The Dead Rising franchise has stood out over the years for its wacky sense of humor, goofy weapons, crazy bosses, and tough time limit. And a lot of that wacky sensibility is still there. But Dead Rising 4, the latest entry in the series and celebrating its tenth anniversary, sets aside too much of what made the franchise unique.
Artistic Acheivement
This won’t take home any graphics awards, especially as you’ll murder the same zombie over and over and over again, but it does have a nice, dead-pan sense of humor that the franchise has perfected over several games. The mall and the surrounding town of Willamette is packed with in-jokes, parodies, and gags that make it worth exploring even if you’ve got nothing to do there.
Sound-wise, however, is where the game really shines. The funny voice-acting, let down a bit by stiff facial animations, really carries the game, and setting it specifically at Christmas lets the sound team have a lot of fun with cheesy mall Christmas music, which is rife throughout the game and often used to hilarious effect.
Innovation
Aside from mechanical tweaks, and adding aspects like Investigations and camera filters to shake up gameplay and create some puzzle-solving opportunities, this is the same zombie-crushing game it’s always been, right down to Frank West returning to Wilamette as the morally flexible protagonist.
Execution
While Dead Rising 4 is fun, and that’s what’s most important, this entry in the series forgoes a lot of what made the franchise unique in the first place. While the goofily satirical edge is still there, mocking commercialism, the need for fame, and holiday shopping madness, a lot of the game’s teeth have been pulled in the mechanics. Part of the reason Dead Rising was so popular was that Capcom made the game stand out by pitting you against the clock. You had to be in certain places at certain times to get the best ending or even advance the plot. It forced you to make choices, especially when you had a bizarre, creepy boss fight to deal with.
There’s no clock, this time, at least not one that matters, and while it’s welcome in the sense that Capcom Vancouver has built an elaborate open world it’s fun to poke around and kill zombies in, the game loses both a key mechanic and a sense of urgency. You no longer have to choose between saving that survivor and advancing the plot: You can easily do both, since the lack of a clock also dials back the challenge. While it’s nice to have the time, that makes this just another open world brawler in a holiday season full of them. Even the bizarre boss fights have mostly been held back and are surprisingly uninspired for a game that had you fight a chainsaw-wielding clown and a redneck and his pet tiger (that you could befriend!) in past entries. The game replaces the clock with a relentless upgrade system always pushing you to improve your character: Building a better Frank West is easy and even fun and often makes doing side missions and finding blueprints to build the wackier weapons worth it.
Finally, there are a lot of glitches in the game, with zombies getting stuck in walls, and falling through floors, Frank waiting an unusually long time to open loot duffels, and other imperfections. Sometimes they can even affect the game: To save a survivor, we had to use Frank to push him far enough away from a zombie trapped in the wall that said survivor no longer saw it as a threat. They’ve also shifted the mechanics a bit to make shooting a bit more viable, which, while a good choice on the level of mechanics, does give the game a bit of an identity crisis since ammo and ranged weapons are plentiful: Is it a brawler or a shooter?
Staying Power
With seven lengthy story missions and a sprawling mall and town to explore, you’ll easily spend fifteen to twenty hours killing zombies and bumping off mercenaries. There’s also loads of clothes to try on, vehicles to build, and things to destroy.
Bullsh*t Factor
While there’s DLC incoming, down to your clothing menu having a special DLC section, the game is detailed, long, and feels complete. That said, the timed-exclusive nature, where PS4 fans have to wait a year to see it, might bother some.
Final Thoughts
Dead Rising 4 is a lot of fun, but in setting aside some of what made it unique, it might have some real problems standing out amid a stretch of open-world games like Mafia III, Watch Dogs 2, and Final Fantasy XV. The goofy weapons and humor are still there, but the timer and tough boss fights that the franchise was known for need to make a return, or else it’ll simply blend into the crowd for many gamers.