Dead Rising 3 is set three years after the events of Fortune City from Dead Rising 2. Yet again a deadly virus has plagued the home of protagonist Nick Ramos and the dead are well and truly walking among the living. There’s nothing spectacular about Nick, he’s just an ordinary person that wants to help people out and just wants people to get along in peaceful harmony. But Nick soon realises that this is not the world he had once known, it’s a place which forces the human race to adapt and survive, and if they don’t, they are as good as dead and might as well join the walking dead club right now.
Dead Rising 3 is set in the fictional city of Los Perdidos in California. Fortunately for Nick not everybody wants to kill one another and he joins forces with his close friend and his boss from the garage that he once worked; Rhonda. Nick and Rhonda are desperate to make their escape from the zombie infested city, but it seems that there are plenty of other folk that have similar intentions. In a world that is already incredibly harsh, Nick especially must dig deep and become a man that he wants to avoid if he has any hope of escaping with Rhonda. Oh and did I mention that the Military are about to nuke the City? So you better act quick, rise to the challenge, because the clock is ticking my friend. Let’s see if we can help Nick and Rhonda escape Los Perdidos before they are blown into pieces or munched into pieces (whichever comes first).
While Dead Rising 3 may not be the best looking Xbox One game at launch, it still looks stunning in places and for where it might lack visually in comparison to others, you can forgive it for the scale of the game and the amount of zombies that can fit on to one screen. I can only speak from my own personal experience, so obviously I don’t know if anyone’s experienced anything different, but I am yet to witness any slow down. Now that’s an impressive feat for this game alone and it’s thanks to the enhanced power of the Xbox One. For this reason I can understand why the developers at Capcom Vancouver couldn’t achieve anything to this level on the Xbox 360, without making any sacrifices. Hence Dead Rising 3 being released on the Xbox One.
The developers also made a very bold claim saying that no two zombies will be the same, not that I’ve been counting, but from what I’ve seen thus far, each and every zombie does appear to have something unique about them and that’s some impressive work indeed by the folks at Capcom. The same can also be said about each and every building that you will find in the game’s huge open world. There was also another little factor that I was glad to see and that was some objects will remain in the world, long after you’ve left them behind and return to them at a later date.
I haven’t done this with every object (that would be very time consuming and it would get a little boring after a while), but I had once abandoned a car as it was close to exploding. So I quickly exited the vehicle in pursuit for a new one. An hour later I returned to the area to where I had left the previous car whilst on a mission to find the car still remaining in the exact same spot, in the exact same condition that I had left it. Now you think of games played on the PS3 or 360, where you would find many items disappearing before you very eyes due to the consoles not being capable of keeping obsolete items within its world after they’ve served their purpose. Which makes the abandoned car situation that little more impressive.
This is not to say that there are not any issues what so ever, because I have experienced at least one very minor discrepancy. It hasn’t happened all that often thankfully and when it has happened, it hasn’t hampered my enjoyment what so ever, but I have noticed the odd texture pop in from time to time. This hasn’t happened to environments such as vehicles, buildings thankfully, but rather random objects such lamp posts, rubble, electricity boxes and what not.
In terms of Dead Rising 3’s audio, it does an excellent job in portraying the classic zombie movie tone. I’ve always been a fan of the cheap zombie movie flick, which is likely one of the reason why I and so many others, also enjoy a good old zombie video game. One of the most iconic elements from those movies was the instantly recognisable soundtracks. Now there’s not a particular track that I can pick out on the spot, but when you hear a zombie themed tune, whether it’s while watching a movie or playing a game, fans of the genre will instantly know that the music played upon their ears would belong in a zombie infested world. Dead Rising 3 has just that and when I first heard certain pieces of music being played, it instantly gave me the urge to watch something from the legendary director George A. Romero.
If you’re familiar with the series then you will feel at home with the combat, which is great on one hand, but then on the other hand it hasn’t evolved all that much. Though since the original game, the firearm gameplay mechanic has certainly improved as you can at least aim properly now. To be fair to Dead Rising 3 it has made some subtle improvements to the gameplay. The gameplay does feel far less frustrating and despite the zombie increase, it seems a little easier to hack, slash and shoot your way through the undead hordes. If you don’t find Dead Rising 3 enough of the challenge, then of course you can play some of the harder difficulty settings, such as the insanely difficult nightmare mode (which I’ll get on to a little later).
One of the less frustrating improvements comes with the boss battles, or I should say psycho battles. The Dead Rising series has always been known for its psychotic boss battles, especially with the original game. The psycho’s in Dead Rising 2 also offered a great challenge, but not quite to the level of the first game. So over the course of the series they have become a little more forgiving as times goes by. Some gamers may welcome this, while some may not so. I guess it’s all down to the individual playing or what preference they prefer. The gradual, but subtle improvement in the combat has aided in lowering the frustration as it becomes a little more considerate when bashing a psycho with a barbed wire baseball bat, an assault rifle or the ever so handy Molotov’s. During certain stages of the psycho battles you will be prompted with the opportunity to perform a grapple of sorts, which will unleash extra damage. But be quick, because your enemy will not lie there waiting for too long.
Another improvement that has been made, other the slightly evolved combat, is the god send of a much more efficient auto-save and quick save function. So now you can quickly save before any boss fight or other challenging scenarios and should you forget, hopefully the auto-save wouldn’t have put you too far back. With Dead Rising 2 one of its biggest gimmicks was the weapons crafting system; this allowed you to piece to gather various parts and weapons to create far more deadly and often humorous weapons. But you could only create them if you had the coinciding blueprint.
The blueprints still remain within Dead Rising 3; you also have the rarer gold blueprints, which will allow you to build far more devastating weapons. You also could only create weapons in Dead Rising 2 at a workbench; this often meant that when you’ve finally found your parts it was a mission of survival on its own to find your way to a workbench to build you weapon. Often as not, the likelihood is that you died during or after your mission to find that vital workbench. This obviously caused much frustration in an already challenging game.
Now in Dead Rising 3 you can create and customise your weapons on the spot at almost any time. It could of course be wise not to build a weapon when surrounded by enemies, but I can almost hear the sigh of relief when this much welcomed function was discovered from not only me, but other gamers alike. As long as you had the required blueprints, you can also customise the vehicles in the game. Making ploughing through the hordes of zombies as they lunge on to your car that ever more satisfying and unlike standard vehicles, they will not only unleash more destruction, but that will also last a little longer before conking out.
There is another welcomed change (in my humble opinion anyway) and that’s with the Zombrex. I won’t go into too much detail as I want to keep things as spoiler free as possible, but some gamers may be very pleased to know that Zombrex may not have such a focal and annoying role as it did with previous games. Well not as you may think anyway, I’ll leave it as that. With Kinect being a main Microsoft focus nowadays, the function has also been implemented into Dead Rising 3. I don’t use Kinect all that often from a physical standpoint due to my health, but from what I’ve seen so far in Dead Rising 3, if a zombie tries to climb through a car window, instead of pressing an on-screen prompt, you will be instructed to shake the control pad to get the undead away from its clutches. You can also distract the zombies by making a sound such as a whistle, giving you the opportunity to perhaps flank your way around them.
As much as I loved previous Dead Rising games (the original more than anything), after completion there was never really an urge on my part to finish the game again. Mainly down to those darn psychotic convicts, their music still sends a shiver down my spine and no way did I want to go through that ordeal again. Dead Rising 2 brought in an awesome new co-op mode; in fact it was so good that it never felt right playing it on your lonesome. Say may love its protagonist Chuck Greene, but I assume most may dislike the walking sap. So in came Dead Rising 2.5 (Dead Rising 2: Off the Record) if you will, this time you played the original main man Frank West and the storyline was altered to the original sequel to suit the charismatic freelance photographer.
For Dead Rising 3 we have Nick Ramos, while he may not be Frank West (let’s be honest, who will?), but in my humble opinion he’s certainly a step up from Mr Greene. So for that reason alone, Dead Rising 3 gives me more of an urge to come back for more once the campaign is first finished. Though that’s not the only reason that you may want to finish Dead Rising 3 more than once, as you have plenty of reasons to do so.
For starters you have the co-op mode and for the hardcore gamer that really likes to push themselves to the limits, you have the ghoulish nightmare mode. The name says it all, this mode will be a nightmare, but will ultimately give you the greatest satisfaction should you defeat it. In nightmare mode you have even less time to escape Los Perdidos before the city is nuked, enemies are far more dangerous and similar to the original Dead Rising you can only save in toilet facilities. Though you are also able to save in the designated safe zones.
Then of course you have all the hidden goodies to track down, such as the limited edition Frank West statues, skill books, blue and gold blueprints so that you can customise your weapons and vehicles, hunt down all the tragic deaths, destroy the ZDC tannoys and ZDC apps. The various survival training missions that you have you defeat certain challenges with set stipulations for extra PP. Not to mention all the many side quests to participate in and the challenge of upgrading all your skills and abilities. Any missions or objects that you may have missed, you can replay each chapter giving you more opportunities to max out and finish those missions you may have missed, all with the benefit of having your skill upgrades that you acquired from your previous playthrough.
While Dead Rising 3 may not be quite the next gen game that I had hoped for, it still manages to maintain what I believe has been the most important factor from the series and that is pure simple fun. The game takes more of the same of what we loved from previous games, removes what was wrong with them and adds to what we already know. Improved visuals, an insane amount of enemies on one screen, more and easily customisation options, less frustrating boss battles and an ever so important fairer auto save and quick save function.
You can still save in the good old fashioned toilets, but if you’re ever unsure that the auto-save had done its job, hitting the ‘options’ button to save is an overdue relief. It sound like a small improvement, but anyone that had played the original Dead Rising especially will know how important this feature is.
Dead Rising 3 was the game that lured me into purchasing the Xbox One and with other titles available, I’m glad that this was the first game that I had owned. It’s the kind of game that reminds you of why we love gaming, simple over the top, pure unadulterated fun…plain and simple. I don’t know exactly where the series can go after this or how it might progress further, other than the generic graphical, combat and processing improvements. But I guess that’s a job for the developers to decide, in the mean time I will be jumping back into the fictional city of Los Perdidos for some good old fashioned zombie slaying fun!