Game Details
- Publisher: Capcom
- Developer: Capcom, QLOC
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Third-Person-Action
- Pros: Satisfying bloody gameplay; lots to do; great presentation; psychopaths; save slots!
- Cons: Otis; awful survivor A.I.
- MSRP: $20
Originally released exclusively for Xbox 360 on August 8,
2006, Dead Rising was one of the defining games of the beginning of the
previous generation. It packed a ton of
enemies onscreen all at once, looked great, and was a fresh and fun and new
experience at the time. It also got
criticism for having tiny text on SDTV’s and a wonky save system, but overall
it was, and still is, a beloved piece of zombie slaying history.
Playing as photojournalist Frank West, Dead Rising 1 takes
you to a Willamette, Colorado, specifically the shopping mall, where a zombie
outbreak is taking place. Frank has to
survive for three days until the helicopter comes to pick him up and in that
time he has to figure out who was responsible for the outbreak. And rescue any survivors. If he has to. To fight through the zombie hordes Frank can use anything he can
get his hands on as a weapon, which is where a lot of the fun in Dead Rising
comes in. You’re in a shopping mall
full of potential weapons, so go nuts!
The new remastered version of the game is mostly intact save
for a couple of changes. The load times
are slightly faster on Xbox One, all of the DLC costumes are available from the
start, and the text size isn’t an issue anymore since you have to play it in
HD, but the bigger story is the inclusion of multiple save slots that you can
switch between. The original release
had confusing language when it came to saving, so a lot of people got confused
and accidentally re-started the game a lot when they didn’t necessarily mean
to. That confusion coupled with the
overall difficulty of the game – and it still is pretty challenging – led to
frustration from players that didn’t know how the save system was supposed to
work.
Only having one save slot also led to frustration because
you could screw up and miss achievements and miss saving certain survivors on
one run through the game. Now with
multiple save slots you can save scum all you want in order to save
everyone. Or if you screw up and
restart, you can just go back to a previous save like nothing happened.
Of course, I was one of the few people that was actually a
fan of the way everything worked in the original Dead Rising. I wrote an article that explained how the
save system worked back in 2006 that to this day is still one of the most read
pages I ever posted for About.com. The
way it worked was like this – when you died you could choose to re-load your
save, or you could re-start the game but keep all of your XP and upgrades. The idea was that you were supposed to die
and restart a couple of times to power yourself up to make the rest of the game
easier, but impatient gamers wanted to be able to beat everything in one
run. I prefer the original setup, personally,
but if having multiple save slots makes the game easier so more people can play
it, I’m all for it.
And Dead Rising 1 is still a game you should definitely
play, too. It has held up incredibly
well over the last ten years and is still a ton of fun. It still stands as easily the best game
overall in the Dead Rising franchise thanks to the most interesting environment
to play in – a shopping mall scenario straight out of “Dawn of the Dead” – and
a great supporting cast. It was also
fairly serious compared to how silly Dead Rising 2 could be and had some truly
memorable enemy “psychopath” characters.
The psychopaths are regular humans that went crazy due to the zombie
outbreak. Each one had an interesting
backstory on why they went nuts and their boss fights (and deaths) were really
a highlight of the whole series.
Before writing this review I actually played the 360 release
of Dead Rising (with my level 50 maxed out save from 2006, of course!) to see
how the visuals compared and I was actually quite surprised how good the game
still looked on Xbox 360. It is vibrant
and clean and good looking even now.
The remastered version on Xbox One looks just a little better though, of
course. The background details were
always pretty sharp, but the remaster really makes the zombies look a lot
better as they’re a lot more detailed now.
Much of the game takes place in confined areas so the draw distance
isn’t much of a factor, but you can definitely see more zombies a lot further
away now than you could before out in the large outdoor area. The performance is also rock solid at 60FPS
with few drops.
All in all, Dead Rising 1 is still the best game in the
series and the remaster does a good job of cleaning it up and making it
presentable in 2016. It is a ton of fun
to play, has a great environment to play in, fantastic boss fights, cool
weapons, and it looks so sharp and clean you could cut yourself on it. Dead Rising is one of my all time favorite
games and being able to play it again, and earn the achievements all over
again, on Xbox One has been a real treat.
If you never played it before, definitely play it now. And if you already love it, well you’re
already probably going to buy it anyway.
In any case, Dead Rising is great and the remaster is well worth a look.
