Capcom's Dead Rising 4 didn't deliver quite the holiday cheer as promised when it released this Xmas.
I have always been a super fan of the Dead Rising series and have greatly enjoyed each new release in the series over the last few years. However, Dead Rising 4 was a little disappointing, and had more glitches in it then all of the previous games combined.
In Dead Rising 4, players take control of the vulgar photojournalist Frank West, while making their way through hordes of undead in Willamette, Colorado. I started playing the game on Christmas Eve, and almost a month later, still find myself drudging through it trying to get additional achievements.
After the sadness felt by gamers worldwide with Umbrella Corps, I didn't get my hopes to high with Dead Rising 4. It is probably the first game in the series that I didn't find myself jumping into on release day and now I am happy that I made that choice.
Dead Rising 4's storyline is similar to most all of the others in the series. Our main character gets dragged into some mission to uncover a government conspiracy that ends with players having to battle their way through tons of flesh-eating zombies to solve various cases. This time around Frank West is now a college teacher who is approached by his student Vicky Chu to investigate a military compound in Colorado. Frank ends up having to flee and becomes a fugitive after being wrongly accused. An agent of the ZDC approaches Frank a short time later, around Christmas time, to help him investigate a zombie outbreak that occurred on Black Friday.
Of course Frank agrees in order to clear his name and get the exclusive story--and we are once again off on an adventure that will ultimately not end well. The zombies are a little different this time--some are faster, smarter and more predatory. However, they are still not that tough to defeat--and I found myself just running past them anyway. Where the new release went wrong was the fact that it took out everything that made the other games so fun and dramatic--such as the timed missions and countdowns. Fighting maniacs, rescuing survivors or even building weapons has no real point anymore in Dead Rising 4. Why try to look for parts to build the weapon when I can just buy it? There are hundreds of places throughout the game where you can just open a drawer and get 400 coins. This takes away all the pleasure that was derived of scouring the city to search for unknown items to build the perfect weapon or just survive--now you just take the lazier approach of buying it from a shop.
Also, fighting maniacs and rescuing survivors has completely lost its luster in Dead Rising 4 due to the removal of the timers and countdown. I use to love trying to complete all of the side missions and cases while racing against the clock--without this factor I found myself just running right past survivors and not thinking twice about rescuing them. I also miss the little back stories that the various survivors had in the previous games--and I just found no emotional connection to them at all.
The visuals and soundtrack are similar to past games with the exception that everything is Christmas themed this time around. Frank's personality is also a little edgier, and he seems to be a little more comedic in his old age. The ever-changing tone of the game, the removal of key components and the endless technical difficulties really hurt the overall enjoyment of Dead Rising this time around. I continuously found myself getting stuck in walls, vehicles and everything in between--even found myself stuck in hordes of zombies unable to move from all of the glitches until my health was completely decimated. After hours into the game, playing through Dead Rising 4 was more like a chore, and I found myself just trying to speed run the game just to finish the story.
In the end, Dead Rising 4 sacrificed too many things without doing anything extraordinary to replace them. The only thing that I really enjoyed about the entire game was the fact it was entirely Christmas-themed and that Frank's personality was a little less bland than it was in past games. If you are a hardcore Dead Rising fan, I can't really recommend picking up the latest release unless you find it in the bargain bin for $5 or less. To learn more, visit the official Dead Rising 4 website.
Reviewed for Xbox One