Dead Rising 4 – Review
Follow Genre: Third-Person Action Survival
Developer: Capcom Vancouver
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: PC, Xbox One
Tested on: Xbox One

Dead Rising 4 – Review

Site Score
8.2
Good: Funny, Simple fun, Lots of weapons
Bad: Controls, Minor but annoying bugs
User Score
8.0
(1 votes)
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Rating: 8.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes, but more than often they pursue a preformatted ideal picture that is in sync with the world’s perception of a hero. Muscular men or scantily dressed ladies often steal the show, and we instantly like them, more than often subconsciously, because of their nearly picture perfect appearance. CAPCOM stepped outside of those boundaries by creating Frank West as the protagonist of the first Dead Rising game, as he was all but a savior and just wanted to pursue a good story that would put him on the map as a reporter. Frank, not immediately an unattractive man, lacked the stamina of a typical hero, and was already well above the age of many protagonists and perhaps, because he is someone normal people can relate to, he gained a huge following and appeared in several other games after his initial success. Even though Frank was gone from the franchise for a bit, he is finally back, to get a scoop and murder some zombies in the process.

Dead Rising 4

Story

After Frank’s zombie encounter, he has been taking things a lot slower and ended up as a college teacher. While he may have an everyday job now, he is tempted to tag along with one of his students, Vicky, who wants to infiltrate a military facility to see what they are conducting, as there are rumors there’s something shady going on. Unaware that this facility is close to Willamette, the place Frank originally was confronted with zombies, Frank joins her crusade. Slowly freaking out, the closer they get to Willamette, Frank starts freaking out, but nonetheless finds his composure and tries to make sure Vicky keeps her cool as well. Sadly, Vicky gets too attached to the mission, especially when she sees the military is conducting experiments on civilians with a new strain of the zombie virus. Barely escaping alive, Frank and Vicky get separated and Frank returns to his teaching job. When weeks later he is asked to help expose the Pentagon, as Willamette is suffering from a zombie outbreak again, and the government is covering things up, he initially declines, but joins after he hears Vicky might be in danger.

Overall the story is presented to you in bits and pieces and remains fairly simple along the course of the game. Nonetheless, all snippets are brought to you in a witty fashion, often thanks to nicely written dialogues. Simple and to the point seems to be the motto of this title’s story.

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Graphics

Graphically Dead Rising 4 is quite pleasing to the eye, albeit with a slightly darker atmosphere surrounding everything compared to the first set of games. Nonetheless, while everything looks good, from the Willamette mall, the surrounding city to the zombies and of course the characters, there are a few flaws to be found. Frank himself looks quite good, and moves rather fluently, safe for a few failed attempts at lip-syncing. The rest of the world is sadly a lot of copy-paste, as many zombies look the same, many buildings look alike, and even the setup of random encounters look identical to one another. This may only be a rather small remark, as you’ll quickly find out there’s still enough to uncover and explore to keep things fairly interesting.

Dead Rising 4 might not draw out the Xbox One’s full potential but that’s due to the many different things happening on your screen at all times. More than once you’ll find yourself in the midst of countless zombies, usable items, vehicles, fires and so on, which makes it impossible to portray them at the highest possible detail level, as your Xbox One would simply die after having to process several of said scenes. Enjoy the show, CAPCOM has done a good job in creating a world that’s filled to the brim with zombies, while never truly cutting back on the graphical prowess of the game.

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Sound

Even though there seems to be a small cutback on the quantity of dialogues compared to the previous iteration of Dead Rising, the quality is still superb. The conversations are rather witty and amusing, while still remaining in a reasonable proportion to keep  them realistic.

Seeing the events in-game all occur around Christmas, you’ll constantly be treated to famous Christmas-themed songs, and/or cover versions of said titles. The latter is actually quite amusing in this zombie apocalypse setting, and it’s simply an original touch to an already great franchise.

Gameplay

Dead Rising 4 is a third-person action survival game, with a few horror elements thrown in the mix, albeit the latter is rather negligible. You’ll find yourself wading through hordes of zombies in Willamette in order to tackle missions, exterminate endless hordes of zombies, and of course expose the atrocities that are going on in this backwater town.

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The offset of the missions, be it main or secondary, is always quite simple, as you’ll simply have to head over to a location, dispose of certain people, perform an investigation or retrieve something. Overall that’s just pretty much it, and while the investigation mode with Frank’s camera may feel rather tedious at first, it slowly grows on you, and will feel natural after a few hours of playing. In the end, it’s simply walking around with the camera in front of you, where you can uncover information by using different lenses in a specific ‘investigation area’.

Dead Rising 4 also doesn’t force you to complete the storyline within a fixed amount of time, whereas the first three games had a time constraint seeing you needed to escape within a fixed amount of time, save someone before he turned into a full zombie, or leave the town before it got bombarded. This time you’re completely free, and while the map may not be massively big, the city is truly your playground, allowing you to cruise around in a GTA-like fashion, discover new locations, create weapons, hijack vehicles and of course paint the pavement red with zombie blood. Even though the time constraint kind of pulled you into the story more than it does in this title, the feeling of freedom is a hefty and welcome compensation of said lack of immersion.

As always, you’ll gain experience from practically everything in this series, ranging from killing tons of zombies, completing quests, exploring, clearing safe houses and so on. This alone creates a huge drive to do whatever you like to do, as you’ll be rewarded anyway. Nonetheless, your skill trees are fairly huge, thus exploring the world and trying out new stuff is the best way to try and unlock all of your skills.

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There’s probably only a few things that drag the otherwise nearly perfect whole down, one of them being the controls. While the arcade-like controls have their merits, especially to make things feel a bit more relaxed, they fall short more than once. When navigating in tight spaces with vehicles, or looking down the sights of your guns, you’ll soon notice how frustrating the controls can become if you wish to do something that requires a certain amount of precision, as you’ll be all over the place trying to get your movements under control.

Just like was the case with the previous game, this one still has a reasonable amount of bugs present. More than often you’ll find yourself stuck after trying to climb something, waiting for a zombie to push you aside, or sometimes the item you pick up clears your inventory and resets it to an earlier moment and so on. Overall these bugs are rather negligible as they don’t happen often, and you’ll always be able to cope with them, but they end up being an annoyance when they occur several times in a row.

Conclusion

Dead Rising 4 is another successful addition to the franchise, even with bugs present that have always been in the series. Unlike the earlier games, you’ll be treated to a fairly more serious experience, but the wacky weapons and the zombie carnage remain as good as they have always been. If you like to mix your zombie killing with a Christmas vibe, a late red gory holiday awaits you when playing CAPCOM’s latest zombie title.

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Rating: 8.0/10 (1 vote cast)
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Dead Rising 4 - Review, 8.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

1 Comment

  1. […] read it right: Dead Rising 4 is coming for PC. For those who haven’t already checked out our review on Xbox One, be sure to check it out. That being said, Frank West is back and years after his first big scoop […]

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