Dead Rising Reviews

Dead Rising 1 beat. Quite possibly one of the biggest examples of "aged poorly" I've encountered in quite some time. Exacerbated by Dead Rising 2's existence alone. The survivor AI is terrible, as soon as you know the tricks the game itself becomes a slow slog and a bit of a joke, there's little variety once you have the truly powerful weapons and the game does little to encourage it. Unlike 2's constant barrage of PP for killing zombies with the special weapons and various minigames to encourage you to literally pass the time messing about. All of which Dead Rising 1 lacks, meaning when the game lets you off the leash to run around killing zombies for a few hours. You quickly get bored and idle at the start of the next case. Which for say, 2 in game hours, would be effective tension building, but at 12 gets tedious. Yet, I obviously can't call it a bad game. The story and characters are cheesy and enjoyable, the spectacle of mowing down zombies does admittedly never get old even if the gameplay behind it might, and the photography mechanic is legitimately genius. Way ahead of it's time now that a lot of AAA games outright encourage fully featured photography modes as a bonus, and all it is in practice is a screenshot that gives a few points. It's just that after playing it once, one has little need to ever play it again. Yet, people did, they did over and over for every ending and for every secret interaction. Wanna know why? Because Dead Rising is quite frankly saved because of it's XBOX achievements. They may be straightforward, but from their difficulty to their absurdity, they are probably the most iconic part of the game barring Frank West himself. A clear, tangible reward for going back in to really see every single thing they put in, while also being early enough in the life cycle to feel cool and want to show them off online when you do get the hardest ones. Even today I struggle to think of a game so defined by it's meta-achievements. Hell, even I enjoyed hunting down a couple during the aforementioned 12 hours of nothing. Dead Rising: Off the Record beaten. *Fan-tastic* Is it even worth doing a full review of a game that is, itself, essentially a shitpost? Sure the same is true of Dead Rising 1 and 2, but there's something extra about a game just blatantly saying "This is non canon, there is no point, there will be no follow-up or new plot revelation, it's barely even a character piece, we are literally just making 'what if dead rising 2 starred Frank West' and you can't stop us." The zombie murder is fun as ever, the Survivor AI remains improved like in base DR2 so it's actually kind of fun to escort them around and have little group adventures. With the game slowly evolving over the 72 hour time limit as it goes from mainly rescuing, to more psychopaths and stronger foes, with a few longer time gaps with no missions where the game deliberately wants you to let loose a little and just have a bit of fun. Which is something Dead Rising 1 lacked since it didn't have the same catharsis of weapon combining, so now you could be doing a little scavenger hunt and the reward was a fun couple minutes of utter ridiculousness. The camera being added back in serves only as a reminder that, as a mechanic, it only kind of worked in DR1. It's fine to have and has it's charm but you tend to forget it's there unless you see a "take a picture of this" icon. In the end, it's a fun little re-romp through Dead Rising 2. Sure you want to play the base game first, but if you already have but just kind of want to play again? Why not do the Frank West version, it's like an additional spin on the games already existing replay value.