Dead Rising/Headscratchers

• Ending A Just Bugs Me: How the Hell do you not Notice a Zombie in your Helicopter before you got on?. Its not like there were that many places for it to hide. Also, how the hell does a brain-dead Zombie lie low and prepare to ambush you in mid-flight anyway? This is just Diabolus Ex Machina at its finest.
  • I assumed that it climbed in while he had his headset on, cycling up the rotors. The real question is how the helicopter pilot escaped from * three* military attack choppers who presumably had kill orders, and then made it back exactly 3 days later.
    • Those were just Blackhawks, not attack helicopters, and the didn't appear to have their miniguns. So presumably, the guy just got fined for his stunt, military didn't see Frank, and then by the time he came back the military was too pre-occupied to intercept him again.
• Laser sword in the security office at the mall! I wish, it would make my job easier.
  • Just hit people with the benches, potted plants, sporting equipment, or whatever you can grab.
• Bee stings=zombies. I just don't get it.
  • The bee's had a special hormone in them that that caused rapid cell development (for the process of growing cattle quickly). Apparently, in things that were dead, it caused zombification (and also apparently could be transferred through the bloodstream). It doesn't make a terrible amount of sense, but hey, its Capcom....
  • I interpreted it to mean that they injected the cows with something that would make them eat voraciously and grow faster. When wasps stung the cows and then humans - Zombies with insatiable hunger.
  • for that matter, how is the infection spread by bites if the victims are zombified by bug stings? The nature of the infection sounds almost like a weird form of blood cancer, but getting bitten by a leukemic isn't really the most fatal thing that can happen to a person. The wiki mentions a virus, but apparently the only purpose of said virus is to prevent the host's immune system from rejecting the parasites.
    • This DR wiki article should clear things up: Ampulex Compressa Giganteus.
• Otis. He can't keep his fingers off the phone, and if you hang up on him due to BEING EATEN ALIVE, you're automatically a rude snob who needs to learn some manner. (On the other hand:you DO get to smack him around a bit in infinite mode.)
• Maybe I missed something, but what was in West's briefcase?
  • The one that fell out of the Helicopter? He never says, but we can assume at the very least that it had the spare batteries for his camera because he has to keep looting them from the mall stores. Other than that, your guess is as good as anyone's, though mine is that it's a video camera.
  • The rest of his photography equipment. Duh.
  • Guns, maybe? 'Cause he's covered wars, ya know.
  • The medication for his gimpy ankle.
    • YES. God, it all makes sense now...
    • His ankle was gimpy because he fell out of the helicopter. Note that he lost the briefcase before he fell.
  • My sandwich! Nooo...
• The fact that two guys of the first group of survivors you meet can't overpower a single old lady when she wants to open the front door.
  • Parental animal love can cause strange things. That said, Lindsay was being fucking dumb then.
• Exactly how does making cows voracious eaters help anyone? If anything, it'd make a food crisis worse through the sheer amount of resources they'd require.
  • I'm thinking they were trying to slow down the cow's metabolism so that they would get nice and fat instead of making them voracious.
  • It still wouldn't help. Cattle aren't exactly the most athletic creatures as is, slowing down their metabolism would have little impact. Even if it did magically make them fatter, they'd still require more resources just to reach that size.
• After fighting Adam and turning off the roller coast to save Greg, why does Frank not turn it back on? Obviously it kept the Zombies away and it could have been a somewhat safe place for survivors to congregate (before another psycho showed up at least).
  • Umm... the roller coaster was still on. It's just that Adam wasn't around to use his chainsaws to keep the number of zombies down.
• Stumbling when you get hit. STUMBLING WHEN YOU GET HIT. This is what Japanese developers need to learn to stop doing. In GTA IV, when Niko gets shot, he twitches a little and the player maintains control. In Dead Rising, when Frank gets shot, he fucking stumbles backwards. Annoying when you're in a firefight, sure, but when you're trying to cross a fucking courtyard full of zombies being chase by convicts in a Jeep with a mounted machine gun? That was the exact moment I realized that the game was an absolute case of YMMV.
  • I read an article about game design (I think it was about WoW), that pointed out that the one thing which enraged players the most, across all game genres, was losing control of the character. Your guy runs out of bounds in Madden because of a canned animation, Frank stumbles when he gets hit, Your character gets stunned by the Sandman in Team Fortress 2, your sensitivity drops to near-nil when you get hit by a stun grenade in Modern Warfare 2, etc. It's all the same feeling and it's usually bad game design.
    • Admittedly, the stun grenade in Modern Warfare 2 is justified - that's the same effect it has on people in reality. Still quite annoying though.
  • Yeah, and why the zombies take health away anyway? I say Capcom should have programmed them to just stand there and be easily pushed aside so we can win without being bothered. In fact, forget pushing aside, just make Frank noclip through them, that'd save us even more time!
• The Hall Family. Although I do get satisfaction from killing them, it's probably because they bug me so much that I enjoy killing them. However, it does bug me that Thomas is reluctant to kill Frank so I killed the other two members first in hopes he'd pussy out, but he keeps firing. But then again, I just killed his family so...
• Why do the zombies go beserk at night? Did they ever explain that? I don´t think so. But, i haven´t played in like a year, so i might be wrong...
  • Nope, you're right. Even in the sequel, it's not explained.
• What was the point of Carlito's last resort? Not only did it make no sense but it wasn't neccessary. How exactly did Carlito expect tiny little larvae to survive an explosion that was supposed to destroy an entire mall let alone throw them into the atmosphere were by some miracle they wouldn't die and would spread all over the planet. Then in overtime mode we learn about his "little ticking timebombs" all over america meaning that spreading the larvae would have been pointless, or was it just a case of There Is No Kill Like Overkill?
  • Presumably, one of the modifications made to the Wasps was to give the larva a highly-durable dormant state, like fluke "cysts." As for the other part... the "timebombs" would infect parts of America eventually, assuming nothing went wrong. The explosion would infect the entire country right now.
• Alright, so I'm escorting several survivors back to the safe room, including the Barricade pair and Leah. Now, as we all know, Aaron can't defend himself to save his life, and Leah sprained her ankle. Fine. But why on earth can't I saddle Leah with him, instead of piggybacking her while praying to god that the idiots I've handed Submachine guns shoot the zombies? If you've got a survivor who can only follow you, and one who can bearly walk, why can't you just sort of combine the two?
  • Because duct tape wasn't in the first game.
• How exactly do you make zombie-creating wasps while trying to mass-produce cattle?
  • Science.
• How do the zombies get into the warehouse elevator in DR1? Since when do they press buttons? And if they do, why wouldn't someone rig up a captcha, so to speak? Even a keypad with the combination scrawled on the wall next to it would work.
  • I always just assumed a zombie bumped into the button and some zombies stumbled into the elevator while the door is open.
    • It is possible. I've done it myself on accident and I'm not even a zombie.
  • A survivor was running from the zombies, he enters the elevator and tries to get inside where he figures he or she will be safe. Now, you know how slowly those damn doors close, so a group of zombies makes it inside too. Next thing you see, inside the elevator there are only the zombies who chased him... plus one.
• I'm wondering why Capcom didn't just go the whole nine yards and make Otis turn to psychopathy on Overtime mode. In fact, I'm wondering why Infinity Mode doesn't have a story as well. It is deep enough to fit one anyway.
• So did Otis escape with your survivors or not? I keep seeing different answers on different wikis, and I thought the note implied that he got away while the special forces were getting the survivors.