Summary [8 out of 10]

Dead Rising 3 is a massive open world zombie killing horror fan’s wet dream. The sheer scope of this game utilizes the improved hardware of the Xbox One to cram almost every square inch of real estate chalk-full of zombies for you to mow down in so many ways your head might explode. If you are in for killing a ton of zombies in a ton of ways without having to look over your shoulder at the time clock, this is the game for you. With excellent visuals and a ton of detail, Dead Rising 3 is easily the best of the series and an excellent jumping off point for future iterations.

What It’s Like:

Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 minus the looming presence of the countdown clock. There are some timed sequences and you can reinstate the clock at higher difficulties but you no longer have to be filled with anxiety over running out of time.  The scope of this game makes the previous installments seem like a drop in the bucket. Other improvements and tweaks makes this feel like this is what the other two meant.

The Great:

No Clock: Unless you play on the harder difficulties and are a masochist of the highest order, there is no longer a countdown to limit how long you have before the game ends and you have to start over. This means that the things that the game is made for like exploration, experimentation and wanton destruction are realistic and encouraged. Gone are moments where you really want to mess around at the work bench or you want to take 20 minutes to see how different sorts of chairs kill zombies but you have to hurry up to the next mission objective. You can do whatever you want here for however long you want. If you get a wild hair to jump in different cars and mow down zombies until you have to find another and do it all over again then you can do that for as long as you want limited only by your ability not to be eaten. This really opens up the sandbox element and helps fulfill the potential the series has always fallen shy of. Again, if you like the timer for some reason and feel like it is an important part of your game play experience then you still have the option to turn it on at higher difficulties. It is a win win.

Zombies: Seriously, there are so many zombies its like the city is flooded with zombies. It makes it challenging to navigate the landscape and complete missions. When the sun goes down, the difficulty cranks up and you will be search for transportation. King zombies are introduced, slightly bigger and tougher than standard zombies. Besides them there are some other special zombies that begin to appear after certain milestones. The saddest and most true is the zombified first responders you encounter, but don’t get too sad about the zombie firemen as they may bury an ax in your skull. Special mention goes to the zombie varsity football squad, annoying and highly challenging the more they start spawning later in the game.

Combo Vehicles: A new twist on the concept introduced in Dead Rising 2. This time around the main character is able to use his mechanical skills to combine vehicles to spawn something straight out of The Road Warrior. It is just as easy to put these things together as the weapons and makes for some seriously fun times involving even more ways to ruin a zombie’s day. The fact that these things look badass does not hurt.

Graphics: This is an exclusive next gen experience and it shows. The amount of texture and detail found here is absolutely insane. The game isn’t going for photo-realism but the fidelity of the visuals here show off the level of power that the Xbox One is working with. If you couple that with the sheer volume of moving characters at any given time and the crispness and detail of the background, you are looking at something impressive. Now, it should be noted that your first glance might not impress you that much but when you spend time with the game, see it in motion and have time to take it all in, you realize that this thing looks very impressive. If this is a first effort on the next gen,  I am excited to see what the future holds.

The Good:

Combo Weapons: Putting weapons together to make new and unique instruments of death was a good addition to the plethora of ready made instruments of death that were already in the game but in previous games a work bench was required which meant that, while on a timer, you had to collect the ingredients, find the blue prints and then high tail it to a work bench before you could put something together. This made me pretty reluctant to actually do this very much. Now, you can basically just connect shit together and make killer awesome weapons that are more effective than standard weapons, which makes you want them more, and they look cooler, which also makes you want them more. As with the lack of time clock, the removal of the work bench requirement just makes this whole process more fun and accessible. The fact that the combo weapons themselves are both numerous and crazy ups the fun even further.

Costumes: The series has always featured different outfits to wear and some of those include silly costumes but Dead Rising 3 really ups the ante with a bevy of awesome outfits in which to kill all the zombies you want. Are you going to turn down being able to house zombies while wearing underwear and a horse head mask? Why wouldn’t you want to tear through enemies in a shark costume? Or a luchadore? There are all kinds of goofy things to dress your character in that will guarantee that you will not get bored with how you look and there is always something silly available.

Storyline: The Dead Rising Franchise has always been a bit light on the storyline and this installment tries a little harder for the narrative but once again it can’t really hold a candle to the allure of just randomly wrecking shit. The story is not bad though and provides enough motivation to keep pushing forward but also knows enough to get out of the way and let players do what they want. This is a definite improvement from previous installments.

Boss Fights: These are a somewhat mixed bag but the balancing is generally good enough to keep them challenging and interesting without them feeling like a chore. Most of the time.

The Bad:

Depth: Look there is a ton of stuff to do in this game and it will keep you coming back to it to try different things out but at the end of the day, there just isn’t much meat to it. If you get tired of ruining shit with improvised weapons then that is that. There is nothing here that is going to keep you especially engrossed beyond killing zombies. That is fine as far as it goes and, again, there are a lot of ways to navigate and kill zombies but if you are looking for a deeper game play experience with all that entails then you aren’t going to find it here. This is not a deal breaker as there is a lot of fun to be had but unless running around killing zombies helps you unwind from stress or something there isn’t much to keep you coming back after the initial glee wears off.

Xbox Glass Interface: The idea behind the second screen interface is good and sounds like it would be awesome here but unlike, say, Assassin’s Creed 4, the implementation of Glass here does not quite hit the mark.

 

Conclusion [8 out of 10]

Dead Rising 3 is a good early example of what the beefed up hardware of the Xbox One is capable of, one of the few launch titles it is a decent improvement over previous games and a solid overall single player and co-op experience. I have a feeling this one isn’t going to be that memorable in the long run and will pale in comparison to future releases but for now, with not a lot of exclusive content to choose from, it is worth checking out especially if you enjoy killing zombies in interesting ways. Even if you weren’t all that hot on the previous installments, you should give this a shot. It is an impressive  first effort for the new system.