Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster(2024)(Review)

I’m certainly not alone in saying that having a remaster of this 2006 game was not on my yearly bingo card – but when Capcom broke the news, I was extremely pumped. The original was a huge favorite game of mine. In fact, one of my fondest memories as a kid was getting an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and since I only had Halo 2 to play, I specifically downloaded the demos for this game and Skate – and my friends and I spent literal hours replaying them over and over. And as they often say, it’s time to be out with the old and in with the new.

‘Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster’ is exactly what’s being advertised – it’s not a from-the-ground remake like Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space were last year, this is more-or-less the same game but with some updated graphics, updated playstyles, and some major quality of life improvements. But first – the story.

You are journalist Frank West, a man with a snarky attitude whose looking to get his big break by taking photos of what is rumored to be “a big event”, but nobody would’ve guessed that a town full of zombies would be that event. He arrives via helicopter, taking photographs of the carnage in the streets, before landing on the roof of the Willamette Mall. When he goes inside, he sees some survivors barricading the doors and panicking. He asks questions before the doors are accidentally opened and the walking dead infiltrate the mall. What unfolds afterwards is essentially the fantasy of being in a shopping mall filled with zombies as you go around the building looking for survivors, fighting insane enemies, photographing various things, trying on silly outfits, using anything you can pick up as a weapon, and lasting until the helicopter returns in 72 hours to pick you up. You get your story, you get the glory.

The game was a success at release, evolving into a franchise that ran for a total of 4 games with a few knock-offs. The locations always got bigger, the weapon variety kept increasing, and the madness exponentially grew, but the heart of the game stayed the same. So with the deluxe remaster, you might be asking: “why should I play this? Is it any good if it’s simply a remaster of a 20 year old game? A lot of people hated the franchise because they were frustrated about a bunch of things.” Well, you’ve come to the right place.

The quality of life improvements are game-changing; literally. There is now an auto-save feature (which we did not have until the later games, meaning if you died inbetween your saves, you lost all your progress). The AI of the survivors you are rescuing are finally able to follow a path and defend themselves a bit better, whereas in the original they were basically braindead and pathetic. You are able to speed up time – since many events and survivors are not available until specific time points hit, you now have the ability to speed up time at a save point instead of being forced to wander around the mall if you choose not to. The zombie animations are much smoother, the graphics are updated, the survivors actually talk instead of forcing you to read super tiny subtitles, and you can FINALLY aim a gun while walking! With all these updates though, the game’s setting, missions, hidden weapons, and overall story are the exact same.

The very first thing I did with the game was make a point to unlock Megaman’s Mega-Buster – which is basically a one-hit-kill gun that you earn by unlocking the ‘Zombie Annihilator’ achievement. It takes a fuck-ton of time to pull off, but the reward is so worth it. The psychopaths you have to fight are a breeze, allowing you to blow through the missions and unlock their secret weapons without breaking much of a sweat. I also bought the ‘Deluxe edition’, which included a plethora of Capcom-related costumes. I played the entire game dressed up as Dr. Salvatore from Resident Evil 4 – which was extra hilarious to wield a chainsaw and mow through crowds of zombies dressed in his gory garb. There’s some hilarious options as well, but I won’t ruin those surprises.

On top of the story, the way you can dispose of zombies has plenty of options. You can drive a car through a parking garage, grab chainsaws and machetes from a hardware store, ride a bike, push a lawnmower or shopping cart, swing a baseball bat, chug liters of orange juice, swing a giant teddy bear, use a water pistol or chuck CDs at their heads… it’s not as endless as the sequels since it doesn’t have the “combination” feature, but there’s still more than enough to keep you entertained. It’s a great game to play with friends – passing a controller back and forth – or by yourself.

In conclusion: this remaster is everything you’d hope for. It’s very faithful to the original material, while updating and improving things that many people did have real concerns with. This makes it a promising experience for both new players and OG fans. It’s unbelievably fun, ridiculously absurd, silly B-horror grade cheese, and lots of bloody dismemberment.

If you’ve ever wanted to play the franchise, or have an excuse to pick it back up after all these years – this is it. Do it.

4/5
“Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster” is currently available on Playstation 5, Xbox Series Consoles, GeForce Now, and Microsoft Windows.

*Review is based on the Xbox Series X version of the game*

‘Til Next Time,
Mike Cleopatra