Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, the Wii-make of the critically-lauded 360 zombie actioner is released today in the US, yet bizarrely - at the time of writing, anyway - there’s not a single review up on aggregator site Metacritic. That’s never a good sign, and indeed, the suggestion that it might not be the world’s greatest port is borne out by the two magazine reviews which currently exist, but haven’t been added to Metacritic just yet.

UK magazines Official Nintendo Magazine and NGamer both carry reviews of Chop Till You Drop, the former awarding it a fairly average 68%, with the latter plumping for a measly 55%. Both suggest it’s an infuriating experience thanks to the addition of zombie parrots and poodles, but that the lack of enemies also disappoints - neither were problems in the 360 game whose mall was absolutely full of the undead. But as NGamer summarises, “a zombie-infested mall doesn’t make much sense without zombies to infest it. Poodles and parrots are among the most irritating substitutes imaginable.” Ouch.

In truth, Dead Rising never seemed like a good fit for Wii, and so this is hardly a surprise, although the addition of tiny flying and ground-based foes which are difficult to hit was a problem that simply didn’t need to exist. Perhaps EA had the right idea turning Dead Space: Extraction into an on-rails shooter, if an experienced developer like Capcom can struggle to port a third-person HD action game onto Wii.

Expect more reviews to roll in later this week, and expect them to follow suit. If you’ve still not been put off, Chop Till You Drop is released in Europe this Friday.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 7:45 pm by Chris Schilling
Disappointment, Mature games, Problems?, Very bad ideas, Wii.