If you never played Dead Rising (2006) its gameplay loop and chop-til-you drop premise are as straightforward as they are timeless. As journalist Frank West, you’ll airdrop into a quarantined mall and spend 3 days piecing together how everything came to an undead head. Or you’ll die and try, try, try it all again.
Frankly—and I do apologise for that wordplay—Capcom’s deluxe remastering of this retail experience from hell is, well, all over the shop.
The added creature comforts in controls, AI, and bonus costumes linked to other Capcom media? All welcome. The so-called visual upgrades and moving everything into the RE Engine? Mostly appreciated in terms of 4K rez and 60 fps increase… but imperfect elsewhere.
Chiefly, because there’s been an effort to needlessly tamper with the atmosphere; a real “aisle 3 didn’t need a clean up, so why’d you even mop it?” situation.
Let’s talk about the good stuff first, plus my unique approach to conducting this review. Back when Dead Rising was quasi-remastered on PS4, I made a video wherein I did a 100% run that economically found all Scoops and Survivors in one epic speed run.
I should explain some of those terms for you newcomers. Unique NPC Survivors can be rescued by Frank if you’re in the right place and time according to the constantly ticking in-game clock. You can trigger special Scoop sidequests in a similar fashion, which usually involve using Frank’s camera, and they’ll inch you toward a truer ending beyond simply surviving 72 hours.
a real “aisle 3 didn’t need a clean up, so why’d you even mop it?” situation.
Anyway, by having that old video guide of mine running on a second screen, I witnessed a 1:1 comparison of both articles. What I saw was a mix of mostly improvements and some odd choices.
Firstly, I don’t think this game has been perfectly implemented into the venerable RE Engine in a way that fully harnesses its power. From minute one, when Frank’s taking photos from his chopper ride in, I was watching enemies pop in on my peripherals. Not a good first impression.
Further into the game, I also saw peculiar instances where the more extreme body counts of zombie crowds were noticeably reduced from the OG. This was particularly egregious in the underground tunnels, which used to be absolutely wall-to-wall with bodies.
The impression I got was that the RE Engine needed considerably more time to populate these new areas (particularly if you were plowing through in a car). Eventually, the scene would catch up to the expected throng sizes, but the difference in time needed to do so was night and day compared to the original.
Speaking of night and day, this remaster makes a concerted, and I think misguided, effort to inject some extra dank into this mall.
this remaster makes a concerted, and I think misguided, effort to inject some extra dank
The OG was mostly fundead zaniness with wacky weapons in a brightly lit and colourful space, mixed with only a dash of tension when nighttime rolled in. In the p.m., the lighting would reduce some and the Zs would get more aggressive.
In Deluxe, however, it’s like somebody has decided to shoot out 25% of the fluorescent tubes in this mall in an effort to, I dunno, bring the atmosphere more in line with the spookier Resident Evil remakes?
But that’s the thing, doing so just detracts from the main reason why fans loved this game—despite Frank’s limited inventory space and low ammo/breakable weaponry, this wasn’t a Resi skulk about. Frank’s ability to level up into a force to be reckoned with, his exotic weaponry, and access to ludicrous costumes quickly turn a desperate plight into something closer to hilarity instead of horror.
Likewise, the boss fights you have here are with pisstake caricatures of Psychos—be it Hillbillies, Chainsaw juggling clowns, or Sherminator-looking rival journos. Quick note: the remastering of the models of these big bads has gone quite well in terms of added detail, actor performances, and creepiness.
The only reason I can think of for Capcom dragging the gamma levels down overall is a need to make the player less spatially aware and not as effective—possibly an unexpected balancing need that arose from modernising and improving the controls so much.
pisstake caricatures of Psychos—be it Hillbillies, Chainsaw juggling clowns, or Sherminator-looking rival journos.
Being able to move/strafe/shoot now, like you can any third-person shooter, is bliss. Previously, Frank had more tank-like aiming, which made many of us rely instead on a soft-lock system of vague directional pointing and firing from the hip. That still returns in the modern controls and works reasonably well, too.
Other improvements I noted in my side-by-side included slightly smarter Survivor AI. Back in the day, you’d have to mash the “follow me button” and babysit your civvies like crazy as you ferried them through the munchy moshpits to your home base.
That, or they’d just get outright stuck on geometry until you smacked them with a golf club or a guitar or something.
Nowadays, I found one summon command would bring them to heel, and it’s obvious that these lemmings are far less inclined to be snagged on enemies. This is a huge improvement over what I believe was the biggest difficulty factor of the OG—dunderhead pathfinding.
Another pitfall that’s been fixed in rescuing is that incoming calls from your “Man In The Chair” can be better fielded and quick-skipped. These used to have a tendency to slow your roll in the original game, which would cause lost time or a landslide of other problems to descend upon you.
Thankfully, the hugely helpful improvements don’t end there, either. There’s been a rethink on the OG’s saving system, which was notoriously tight-fisted to really make you plan and move efficiently through the mall to meet stringent encounter conditions.
New auto-saves that trip at the entering of every new wing of the mall have been implemented. If you’re quick on the draw, you can theoretically reload to these if a rescue or boss fight has gone off the rails. The purist in me hates this change; the time-poor father adores it.
When all was said and done, including the unlockable Infinity Mode where you need to survive a whopping 7 days in this mall, I was mostly glad to revisit Dead Rising. Though Capcom has reissued this before, the controls and AI fixes alone definitely make Deluxe the best way to play it. Hands down.
Go in with lower expectations on its use of RE Engine, and you’ll still have gobs of fun playing (and then replaying, and replaying) this visceral videogame equivalent of Groundhog Day meets Dawn of the Dead.
This review was made possible by a digital code provided by the publisher. Physical copies of DRDR will release on November 8 2024.
