Dead Rising 3 Review

"Welcome to the beautiful city of Los Perdidos! Now strip down to your underpants and smack some zombies in the face with a traffic cone."

Dead Rising is one of my favorite zombie games. It's up there with L4D, but way behind the Last of Us. The story line is pretty great. The 5 day narrative kept me enthralled and the gore kept me excited. After playing Dying Light I was a little worried that it was going to be difficult for me, but Dead Rising was true to it's melee roots. Man, I love being able to stop and pick up just about anything and kill a zombie with it. The crafting adds another layer of fun, as collecting the parts to build a new blueprint becomes a quest of it's own. I also like being able to pick up a weapon at any safe zone once I've encountered it once.

Some survivors eventually join your party, where they can be armed with the game's less flamboyant weapons to fight alongside you, or can be led back to one of the game's safe areas and stored for later deployment. Keeping survivors alive was a key part of the first two games, as leading them to safety was how objectives were completed, but Dead Rising 3 considers it more of an optional afterthought. Safe rooms, scattered around each of Los Perdidos' four districts, also contains recharging lockers that can spawn in any item or combo weapon you've previously used. This is a game far more focused on having you slaughtering the undead than continually scavenging for items, though it's not always a change for the better. Dead Rising 3's accessibility makes it easier to rack up the kills, but infinitely spawning weaponry ultimately robs the game of the deeper connection I forged with Willamette mall or Fortune City. I can still remember the route to Colombian Roastmasters in the first Dead Rising, and jumping off the edge of the coffee shop to land on the balcony with the katana. I couldn't tell you much at all about Los Perdidos.

I never played nightmare mode, so I can't comment on it. Other reviewers seem to think it's great tho.

Since I'm pressed for time at the moment I'll just end by saying that the games frame rate is choppy, and seems... imperfected.


8/10