Review
Played on: Xbox OneReleased: 2016
The Dead Rising series is a strange one. It was praised by many on it's first release back on the Xbox 360 back in 2007. In many ways it's often referred to as one of the consoles unique exclusives prior to the remaster launch on multiple platforms. It boasted an impressive graphics engine, and a huge scale zombie outbreak set in a mall.
The downside, however, was the punishing timer and tons of escort missions, bringing a great new IP idea to a required gameplay taste. A game that many didn't enjoy the structure of me included. The series continued with a sequel in that same generation, then a third game as early on the Xbox One.
While the third game kept the timer, it did so with a wide time window, making it almost non-existent. I quite enjoyed Dead Rising 3, review here, and my excitement for a new entry in the series was quite high. The news appearing of Dead Rising 4 development further spiked my interest, such as the timer being removed completely and escort missions being abandoned.
As a winter release, Dead Rising is back again featuring the zombie slaying, news reporter, Frank West from the first game. Let's take a closer look!
Returning to his roots in small town Willamette, Frank discovers a new zombie outbreak is erupting. Hell bent on revealing how the government was behind both the first and this second outbreak, Frank heads out to a secret military facility. Here he discovers they're experimenting and producing a new zombie virus.
A few months later and it's breaking out all over the town. Frank travels into Willamette town centre to document it all on camera, but crash lands at the insanely large mall. Once again, he's stuck in the middle of zombie hell. Without a set timer and a whole city outside to explore too!
With an unusual seasonal setting, more games should do this, DR4 sets itself perfectly for the holidays in a Christmas setting, which I absolutely love. There's a hilariously strange sensation over massacring tons of zombies, then pausing and listening to old, Christmas classics. It's such a politically incorrect mismatch and hilariously dark.
Larger than ever before too, DR4 is roughly the town size of DR3 combined with the mall size of DR1&2. The whole map has a neat main road that connects all the surrounding town areas together in one huge loop you can drive around with the mall at the centre of it. The combination of indoors and outdoors environments, without sacrificing one or the other, is a nice welcome touch and helps mix zombie slaying and survival tactics up.
The graphics do their job fine with the number of zombies and items onscreen being the most impressive technical aspect. While the animation, textures and picture quality being nothing to get overly excited about.
Update: The game has since this review received a Xbox One X enhancement, boosting the resolution from 900p to 1600p, albeit still at 30fps.
New to the franchise are black boxes scattered across the map with military exo-suits in them, these are perhaps the cleverest new idea in DR4. Pick one up and heavy objects that previously were inaccessible to Frank can now be picked up and work as huge weapons. The exo-suits all have a certain amount of power from the second you put one on, usually placed before wrecking carnage in a crowded area, allowing you to use it until the energy is drained.
Continued from DR3 are also the combo vehicles, which lets you basically ducktape together two completely different vehicles into on zombie slaying machine. They 're usually very creative and feature some hilarious weapons to get rid of the hundreds of zombies that roam the streets.
It has a nice learning curve, even for newcomers it puts you off to a mild start. Without the timer the game feels more like a proper free roaming game, only set in a zombie invasion. There's a more streamlined item management this time around too. Each direction on the d-pad is designated to throwing, melee, firing and health items. Making switching between them a far easier affair than previously, eliminating the frustrating controls from the earlier titles.
Picking up the correct item when there are many bunched together on the ground though, still feels like a hit and miss. Overall, the controls are made for the better, a much-needed change for the series.
Although I feel the gameplay and mechanics have all been changed made for the better, DR4 still can't shake a sense of blandness. The story is forgettable, and the dialogue tries hard to be funny, but doesn't feel so most of the time. I found Frank to be difficult to understand as a character and his comedic moments just weren't that funny apart from some lines here and there.
The main plot is short, and I would've appreciated more depth to the gameplay. Slaying zombies becomes tedious eventually. One can accuse the removal of the timer takes away a pressing dynamic to the game, but it needs to be replaced by something. I'm uncertain they really have hit the mark in replacing that something to keep a pace and overall goal to all the zombie slaying.
Personally I don't miss the timer but there are other sacrifices to classic DR ideas which question. The crazy, boss battle, psychopaths are completely removed and feel like a weird omission. Their insane and disturbing fights with a funny, but creepy introduction to each one, is sorely missed. In their place are maniacs, but these are normal, aggressive human enemies.
I would've appreciated a build-up to trying to escape the city, like in DR3, to be the main goal in DR4 too. I found the main story was just a checklist of missions, giving me little sense of being in a zombie apocalypse dealing with its problems.
Once again, Dead Rising somehow manages to grab players with a fun zombie slaying gameplay mechanic, letting you get creative with weapons combinations and stupid outfits, proving that the actual core of the game works. But after a while it just wanders off into a bland path with little new on offer.
It's a series trying to find it's itself yet never has a clear definition of what it's supposed to be. Sure, removing the timer is a huge relief, but in its place, there needs to be a new engaging dynamic to keep the pace. The lack of a clearly defined goal except hunting people down, haunts the game throughout.
DR4 has its good moments, the open world is large enough to keep a nice sense of exploring and the zombie slaying is fun with tons of weaponry and vehicles at your disposal. However, there's this feeling of not much happening.
If you really enjoyed DR3 and the changes it made, then this game is for you as it further distances itself from the stressing dynamic of DR1&2. Just don't go in expecting it to radically change its formula or offer tons more of innovative ideas, it just does what it does best: allowing you to slay thousands of zombies in creative ways with a sense of a b-movie hanging over it. Which has its moments, but not an overall impressive title for me.
