Capcom has a tough sell in Dead Rising Mobile. Visiting your local shopping mall is good enough for vacant stares and shallow entertainment - you don't need to spend money on this outdated, clunky game.
At a time when developers are pushing the envelope with better graphics, more sophisticated features, and more involved gameplay, Dead Rising Mobile remains behind the curve with deficient controls, lacklustre gameplay, and embarrassingly blocky graphics.
Much better could have been done with this fun series, which makes Capcom's tepid effort all the more disappointing.
Mall ratsAs photojournalist Frank West, you're stuck inside a sprawling shopping centre along with hundreds of zombies. Other survivors have hidden themselves away, chiming in requests over radio.
These requests range from the absurd, such as checking on a survivor's car in the parking lot or visiting the music store to pick up a favourite CD, to more basic tasks like killing a number of zombies under a time limit.
You never meet these survivors in person. Instead, it's just you, the zombies, and a bunch of items littering the mall that can be wielded as weapons. There are shopping carts with which you can bash zombies, lawnmowers to grind them up, mannequins to throw, different types of guns, baseball bats, and all kinds of knives.
The focus is purely on the action. While you're forced to take on survivor requests, they're just a vehicle through which zombie-killing action is delivered. It's a thinly veiled conceit, though one that would work if the action was satisfying.
Controls, circa 1994Unfortunately, the number of weapons, while initially impressive, is actually quite small. It doesn't take much time to play with the available items and once you do the novelty wears off.
More problematic are the controls, which demonstrate an unwillingness by Capcom to get with the times. Both movement and camera angle are tied to a single analogue stick, resulting in frequently awkward camera angles and annoying missteps.
The camera needs to be independent of the movement stick to prevent you from running into objects and enemies. This isn't difficult - countless third-person action games already do this successfully on iPhone and iPod touch by allowing you to swipe anywhere on the screen to adjust the camera. Either Capcom isn't paying attention or it doesn't care.
Redeeming qualitiesThere are a few praise-worthy qualities about Dead Rising Mobile. Creative integration with Facebook and Twitter enables your buddies to save you from becoming a zombie by reviving you when killed. Game Center support provides plenty of achievements to unlock.
Tons of missions combined with rescue calls from friends via Facebook and Twitter also infuse the game will long term value.
But the problem isn't that there's a lack of stuff to do - it's that the gameplay is unexciting. Dead Rising Mobile fails to deliver action compelling enough to have you coming back for more, let alone download it in the first place.