‘Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’ Review
Developer: Capcom | Platform: PS5 | Playtime: 26:25
It’s always pleasant when a game or series you have an interest in playing has a sudden resurgence of some sorts. A trailer dropped at the end of Summer Games Fest season and a release date shortly afterwards, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is my first experience playing the series and just so happens to be the one I know the least about. Coming out of the mall, I had an excellent time.
Dead Rising follows photo journalist Frank West who after receiving a tip off that something was going down at the mall in Willamette, Colorado. After being dropped by a helicopter which is set to return in three days, Frank discovers the unrest is a zombie outbreak of all things. Becoming entangled with Homeland Security, Frank must both survive the outbreak and get to the bottom of what is happening in the mall before his evacuation.
From there, the mall is your world. A little on the smaller side compared to what you may be used to, even compared to sandboxes rather than open worlds but it gets the job done. Especially so as the entire mall is open to exploration from the get go. There’s nothing stopping a player with knowledge from beelining to grab the most efficient gear, which adds to the games replayability. While you’re in the mall, you have three main objectives: The Cases, which are the games main objective. There’s Survivors who as the name implies are fellow survivors who need escorted to the games safe house (the hub as it were) either willingly or after a little palm greasing one way or another. Finally you’ve got the Psychopaths who are survivors who have lost the plot thanks to the outbreak and act as boss fights. While some are more obvious than others, I like that the game doesn’t let you know if an objective (A scoop) is a survivor or psychopath until you get there, meaning you have to be prepared for fight or flight.
How do you prepare? Well nearly everything in the mall can be picked up (with some more or less glaring exceptions, this was a game from 2006 after all). If it’s a food item or drink, it will heal the player. If it’s anything else then it can be used to smash, cut, burn, maim, sever or batter zombies about. Thankfully zombies here are just the reanimated dead kind rather than your Left 4 Dead special infected kind so they go down in a hit or two. To balance this, each screen could have 100s of zombies at a time. The weapons also durability (guns have limited ammo) which can’t be repaired, only replaced. Skill magazines found around the mall can increase weapon durability as well as a plethora of other things such as more healing from food or making your escorted survivors more proactive in their own survival (There’s a joke there about people needing a magazine to tell them to survive but that’s neither here nor there)
To stand a chance, you’ll need to level up with plenty of PP. Hardy Har. PP is earned from escorting survivors, killing Psycopaths and most importantly – Taking Photos. Frank is a photo journalist after all and can take an endless amount of photos. All photos gain PP but if you can get a photo in one of the special genres – Drama, Horror, Outtake or Brutality, then you’ll rake in huge amounts of PP. The original game did have a 5th category that was removed – Erotica. Personally I don’t think it’s a big loss and is better suited to the Vegas inspired setting of Fortune City in the sequel. That said, upskirt zombies on your own time. Raising Frank’s level gives him more health, lets him move quicker and carry more items as well as a range of bizarre wrestling and combat moves. Who even needs a baseball bat when you can piledrive a zombie, run on their heads or even walk like one to avoid detection. Personally the only move I used was kicking when jumping which worked as effectively as any other form of blunt force trauma.
I’ve gotten this far without mentioning it but it’s time to address the supposed elephant in the room. The 72 hour time frame I mentioned at the start isn’t just thematic, the entire game runs on it. The player has 6 real world hours to complete the main storyline of the game otherwise they’ll get the bad ending. Beyond that, individual cases as well as survivors/psychopaths are on a limited time frame. Wait too long and they’ll die or disappear from the game. A lot of people have said that this time management element is what has put them off playing the game and while I do see where they’re coming from, I also don’t think it’s that much of a big deal. You have plenty of time to complete the main objective even if you may find yourself pushing for time on some of the side content. This is why I mentioned the games replayability, the game is short enough that you can optimise your playthrough to get more and more done. New to the remaster is the ability to fast forward time at save points (the various toilets around the mall) to alleviate the issue of waiting around for however many in game hours. If I had to make a complaint it’s that with the side content specifically, they’re all available for varying amounts of time. The main cases will say you have to be a this point or that point for a certain time and generally offer longer but the side content is available for a variable amount of time. Not a problem in concept but there’s no way to track how long they have beyond a time bar shrinking. A perfect playthrough is absolutely possible but some people might not like how daunting a challenge that would be playing a blind first playthrough.
If the player reaches the good ending (which is purely beating the cases, survivors saved and psychopaths killed are irrelevant), the player unlocks Overtime mode which acts as an epilogue/true ending to Frank’s time at Willamette. Completing this will unlock the infinite mode, notorious for the achievement/trophy ‘7 Day Survivor’ which meant keeping your console on for 14 straight hours. Thankfully the requirements for that one have been altered. I only made one attempt while I played as to not burn myself out but I do intend to go back to it.
Comparatively basic compared to other modern titles and even the sequels within its own series, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster acts a perfect taste of how good the more concise and focused titles of yesteryear could be. Lean, but absolutely no fat to be seen. If you’re after a zombie experience that’s a little different to what you’ve recently come accustomed to, I’d highly suggest dropping in store to try Dead Rising.
