Part of Spooky Season 2023.
My dumb ass accidentally restarted my save after I died and I don’t feel like playing through the game from the beginning again, so I’ve just decided to shelve it for now and write out my thoughts. It really sucks because I was approaching the game’s climax too. Ah well.
I think that Dead Rising has a great concept that unfortunately doesn’t quite live up to its full potential. It’s a game that heavily revolves around escorting NPCs with AI from the mid-2000s, and that alone should raise some red flags. The game can be thrilling and really enjoyable when the AI works, but that’s just it: the AI frequently doesn’t work. This coupled with other poor design decisions oftentimes makes the game more frustrating than fun. It bums me out because I can see the vision, and when things do work, it does manage to be a very good time. It’s just that it’s also janky as all hell, and while the jank can be charming, it’ll also frequently take you out of the experience.
Dead Rising is a timed game in a similar vein to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It takes place in a zombie infested mall, and you have 72 in-game hours to not only complete tasks that advance the game’s main storyline, but rescue as many survivors as you can and escort them to the one safe location within the mall: the Security Room. Everything operates on a schedule, so you’ll only have specific opportunities to complete objectives. If you miss those opportunities, they’re gone for the rest of your playthrough. These include main storyline quests as well. I really love this structure. It forces you to memorize the layout of the mall (which isn’t particularly complex) and plan ahead as far as which side quests (which are referred to in-game as “Scoops”) you tackle and how many people you can try and save.
Thankfully, escorting survivors isn’t vital for completing the main story except during specific missions, and I think that is one of this game’s saving graces. That doesn’t mean that successfully escorting them isn’t extremely important, though. There’s a leveling system where Frank gradually gets stronger and more agile the more you play. In addition to gaining exp from killing certain amounts of zombies and completing certain tasks, you get the most exp from successfully escorting survivors. This is where a majority of the game’s frustration comes from. Missing out on exp because the survivors you’re escorting die from not listening to your commands, getting caught on level geometry, or just dashing straight into each other and not moving at all is infuriating. Sometimes the survivors can even accidentally shoot and kill you, and that especially got on my nerves.
I will say that the game does throw you a bone when it comes to the survivors. Simply meeting up with them and getting them to join you is enough to grant you some exp, but actually getting them to safety is what gets you the biggest exp boosts. You’re going to really want them too, because Frank does not feel very good to play as early in the game. I realize that it was the developer’s intention to not make Frank very good early in the game, in order to make replays where he starts off at higher levels more rewarding, but still, it’s rough. If you ever feel like the game isn’t going your way and that you’re stuck or that you’ve missed out on more Scoops than you’d like, you can always reset your campaign with Frank’s current level and upgrades, which I think is a really solid design choice (though I did this by accident, which is how I lost my save).
In addition to the AI of the survivors, the AI of the boss fights is also pretty bad as well. Granted I haven’t fought every boss in the game, but there were a few bosses that were easy to exploit in pretty hilarious ways. I think that the famous Convicts are the best example of this. Almost every time you go through the park after their introduction, they will immediately just drive the humvee straight into a tree and you can shoot them from a safe distance where the AI won’t even register your presence.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the game is how you learn about new Scoops that are available to you. There’s a character named Otis that will call you on your walkie talkie whenever he discovers someone in need of help or if there’s something strange that Frank should consider investigating. The problem is that whenever he calls you on the walkie talkie, Frank is unable to attack or jump, as doing so will interrupt the call from Otis and he’ll call again, angrily telling you “Don’t cut me off like that, it’s rude!” before repeating everything that he just told you. This honestly makes me more angry than it probably should, but it’s incredibly annoying when the walkie talkie is going off over and over again while I’m in the middle of a stressful situation such as escorting survivors through a heavily zombie infested area or in the middle of a boss fight and I can’t answer it without risking either my own death, or the death of a survivor. You can talk to Otis directly in the Security Room, so I don’t get why you can’t just get Scoops by simply talking to him while you’re in there as well. You can only get Scoops when you’re outside of the Security Room via the walkie talkie, and I think that’s just really stupid and shortsighted.
I also really wish there was more than one route to the Security Room. Unless there are hidden routes that I just never discovered during my playthrough, you have to escort survivors through Paradise Plaza, through the warehouse hallway, up the elevator to the roof and then through the air duct every single time. I think this was done to make sure that the player most effectively learns the layout of the mall through repetition, but escorting them also becomes really repetitive as a result. I did learn of one shortcut to Paradise Plaza, but you still have to go through Paradise Plaza every time to get to the Security Room.
A majority of this review has been complaining, and I do want to stress that the game is actually really fun when these frustrations aren’t getting in your way. I loved learning about the layout of the mall, memorizing where I can find certain weapons or certain zombies that wield certain weapons, or discovering secret weapons like the sub-machine gun you can find above the roof of one of the stores in Paradise Plaza. I loved planning which Scoops I should tackle and agonizing over which ones I just didn’t have time for. I also think that Frank gradually becomes much better to control as you level him up and unlock faster run speeds and techniques like jumping off of zombies’ heads. Eventually, fighting hordes of zombies becomes very satisfying and enjoyable. It just feels like there’s a lot of factors outside of your control that hinder your efforts and subsequently your enjoyment. I think that if Frank was a bit stronger at the start of the game, and if the survivors and bosses had better AI, then Dead Rising would be much better than it is.
The story was pretty interesting from what I’ve played, and I was pretty invested in what was going on. Like I said, I was at the climax of the game when I lost my save and it was really demoralizing. Not quite sure what made Frank such a popular character back during this era of Capcom. He’s been a decent protagonist, but I can’t say there’s much to him or his personality that makes him especially stand out.
It’s possible to have a lot of fun with Dead Rising, just keep in mind that it has a lot of jank and really lacks polish. For all of its faults, I never found it to be boring. There’s a lot of charm to it, especially those aspects of it that feel straight out of the mid-2000s, like the nu-metal soundtrack and the overall design of the mall in general (finding stores that just sell CDs made me feel super nostalgic). It says a lot that despite all of the things that drag it down, I still want to go back and finish it eventually. Maybe I’ll save it for Spooky Season 2024.
My dumb ass accidentally restarted my save after I died and I don’t feel like playing through the game from the beginning again, so I’ve just decided to shelve it for now and write out my thoughts. It really sucks because I was approaching the game’s climax too. Ah well.
I think that Dead Rising has a great concept that unfortunately doesn’t quite live up to its full potential. It’s a game that heavily revolves around escorting NPCs with AI from the mid-2000s, and that alone should raise some red flags. The game can be thrilling and really enjoyable when the AI works, but that’s just it: the AI frequently doesn’t work. This coupled with other poor design decisions oftentimes makes the game more frustrating than fun. It bums me out because I can see the vision, and when things do work, it does manage to be a very good time. It’s just that it’s also janky as all hell, and while the jank can be charming, it’ll also frequently take you out of the experience.
Dead Rising is a timed game in a similar vein to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It takes place in a zombie infested mall, and you have 72 in-game hours to not only complete tasks that advance the game’s main storyline, but rescue as many survivors as you can and escort them to the one safe location within the mall: the Security Room. Everything operates on a schedule, so you’ll only have specific opportunities to complete objectives. If you miss those opportunities, they’re gone for the rest of your playthrough. These include main storyline quests as well. I really love this structure. It forces you to memorize the layout of the mall (which isn’t particularly complex) and plan ahead as far as which side quests (which are referred to in-game as “Scoops”) you tackle and how many people you can try and save.
Thankfully, escorting survivors isn’t vital for completing the main story except during specific missions, and I think that is one of this game’s saving graces. That doesn’t mean that successfully escorting them isn’t extremely important, though. There’s a leveling system where Frank gradually gets stronger and more agile the more you play. In addition to gaining exp from killing certain amounts of zombies and completing certain tasks, you get the most exp from successfully escorting survivors. This is where a majority of the game’s frustration comes from. Missing out on exp because the survivors you’re escorting die from not listening to your commands, getting caught on level geometry, or just dashing straight into each other and not moving at all is infuriating. Sometimes the survivors can even accidentally shoot and kill you, and that especially got on my nerves.
I will say that the game does throw you a bone when it comes to the survivors. Simply meeting up with them and getting them to join you is enough to grant you some exp, but actually getting them to safety is what gets you the biggest exp boosts. You’re going to really want them too, because Frank does not feel very good to play as early in the game. I realize that it was the developer’s intention to not make Frank very good early in the game, in order to make replays where he starts off at higher levels more rewarding, but still, it’s rough. If you ever feel like the game isn’t going your way and that you’re stuck or that you’ve missed out on more Scoops than you’d like, you can always reset your campaign with Frank’s current level and upgrades, which I think is a really solid design choice (though I did this by accident, which is how I lost my save).
In addition to the AI of the survivors, the AI of the boss fights is also pretty bad as well. Granted I haven’t fought every boss in the game, but there were a few bosses that were easy to exploit in pretty hilarious ways. I think that the famous Convicts are the best example of this. Almost every time you go through the park after their introduction, they will immediately just drive the humvee straight into a tree and you can shoot them from a safe distance where the AI won’t even register your presence.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the game is how you learn about new Scoops that are available to you. There’s a character named Otis that will call you on your walkie talkie whenever he discovers someone in need of help or if there’s something strange that Frank should consider investigating. The problem is that whenever he calls you on the walkie talkie, Frank is unable to attack or jump, as doing so will interrupt the call from Otis and he’ll call again, angrily telling you “Don’t cut me off like that, it’s rude!” before repeating everything that he just told you. This honestly makes me more angry than it probably should, but it’s incredibly annoying when the walkie talkie is going off over and over again while I’m in the middle of a stressful situation such as escorting survivors through a heavily zombie infested area or in the middle of a boss fight and I can’t answer it without risking either my own death, or the death of a survivor. You can talk to Otis directly in the Security Room, so I don’t get why you can’t just get Scoops by simply talking to him while you’re in there as well. You can only get Scoops when you’re outside of the Security Room via the walkie talkie, and I think that’s just really stupid and shortsighted.
I also really wish there was more than one route to the Security Room. Unless there are hidden routes that I just never discovered during my playthrough, you have to escort survivors through Paradise Plaza, through the warehouse hallway, up the elevator to the roof and then through the air duct every single time. I think this was done to make sure that the player most effectively learns the layout of the mall through repetition, but escorting them also becomes really repetitive as a result. I did learn of one shortcut to Paradise Plaza, but you still have to go through Paradise Plaza every time to get to the Security Room.
A majority of this review has been complaining, and I do want to stress that the game is actually really fun when these frustrations aren’t getting in your way. I loved learning about the layout of the mall, memorizing where I can find certain weapons or certain zombies that wield certain weapons, or discovering secret weapons like the sub-machine gun you can find above the roof of one of the stores in Paradise Plaza. I loved planning which Scoops I should tackle and agonizing over which ones I just didn’t have time for. I also think that Frank gradually becomes much better to control as you level him up and unlock faster run speeds and techniques like jumping off of zombies’ heads. Eventually, fighting hordes of zombies becomes very satisfying and enjoyable. It just feels like there’s a lot of factors outside of your control that hinder your efforts and subsequently your enjoyment. I think that if Frank was a bit stronger at the start of the game, and if the survivors and bosses had better AI, then Dead Rising would be much better than it is.
The story was pretty interesting from what I’ve played, and I was pretty invested in what was going on. Like I said, I was at the climax of the game when I lost my save and it was really demoralizing. Not quite sure what made Frank such a popular character back during this era of Capcom. He’s been a decent protagonist, but I can’t say there’s much to him or his personality that makes him especially stand out.
It’s possible to have a lot of fun with Dead Rising, just keep in mind that it has a lot of jank and really lacks polish. For all of its faults, I never found it to be boring. There’s a lot of charm to it, especially those aspects of it that feel straight out of the mid-2000s, like the nu-metal soundtrack and the overall design of the mall in general (finding stores that just sell CDs made me feel super nostalgic). It says a lot that despite all of the things that drag it down, I still want to go back and finish it eventually. Maybe I’ll save it for Spooky Season 2024.
6 Comments
@Lehuan I never realized there was a limit to Scoops. I did have times where I couldn't really do anything because I had to be in a specific location at a specific time, that does really suck. I did still enjoy the game, and I do want to eventually come back to it, but losing my save really demoralized me...
Would you say that Off the Record is preferable to vanilla DR2? My understanding is that Off the Record is literally just DR2 but with Frank as a playable character
Would you say that Off the Record is preferable to vanilla DR2? My understanding is that Off the Record is literally just DR2 but with Frank as a playable character
I haven't played Off The Record myself yet, but everyone seems to say so, it has more content. There are story differences that go beyond just Frank though. It also has a Sandbox mode that seems to be better than DR1's endless mode.
I think theres something to be said about the "Capcom Charm", where their games are sometimes very clunky, janky, obtuse, archaic - but when you get a taste for it, you find it very endearing.
The most obvious and famous example is Monster Hunter, where this a very large yolk to break through before you "get it". Very publically this was the case with Dragons Dogma 2 recently, which seems explicitly dedicated to being weird and unorthodox - but its even true with Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, whose fans adopted the series so early on that they might not recognize thats the case.
I think Dead Rising is just dormant and off-popular enough a series that you could be mistaken in thinking its, like, especially janky and conclude that maybe thats why it isnt as prolific as those other series - but I think if you step back and really look at it, this is a Capcom-ass game and your relationship to the Capcom Charm is ultimately gonna decide if its for you or not for you (yet, anyway)
The most obvious and famous example is Monster Hunter, where this a very large yolk to break through before you "get it". Very publically this was the case with Dragons Dogma 2 recently, which seems explicitly dedicated to being weird and unorthodox - but its even true with Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, whose fans adopted the series so early on that they might not recognize thats the case.
I think Dead Rising is just dormant and off-popular enough a series that you could be mistaken in thinking its, like, especially janky and conclude that maybe thats why it isnt as prolific as those other series - but I think if you step back and really look at it, this is a Capcom-ass game and your relationship to the Capcom Charm is ultimately gonna decide if its for you or not for you (yet, anyway)
Lehuan
6 months ago