Off the Shelf Media

Picture this: it’s late summer 2006. You’ve just recently gotten an Xbox 360 earlier in the year, and you’re itching for another new gaming experience to grace this new and advanced platform. Your younger age means you might not have the attention span or wherewithal to tangle with classic Resident Evil’s tank controls and fixed camera angles. Enter Dead Rising: a game that would bridge the gap between the tense survival horror of Resident Evil games of yore and other popular hack-and-slash adventure titles like Dynasty Warriors. A game where I can pick up virtually anything and use it as a weapon? Not only that, but I am completely morally justified in doing so? Sign me up!

Fast forward to 2024. Perhaps you’re beginning to grow tired of all the remakes and remasters, but boy oh boy… Dead Rising remastered in the RE Engine??? Sign me up, again! 

Though, maybe pump the brakes… I love the original version of this game. I love Capcom games. I will buy just about anything they put out. If you’re new to this series, I would highly recommend starting with the original 2006 release first. 

That said, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is a fresh and fun revisiting of one of those classic games that is just emblematic of the mid-2000s. Is the game good enough to simply coast on the fickle momentum of nostalgia? Let’s take a look. 

Gameplay: 1

For those who have not gotten to enjoy the original version of this absolute classic from the annals of gaming history, the gameplay loop is simple: survive in the zombie-infested shopping mall for 72 game world hours, and be at the mall’s helipad in time for the rescue. 

During player character Frank West’s struggle to survive, he has the option to assist two government agents mysteriously at the mall at the onset of the outbreak. By solving the various “cases” over the course of the game’s main storyline, Frank can unearth the truth about how the Willamette outbreak began. These cases make up the game’s main questline, so to speak. You can choose to ignore this mission entirely, however, and simply enjoy the three days saving survivors or slaughtering every single moving, breathing, or reanimated body you come across. 

Over the course of Frank’s three-day stint in the Willamette Parkview Mall, he can encounter, and hopefully rescue, many survivors who have become trapped in the mall with him. In addition to escorting these survivors, Frank can also encounter various ‘Psychos’ that serve as the game’s boss fight encounters. Players are encouraged to both save survivors and kill psychos, as they typically provide many rewards in the form of experience points (PP or Prestige Points in-game), unique weapons and items, or shortcuts that make navigating the mall much easier. 

The Psycho boss fights have been adjusted and balanced. They don’t seem nearly as tough in this remaster as they did in the original. Some of the boss fights used to range from challenging to downright unfair. In this release, I felt each fight had the perfect amount of challenge, due in large part to the fact that it’s not as simple as grabbing the one super powerful sword you can find early on and wailing on the boss. Also, for a few of the bosses, there exist new exploits to get the upper hand in the fight that weren’t present in the original. 

Each sector of the mall is teeming with the infinitely regenerating undead. As mentioned earlier, Frank can use virtually any item at his disposal to combat the shamblers standing in his way. Weapons can range from benches, television sets, guitars, lead pipes, sporting goods, 2x4s, garbage cans, various blades, firearms, and the list goes on. The wide array of weaponry as well as unlockable skills ensures that each playthrough is different from the last. 

Some of the most headache-inducing components of the gameplay from the original have been eliminated entirely. One that stood out to me almost immediately is that Frank can now move while aiming and firing in ranged combat. In the game’s original 2006 release, Frank would be locked in his current spot when aiming. This mechanic made the player a sitting duck if they were trying to get a quick shot off at an inconveniently placed zombie or return fire against one of the game’s many gun-toting psychos. For some, this might seem like a small adjustment, but it is one that infinitely improved the game for me. For the true Dead Rising purists, however, there exists an option to default to the original control scheme, including movement-free aiming. 

For players who decide to opt for the updated controls, Frank’s special moves are remapped on the controller. Originally, when grabbed by a zombie, the player would need to wiggle the analog stick to break free from a grab. As the player leveled up, different escape animations could be unlocked. In my experience, it was often difficult to trigger these unique animations. There are four different escape animations, which are now mapped to their own individual buttons in the remaster. Making a ‘judo throw’ or ‘push off’ move is guaranteed based on which of the face buttons you press. 

Probably one of the most significant gameplay improvements made in the updated control scheme is the ‘flying dodge’ move. It now has its own dedicated button. In the 2006 release, the flying dodge was triggered by flicking the analog stick twice in the same direction in quick succession. Almost every single time the player moved Frank and tried to change direction by picking their thumb up and putting it back down on the stick, the flying dodge move would be triggered. I can’t count the number of times I flung Frank into a large throng of the undead when I was simply trying to turn right slightly. In the remaster, however, the move is now mapped to the ‘circle’ button on PS5 in addition to pushing the analog stick in the direction you want to dodge. Again, a small adjustment, but one that removed a lot of the headache that came from playing the original release. 

As satisfying as the gameplay loop may be starting out, some might find it boring after a while. If you enjoyed the aforementioned changes made to the ranged combat mechanics, you’ll begin to realize the guns are some of the most effective tools for disposing of the undead. Once players find out where the gun shop is located, it will become routine for them to make a run back there every so often to stock up on a few shotguns, handguns, and hunting rifles. Many players these days seek constant variety throughout their gaming experience, and Dead Rising still has a few ‘meta’ items that make the game trivially easy at certain points. 

Though all these improvements have been made to the gameplay, there still exists a fair amount of “jank.” This end result is what comes with a game that is a remaster in a new engine rather than a full-on, ground-up remake. For instance, Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 remakes were remade from scratch in Capcom’s in-house RE Engine. Capcom employees on these projects were dedicated to reimagining the games for a modern audience. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is Dead Rising (2006) borrowing the RE Engine’s clothes. In short, this keeps the game from playing exactly as one would expect a 2024 game would.

One such headache that I expected to be dealt with in a 2024 game is the awful survivor AI. Survivors will get caught against walls, foolishly plunge headlong into a horde of zombies with reckless abandon, and die in what seems like a few blows. An “affinity” system has been added to the survivors. Allegedly, giving specific items to certain survivors will raise Frank’s affinity with them, ostensibly making them more effective companions. I didn’t notice much difference in their effectiveness in my tens of hours of play.

Vehicles left in the mall parking lot are accessible and provide a much-needed means of quick traversal across the open park in the middle of the mall, or the maintenance tunnels beneath. There are a lot of piss poor collision detection areas where pulling your vehicle into the median of the maintenance tunnel will cause a traffic collision not unlike Daniel Craig’s in Casino Royale (2006). Unlike this scene, however, these sections of the game lack any of Craig’s suave execution, especially during the mission where Frank needs to disarm various bombs scattered throughout the maintenance tunnels in a set time. 

The “jankiness” of the game is likely due to most of the development being outsourced to Hong Kong-based developer NeoBards, rather than a handpicked Seal Team 6 of Capcom’s finest. NeoBards doesn’t absolutely muck things up for Capcom here; it’s just noticeable that a smaller, less meticulous studio had a hand in this.

Story: 1

The story here is so-so. Not at all terrible, but not Scorsese level either. Protagonist Frank West is a freelance photojournalist who is looking for his next big scoop. He hears something big is going down in Willamette, Colorado. He hires a chopper and a pilot to get him to the action. As Frank arrives in Willamette, a quick flyover of the town shows a city in absolute disarray, with shambling undead lining the streets, with most of them concentrated at the large local shopping mall.

Frank gets dropped off by the pilot at the mall’s helipad, and the pilot must make a dramatic escape after Frank tells him to be back for him in three days. Shortly after infiltrating the zombie-infested mall, Frank discovers just how grave the situation is. Frank and several other survivors hole up in the mall’s security offices after a mall staff member welds the door connecting them to the mall shut. 

After escaping an initial siege by the undead at the front door of the mall, Frank sets out to explore and find some more answers. Along the way, he encounters Homeland Security agent Jessie McCarney, who enlists Frank’s help to find and rescue her partner Brad Garrison, who left and hasn’t checked back in with her or come back. Frank reluctantly agrees and sets out to look for Brad. 

At this point, the player is free to ignore the mission to find Brad or seek him out. If the player elects to do the former, it locks the player out of the true ending and additional content. 

Eventually, Frank discovers the reason for two DHS agents coincidentally showing up at this mall at the same time a zombie outbreak occurs, and Frank must work alongside them to uncover the truth about what’s happened here. 

All the trappings of a Capcom zombie game plot are here. Evil, shadowy corporations, government skullduggery, and one man standing against it all. Though the man standing against it all in this case isn’t some kitted up military badass, it’s a cocky dude with a camera. 

Dead Rising sometimes feels like a less serious, even campier version of the Resident Evil games. That’s not to say it doesn’t get dark and heavy at certain points. It definitely has its fair share of dark and disturbing moments, but there’s also a ton of comedic relief here, too. 

Fans of the original release will remember Molotov cocktail-wielding psycho Paul and how his crotch catches on fire after you defeat him in his boss encounter. By contrast, the grizzled war vet holed up in the hardware store is still one of the more disturbing and depressing encounters in the game. All in all, there’s a little something for everyone in this experience story-wise, but it doesn’t exactly redefine the genre by any stretch.  

Atmosphere: 1

Another aspect of the game that’s not necessarily good or bad, just kind of… meh. I mean, you’re in a zombie-infested shopping mall, right? What more do you need to set the mood? 

Cheesy mall music plays on the loudspeakers as you bob and weave your way through the crowds of walking dead. The title screen still has that iconic haunting… moaning(?) sound that I’m not sure from which instrument it comes from. It’s probably some kind of synth. Anyway, the title screen music from the original release is back, and it hits as hard as it did back in 2006. 

Speaking of hitting as hard as back in 06, that anxious and tense theme that plays as Frank flies over Willamette for the first time is back as well, and thank goodness it was. “Frank West’s theme” is a track synonymous with this game and it would not have been Dead Rising without it. Props to Capcom for keeping that in, as I find a lot of times, whether it’s for good reason or not, devs will remake a game and then leave some of the most iconic parts of it out. 

Boss fights all have their own music tracks attached to them. These songs usually consist of hardcore punk and metal ditties that were quite obnoxious to me back in the day. Listening to the music through the rose-colored nostalgia goggles in the current day, however, it’s like opening up a time capsule or finding an old school yearbook and seeing how you used to dress years ago. Sure, maybe it’s a little cringeworthy, but it’s also weirdly comforting in some ways too. 

Duration: 2

This game will take as long or short as you want. You can search every nook and cranny of the mall for every secret and every survivor or you can hunker down, find some good weapons and just hold out for the chopper. Either way, completing the story and lasting 72 hours will ensure you get a crack at the true ending of the game as well as the unlockable content. 

If the true ending is unlocked, players enter into “Overtime Mode,” where they’re able to discover the truth about what happened in Willamette. Completing “Overtime Mode” unlocks “Infinite Mode,” a survival mode where psycho, survivor, and item placements are randomized from the mainline experience. Frank’s health bar slowly decreases over time, so regular consumption of food items is a crucial new gameplay mechanic specific to “Infinite Mode.” Infinite mode lasts as long as you can survive, so there’s incentive for players to keep coming back to top their own personal bests or the leaderboards. 

The multiple endings, coupled with a seemingly limitless number of ways to approach the game and lengthy endgame content, make this a game that you can enjoy for either its projected runtime or hours and hours beyond. There’s really no in-between. Either you kind of like the game, or you love the game. 

Value: 2

At $49.99, you really can’t beat the price of this game. You’re getting a mostly polished, significant graphical update of one of the unique classics in the survival horror genre. There is also a deluxe edition for an additional ten bucks at $59.99 that gives you all kinds of bonus costumes for Frank to wear. These include callbacks to other Capcom franchises like Leon Kennedy’s RPD uniform from Resident Evil 2 Remake or Ken’s karate outfit from Street Fighter. 

There’s also Nemesis and Licker costumes, two grotesque monsters from the Resident Evil series, along with quite a bit more. Also with the deluxe edition, players get the opportunity to change the mall’s background music, allowing for both some nostalgic as well as some funny tracks to be piped into Willamette Mall while Frank does his ‘chopping.’ The deluxe edition is there for people who really love these games and Capcom in general, so if none of these extras sound appealing to you, you won’t be missing much by only downloading the regular edition. 

Total Score: 7/10

So what do you think of these games that are not quite remakes but also not quite simply remasters? The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remaster, back in April, is similar to DRDR, and people can’t put that down. Do you think we’re starting to see a new trend in videogames? Are we going to start getting old games that keep the same bones, but get a major facelift graphically? Some people take to a facelift very well… others not so much. 

I would caution devs from making this the standard for all games going forward, as it could be the next excuse large companies make to not innovate within the space. In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying both this game and Oblivion’s remaster, because going back to the year 2006 sounds kind of nice right now.