The story follows photojournalist Frank West after he becomes trapped in a zombie infested shopping mall in the town of Willamette, Colorado.

The game is played from a third-person perspective and features an open world for the player to explore in the form of the Willamette Parkview Mall.

[5] The weapons and other items are firearms, sports equipment, children's toys, furniture, construction tools, electronic devices, and various bladed objects.

Some weapons can be changed by the environment - frying pans can be heated on a stove both to increase damage and grant access to a special move - while others are large objects that Frank cannot store in his inventory and which he will drop if he picks up or switches to another item.

For example, the toy Megabuster, from Capcom's Mega Man, shoots tennis balls; traffic cones are put over a zombie's head, causing it to stumble about blindly.

Frank can try out various outfits from the mall's clothing stores - such as a Special Forces uniform, wrestling boots, a hockey mask and X's armour from the Mega Man X franchise.

Dead Rising incorporates a role-playing element in the form of an experience system, in which completing various actions will reward Frank with "Prestige Points" (PP).

An in-game HUD is provided, which displays information on Frank's health, his prestige level and the amount of PP progress he has made towards the next one, his inventory of weapons and their condition/amount of ammo left, a counter for the number of zombies the player has killed during a playthrough, and objective counters for both major and optional tasks, which consists of a bar that counts down the amount of time a player has to reach where the objective is located within the mall and complete it, before it is considered to be failed.

Barnaby refuses to be escorted to safety, forcing the two to return to the security room where they are unable to call for assistance due to a communications jammer.

In his search, he finds the medicine required to save Brad is in the supermarket but is held by an angry and mad manager named Steve who is holding captive a woman he met during the mall's breach.

Frank escorts Isabela to the security room, where she reveals that Santa Cabeza was home to an American research facility experimenting on cattle and that Barnaby was its head.

Isabela, as a research assistant, was privy to the fact that a species of native wasp was used in an attempt to boost the performance of cattle, but instead had a zombifying effect.

Isabela reveals that Carlito is planning to use the mall as a staging point to spread the parasites across the country, using bombs located in trucks.

The photo inside the locket provides Isabela with a clue that lets her guess the password to Carlito's computer, and she shuts down the jammer.

Isabela realizes that Frank has been infected by the wasp larval parasite but inexplicably has a high resistance to it, giving him more time before he turns.

Frank gathers supplies for a drug that can suppress the parasite temporarily and discovers an exit from the mall created by DeLuca's crash.

[7] Despite the game's similarities to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Capcom asserted that the concept of "humans battling zombies in a shopping mall" is a "wholly unprotectible idea" under the present copyright laws.

[9] As the development team consisted of members who had worked on Capcom's role-playing video game Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, it helped greatly in incorporating one of the game's elements borrowed from it, towards the developing the mechanics structure of Dead Rising - the ability to roll over anything earned in terms of experience, levels and abilities, towards making a new playthrough, was implemented so that players would have a sense of responsibility for their decisions and actions.

[17] Most reviewers commended the "sandbox"-style of gameplay, the amount to explore within the mall, and the sheer number of ways to kill the thousands of zombies.

[26] However, general consensus amongst reviews was towards criticising the game's save system mechanic and the AI of the survivors; while IGN considered the game to be "one of the more unique and entertaining titles on the Xbox 360", its review notably indicated that improvements were needed with both the save system and NPCs, along with offering "a more forgiving story progression, and tighter controls".

In response to the complaints about the issue, a representative of the company posted the following on Xbox.com: Dear everyone, I have heard your concerns and passed them to every source within Capcom possible.

In a complaint filed February 12, 2008, to seek an injunction that would pre-emptively counter an anticipated complaint from MKR, Capcom asserted that "humans battling zombies in a shopping mall" is a "wholly unprotectable idea" under today's copyright laws; Capcom further pointed to the warning "label" on the box cover as a preemptive measure that was intended to separate the game from the films and avoid any customer confusion.

[48] The lawsuit was dismissed in October 2008, with United States Magistrate Judge Richard G. Seeborg stating that MKR failed to demonstrate the similarity of any protected element of Dawn of the Dead to that of Dead Rising, with many of the elements MKR claimed were similar being part of the "wholly unprotectable concept of humans battling zombies in a mall during a zombie outbreak".

[3] Built upon the same engine used for the Wii version of Resident Evil 4, which had been positively received by reviewers, the port incorporated additional features to that of the Xbox 360 original, including the use of an over-the-shoulder camera approach and utilising the motion control system of the Wii Remote,[3] yet lacked some of the features of the original, including showing large number of zombies on screen and the photography system.

Similar to Infinity Mode in the console version, the game features a hunger meter, with Frank now required to eat food within the mall in order to survive.

[54] The hand-held spin-off was generally well received by reviewers, earning a B+ from 1UP.com,[55][failed verification] and a 7.3/10 from IGN, with praise given for staying true to the sandbox design and plot of the Xbox 360 version, despite being pared down for the smaller screen and platform.

On 28 September 2010, Dead Rising 2 was released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows, and while it followed the basic setup of gameplay mechanics as the original, it featured a new character, a currency system, a weapon creation system that involved finding "Combo Cards" to know what to make, and online multiplayer modes, including zombie-killing minigames and two-player cooperative play, whilst also featuring improvements to address some of the negative feedback that Dead Rising received.