Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Wii)

If it's zombies you crave, it's a good time to buy video games. Between Sega's House of the Dead: Overkill and Capcom's Resident Evil 5, you'll have plenty of undead blasting in your future. And then there's the campy DEAD RISING CHOP TILL YOU DROP, a remake of Capcom's popular 2006 horror game for Xbox 360 that now takes advantage of the Nintendo Wii motion-sensing controls to hack, slash, and shoot a flesh-eating mob.

In case you haven't played the original adventure, players assume the role of Frank, a photojournalist, holed up in a zombie-infested shopping mall. You must get out alive by finding and using real and makeshift weapons (from shotguns to bowling balls, respectively) to keep enemies at a distance while trying to find an exit -- and an answer as to what happened here in the fictitious suburb of Willamette, Colorado.

The Wii remote adds some variation to the zombie killing as you can swing it like a bat, aim and shoot it like a pistol towards an oncoming enemy, or hold it like a chainsaw to take down the hoards. A ticker in the bottom right corner of the screen keeps a tally of how many baddies you've killed. It's gory, bloody and over-the-top -- like a B horror movie such as Dawn of the Dead (which also takes place in a mall). Plus gamers will face boss characters, rescue survivors, dress up Frank in a variety of costumes, solve some puzzles, and watch entertaining cut-scene cinematics.

But the Wii doesn't have the same horsepower as the Xbox 360 -- and it shows. The graphics are pale in comparison to Microsoft's machine and there aren't nearly as many enemies on the screen at once. What's more, Frank doesn't use his camera to take pictures in this version, which was very much a part of the original game-play. Despite these shortcomings, this "Mature"-rated zombie playground proves fun and silly for Wii gamers age 17 or older, but it might be best as a weekend rental as opposed to paying $40 to own this slasher.