Dead Rising 3 lost pretty much everything that was good about the series to begin with. Lots of people never understood the appeal, but it was always about time management, familiarizing with the environment, goofy humour and exploration.

This game just throws all of that out of the window. The time is ridiculously generous to the point where I wasn't even sure there was a timer running for most of the game and barely mattered. I fucked around a lot and still did every single sidequest without really trying too hard. It felt like I was working off a list instead of frantically trying to rescue as many people as possible.

The game also just throws items, combo cards and even cars at you. While in the other games it was a powerful moment to get permanent access to a car, they're now everywhere and readily available. Even combo cars that wreck a whole district worth of zombies.

It also doesn't help that every single collectible is shown on the map. Just randomly entering buildings and stores feels like a waste of time since you can tell where the next item is lying anyway. Fun and random side activities like the casino are also gone. The game still has it's funny moments, but they're so far and few between that they feel even more out of place than before. Also really wasn't a fan of the soundtrack in this game. The psychopath themes and mall music were always a real delight to listen to and here there's just nothing.

Still, the controls of the game are an improvement and the A.I. is less frustrating to deal with (for better and worse). I like how you can pick up items in the middle of running and throw them without going into aiming mode. The new weapon combinations are also really creative and fun to use. Just wish the items weren't lying right next to each other ALL the time. The skill system is an okay idea if you're not into the randomness of the previous games, but at the same time just feels uninteresting. This might be a preference thing though, I like to be surprised.

Dead Rising 3 is fine if you're just in the mood of randomly fucking up zombies, wreck stuff with a whole gang of companions or coop partners and play around with creative weapons. The storyline was fine, but even that was done better before and the ending feels extremely rushed.

Desperately wanted to like this one, but the high encounter rate mixed with the extremely slow animations and loading times makes me feel miserable. Not sure why it bothers me so much here because normally I can stomach this kind of stuff well.

Also doesn't help that the system with the different masters and the acquiring of new skills is extremely unintuitive ... And almost feels pointless given how you can just auto battle through everything. At least in the first 10 hours.

A shame, because the music and artstyle is great and I enjoyed the characters. Maybe I should just watch an LP on the side or something.