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It's best not to think of Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop as a simple port of the Xbox 360 game that inspired it. Though the plot and setting are the same, the changes made while adapting the game to the Wii are so drastic that it's as if the very soul of the original was plucked out and replaced with a mildly entertaining but generic shooter.
The subtitle, "Chop Till You Drop," evokes imagery of butchering zombies, and anyone who's played the original game will likely think of all the creative ways to do it. After all, the game takes place in a shopping mall, and each store presents a unique opportunity for slaying the undead. In the Chop Till You Drop, however, this sort of creative thinking takes a back seat to a hefty arsenal and nearly limitless supply of ammunition.
In execution, Chop Till You Drop feels a lot like Resident Evil 4, right down to the over-the-shoulder aiming and tedium of slaughtering wave after wave of zombies, who almost all drop ammo and other helpful items. Even some of the weapons are exactly the same, such as the Riot Gun that replaces the Shotgun, the Magnum and the Semi-Auto Rifle. And like Resident Evil 4, the abundance of weapons and ammo significantly reduces the survival aspect of the so-called survival horror game. Enemies, no matter how grotesque, are wiped out with near comedic effect.
Not that the game isn't tongue-in-cheek to begin with. Players take on the role of Frank West, a snarky photojournalist who gets a tip about strange activity in Willamette, Colo. He hires a private chopper to fly him to a shopping mall in the small town, and quickly learns that the place is overrun by the undead. The premise is scary enough, but it's offset by the occasional streak of dark humor and the irony of the everyday setting, chock full of canned loudspeaker advertisements and cheesy elevator music. The endless drone of hungry zombies makes for stark contrast.
Technically, Chop Till You Drop has eight "missions," each with a varying number of steps (some, in fact, are just cutscenes). Each mission reveals an essential truth about what happened in the Willamette Parkview Mall, and for the most part, the journalist's instinct of wanting to know is enough to carry one's interest throughout.
The helicopter is set to return after three days, but it's not a hard-and-fast deadline. While the original game set players free to accomplish as much or as little as they chose in 72 simulated hours, Chop Till You Drop is completely linear. This is a blessing for players who want to discover the plot without enduring multiple playthroughs to see the "best" ending, but the forced nature of every little sidequest induces mind-numbing tedium.
Unfortunately, the game is brought down by these secondary, but involuntary rescue missions, in which the player must venture out to the mall to save random victims. They’re not totally pointless affairs; several boss fights are embedded within these adventures, and they also result in hefty cash rewards good for purchasing better guns and new skills. Still, by the fifth or sixth foray through the same old corridors, shooting a path through the always-respawning horde wears thin. A good portion of the game is spent moving through the mall, and it's a chore without the challenge of using whatever's around as a defense.
The developers were clever enough to include shortcuts for these missions, but they require a small fee, and they significantly reduce the amount of rewards reaped at the end. With all the ammo and health lying around, those perks are fairly useless anyway, but the game also patronizes the player for using shortcuts. In reality, the player needs a more compelling reason to take the long way around.
Despite being a Wii makeover, motion controls hardly come into play. The Wii Remote's pointing function comes into heavy use for aiming and shooting, but there's little waggle to speak of. Mostly, a bit of controller shaking is required to shake off zombies and dodge boss attacks, but it's rarely more creative than that. In a way, that's okay, because it allows the player to focus on charging precisely through mazes of the undead. Aiming weapons and frantically shaking to fend off enemies seem natural, even for players who haven't picked up the Wii in a while.
Of course, with the Wii's motion perks come its drawbacks. Graphics are notably blurrier in this adaptation than the original Xbox 360 version, and zombies tend to fade into view where they once didn't exist. The original game was lauded for displaying so many enemies on screen at once, and this is likely the Wii's way of compensating for less processor power. One thing that hasn't notably worsened is sense of emotion and mannerisms from the game's characters. Frank and the macho DHS agent Brad, in particular, seem very much alive in their actions. Their tone and dialogue are convincing, too.
The entire affair lasts about 10 hours, though the in-game clock will show something closer to six. The extra time is presumably filled with cutscenes, inventory management, load times and retries in the event of failure. Despite the relatively short play time, Chop Till You Drop tends to drag on.
Discovering the story behind the city of Willamette, and the characters trapped inside, is certainly the most compelling reason to play, but going this route, instead of struggling through the trickier Xbox 360 version, feels cheap. It's as if all the secrets of this small town were made easy to find, if only the player can endure a less-fulfilling experience than the original. Like a government cover-up, it's best to pretend the first game never happened.
Fun Factor: Zombie games exist, in part, because it's fun to blow away the undead. That said, it gets old after a while.
Game Length: 10 hours, plus a batch of extra challenges once the main game is complete.
Difficulty: For players who are handy aiming the Wii remote, it's a pretty smooth ride throughout, made easier with lots of ammo and health boosts.
On the Negative Side: The sidequests are dull compared to the plot-driven missions while the gun-driven play shares little of the original game's creativity
Bang for Your Buck: It's not terribly long, or worth coming back to after the first time around. A rental would suffice.
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