- Note: This is a technical review of the PC port. For the Xbox One review of Dead Rising 3, please click here.
I logged onto my Steam account, exactly one week after the release of Dead Rising 3: Apocalypse Edition. I saw that my gameplay time for it read two hours, and was quite shocked by it. For you see, that wasn’t how much I had been playing it that week, but instead how long I had tried to get it to actually work. Many PC games that launch after their console counterparts are known to have a good amount of issues. However, I have never seen anything as ridiculous as this.
Those that were lucky enough to get it to run the first time were lucky enough to avoid the game’s various problems. Then, for gamers like me with gaming laptops that had Nvidia chipsets in it weren’t even able to launch the game past the loading screen. It was a very a frustrating issue that took a good while to patch. So, rather than enjoying bashing zombies skulls in, my daily activity concerning Dead Rising 3 post launch, instead it involved me going over to the forums everyday hoping that they’d patch it.
Now, I would understand if the laptop counterparts weren’t officially supported, but in this case they didn’t even made a note of it on the official requirements. So, even though they claimed post launch that laptops were not supported, official requirements said otherwise. They did not properly warn their customers beforehand, and it was a mistake on their part.
There was a first sign of hope however and it came when they finally released the compatible drivers for NVIDIA chipsets. However, it did not solve the issue outright. Fortunately, it did help some people with the random crashes. However, for majority of the players the game was still not launching. I found it baffling that the developers didn’t feel the need to work closely with graphics chipset manufacturers to release proper profiles through the drivers before the release of the game.
I remember when that particular driver version was released; it contained the profile for The Evil Within, which was still quite a while away from release. For that game it was a great sign. Even then, the only thing the drivers addressed concerning Dead Rising 3 was the SLI option, by completely disabling it. Yes, that is right; SLI isn’t supported, and barely works for anyone. Instead, it causes more problems (surprise!). After that driver release, hours turned into days and days into weeks before I finally gave up hope of them even trying to fix it. Fortunately, I was wrong as they did release a patch for it that addressed the problem. I was finally able to play. However, it turns out that was just the beginning of my long journey through frustration.
The game is riddled with bugs and glitches that could make playing your game an absolute nightmare and I’m not even talking about the games nightmare mode difficulty! Then, the ridiculously high requirements meant that the game was stuttering for anyone even slightly below them. I would understand if the game looked amazing, but considering how beautiful games like the recent The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter looked compared to the requirements, it was preposterous. The game looks good, but in my opinion not that good. What is more, is that when I monitored the memory usage it was barely pushing past 4GB, even though I have 8GB of RAM available. The game really is poorly optimised.
What saddens me most however, is that under all these bugs and glitches mixed with horrible optimisation, there is a genuinely good game. As much as I could have played, the game for me was excellent. Too bad I couldn’t properly enjoy it because of all the problems. For example, one of the most frustrating problems I faced every now and then was when the graphics altogether stopped loading, leaving nothing but a gray background behind. If you are to walk over to that background or missing asset, you fall through the ground endlessly. I wouldn’t have minded if it loaded properly after waiting, but there was nothing that you could do, other than restart from a checkpoint. Even that wouldn’t have been much of a problem, if the loading times weren’t so ridiculously long.
I really wanted to play through it, but every time I tried it was nothing but an absolute chore. Now, there are those with powerful computers that are able to run the game, but the performance isn’t satisfactory. What’s more concerning, is that there are still people who cannot play the game, especially those with an AMD chipset. As far as I know for the past few weeks there have been no updates on patch estimation by the developers over on the official Steam forums. For that people who have rightfully paid for their copies have been getting very restless and some even asking for refunds.
I honestly don’t think I’ve seen such a disaster of a launch for any PC port in my opinion. It took the developer’s weeks just release a patch so that the game could run, and even then it had countless problems hindering the gameplay of many players. I only wish that they fix and iron out the optimisation issues as soon as possible, so that I can finish the game, because I really, really loved what I played. Is that really too much to ask? Nick is just one badass dude, and the countless weapon and vehicle combinations mean that you will be dispatching zombies in the most entertaining of ways.
If you have anything less than a good computer or a gaming laptop (no matter how good), I advise you to stay away from purchasing this game on your PC. It is expensive and at the moment not properly optimised for a wide range of PC’s. If you really are desperate to play this game, then if possible, I would recommended picking up an Xbox One and a copy of Dead Rising 3 for it.
I really hope that Capcom sincerely learns from this, and in the future puts more emphasis on PC testing and optimisation. Because as of now, the PC port is nothing but an absolute mess. If you do have a powerful computer, then go ahead as the game comes with every DLC released from the console edition (minus the Smart Glass specific missions) and is tons of fun to play. Not to mention, you get a preview of the Brady guide, and the making of artbook which I really enjoyed. Dead Rising 3: Apocalypse Edition is a game that should remain dead and buried.