Sidequest.cool

After finishing Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, I’m positive that it’s both the best way to play the original Dead Rising and also, has lost its soul.

The original Dead Rising was a masterclass in making something more than the sum of its parts. A glorified tech demo, Dead Rising’s original release on the Xbox 360 brought massive crowds of zombies and a fully interactable world. All this was wrapped in that uniquely mid-2000s Capcom energy, straddling the line between funny and creepy.

Deluxe Remaster fixes a lot of the original game’s issues but brings with it a brand-new quandary. Is making the original game easier to play and work through a killing blow to what made Dead Rising so unique – even within its own franchise.

Capcom has never been able to fully replicate the original game’s general vibe. Dead Rising 2 was made by a Canadian studio, Capcom Vancouver (then Blue Castle Games), which brought the series an easier experience while still retaining some of the bizarreness. 

The third game was a covert sequel to the first, but ditched the aesthetic for a modern grunge look that immediately set it for failure. It wasn’t even bad, just a different take that didn’t stick. The less said about Dead Rising 4, a game that was misguided from the outset, the better.

Deluxe Remaster feels like Capcom testing the waters after polluting it so badly with the final two entries. Once again, another Capcom property heading back to its “roots”, much like Resident Evil did in 2016. 

Losing weirdness

However, much like last year’s Resident Evil 4 remake, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster feels like someone in the chain of command didn’t fully get it. Sure, a remake has to make its own ground, but the still tight and action-packed original RE4 didn’t need sidequests to complete or a reduction in the campness of it all. What it needed was updated controls, a new look and tweaking the bad bits – like the island.

Dead Rising, despite not being a total remake and a “Deluxe Remaster” – which as far as I can tell, just means exactly what I wanted out of RE4R – feels like a wholly different game in some spots.

The main character, journalist Frank West, no longer sounds like he fits in the weird world of Dead Rising. Instead, it’s this professional, clean-cut voice that hardens him rather than encourages the silliness. 

Hearing the new actor put his heart and soul into certain scenes as I’m half-dressed as Mega Man and wearing a stolen tuxedo, is too harsh a contrast to be taken lightly. It is also missing that sleaze of a man who clearly just wants to get paid. Frank was in this for himself, it just so happens that he realises part way through this is bigger than him.

It’s still weird, but on the end of the spectrum, it feels less stupid, and more jarring than anything.

This even extends to the new fresh coat of paint. DRDR looks fantastic, and the RE Engine’s character models are a brilliant update of the classic game.

I don’t care what you say, the weirdo who can’t clean his house at 34, but if you’re focusing on character looks when they’re on screen for no more than ten minutes, you have bigger problems with those brainworms manifesting in your rot.

However, it’s incredibly jarring to see Adam the Clown in full 4K, stretching his skin as he did back in 2006. It adds to that sense of weirdness, but again, it all feels really jarring.

Throw back

The game itself is like being chucked back into 2006 in some spots. I love that they have barely touched the timer – Frank has three days to explore and get the scoop – but have allowed players to fast-forward through intervals if they so wish.

Capcom has done an impressive job of making sure the game plays great for modern players, but it still abides by Dead Rising rules. Bosses will stun-lock you into place, and you can still soft-lock yourself into an impossible scenario. 

It’s like they spent the time making sure that every single aspect of the original game remained untouched, except where it needed to be. You can aim and move now, and the survivors you can save from around the mall aren’t entirely brain-dead thick. 

One impossibly funny solution is that to get around a major hindrance in the original, they’ve added a ramp to the security room hideout. This makes rescues less of a chore, as you had to enter and exit the same room multiple times to usher strangers to safety. Now everyone neatly climbs and waits for you to wander in.

It means that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is the definitive way to play the game for anyone brand new and a little frightened of the original’s quirks. I’m not exactly about to start telling people that the 2016 rerelease is “the real way to play”, because dealing with it can be a nightmare at times.

Difficulty shouldn’t be something we shy from

What is missing is the level of difficulty from the original. Having multiple saves, or seeing where a sniper is aiming isn’t the issue here. Players can level Frank up (up to 50) by earning PP from photos and killing zombies and bosses. I don’t even care that it highlights everything on the map once spotted, these are the quality of life things you want in a remake of something so old. 

It’s the fact that you level up exponentially quickly. In the first hour, I was sat just under level 10. Dead Rising insisted that you go in, gain a few levels and restart the game. Your Frank would keep the PP earnt, but restart with nothing – he loses a case of equipment out of the helicopter at the start. Everything is skippable in DRDR and the original, making getting up to a certain point impossibly easy.

Dead Rising was a masterclass in design, using the thin groundwork it laid out to create a larger-than-life game. If you go from point A to point B as intended, you can beat the game in a very short amount of time. 

That’s what happens in DRDR, as the game still has all the restarting features, but it’s unnecessary. My first run of the game was a totally successful one, with the modernity and fast levelling boosting me over the game’s original difficulty. 

The game has never been more accessible, and that’s great, but something is lost in the mix. The air of danger, suspense, it’s all gone. Frank quickly becomes a zombie murder machine, instead of a scrabbling photojournalist who eventually starts suplexing zombies. 

Fucking up in Dead Rising was a key fundamental element of the experience. I don’t mean dying to a psychopath and having to traipse across the mall to redo it, but that soft-lock of not being in an area in time and missing a key part of the story. This is all still possible, but now there’s no real consequence to it. You just reload back to a save point or checkpoint. 

For a game hinged on keeping time, DRDR is far too forgiving for missing appointments. For a game that is desperately trying to resurrect the original’s vibe, eliminating that key difficulty and introducing a too-clean voice actor, disrupts the whole thing. 

Clean cut

It doesn’t feel weird anymore. It’s clean-cut, shaven, desperate for you to see it through – as with most modern games. It’s the best way to play Dead Rising, but it’s not the onlyway you should play it. Dead Rising Deluxe Remastered could have done up the survivors and gunplay, spruced up its looks and called it a day. 

I’m even open to hearing arguments that the lost erotica points you can capture whittle down Frank’s sleazy character a smidge. I get why it’s gone, I do, but could we have found something to replace it with?

That element of the grind, restarting, going back in and perfecting a run is something that’s ingrained into the collective psyche of the gaming collective these days. 

Dead Rising was a very thin rogue-like before we started slapping the term all over the place. It was crueller than Dark Souls, or Majora’s Mask. The Binding of Isaac could never. Forcing players to endure its particular brand of weirdness because what else were you going to do in 2006 is something that could never be replicated.

Capcom will never be able to make Dead Rising again. It was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment, something so pure and inescapable at the time. 

Even Deluxe Remaster sits above the vast majority of zombie titles that exist. But its polished nature and friendliness mean that if you never even consider playing the original, you’ll never truly grasp why there’s a massive fervour around the game. 

Gaming in recent years has proven that people crave a challenge, crave that jank and weirdness. Something to push back against, to overcome. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is great fun to play but doesn’t have any of the soul that the original had.