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Fashion Rising is back in force. Bringing fantastic new features, a 10/10 story and the best zombie killing experience to date…
I wish I could start this review with that. I wish I could say the way the fanbase despised this instalment was unfair. I absolutely loved DR4 when I first played it back at release. Being the first Dead Rising game I actually got into and finished, I held it as my favourite zombie killing game. I still like a lot of things about it, but there’s the overwhelming feeling when I play after playing all but one of the titles. It feels like an early access game… Let’s get started.

It’s short. Way too short. It’s not bad, but you can see it’s missing chunks of character development. Issues like a character being introduced at the start, who then essentially ceases to exist until the end of the game. It’s the same generic plot points of: Government is doing illegal testing; things go wrong and it all links back to the first game.
We are brought back to the location of the first game. And I do enjoy the map. It’s big, but not a massive pain to navigate like DR3 and you even get a Mall again. There was a lot of potential with the location, the characters and the soap-opera level lore about the people involved in the original outbreak. It does fall short; feeling like it was chopped and changed, characters being under developed, and a general lack of coherent flow. But in the distance, you can see what could have been.

Back in the field; having made some past mistakes that led to being buried by the government is our man… Frank West. The players hated this version of Frank. Mr West is not a good person in this, every act of kindness is riddled with self-gain or pure reluctance. Yet very suddenly towards the end of the game he’s being weirdly considerate of others and willing to sacrifice what he wanted to help others. So here’s where the missing chunks of character development comes in. Frank is numb towards the zombie incident, not caring about others and only focusing on his story. People hated this as it was very unlike him in other games, however I look at it as if I was getting dragged into my third outbreak and I was emotionally immature I would respond the same way. This could’ve been explored in further detail for sure, but Frank and every other character only gets real development through… collectibles. I can’t say too much about the others as we really don’t interact with everyone else for long enough to see how they interact off of each other.
Oh right. Psychopaths. One of the biggest things that adds enjoyment for fans. Yeah, they’re gone. Replaced with these half baked “Maniacs”. No cutscenes, no fun interactions, nothing. Just show up, kill some minions and shoot the maniac in the face and leave. DR3 had less in it, but the ones that were, i.e. the 7 Deadly Sins, ended up being a lot of fun.

There are a lot of questionable decisions to tackle here. For starters, throwables, melee and ranged all have separate inventories. This means you can no longer throw every item on you but does mean you can have a ranged weapon assigned that you can quickly switch to. I liked being able to pick up random chairs and throw them but maybe it’s just me. There’s also a lot more as far as collectibles. How many? 6. An important lesson for any developer; you only need two or three small sets of collectibles. Using the abundant amount of them to tell the story instead of… oh I don’t know… showing us in the bloody story! It draws out the game time in a very inorganic way. There’s no side missions that we can use to interact with other survivors, only ‘Distress beacons’; Side missions being a better way of extending playtime and exploring character growth.

So what else do we have? Blueprints- 55 in total. There are a handful of new ones, but no Super Combos or overpowered Psycho weapons, just the maniac weapons. In DR3 we got lockers for any weapon you have previously picked up or made. DR4 returns to the classic method with a slight twist. Merchants in the safehouses. They are certainly a thing… This does mean you get a currency system (scrap), but I only used it for the Location merchant to find the collectibles. It’s there, it doesn’t add anything game changing it’s just something someone probably thought was a good idea. They also removed Co-Op for the campaign and instead added these episodes you can play with friends, hence why we don’t have Scarlett joining us this time (I’m in spirit editing). I think what makes all of these weird, unimpactful or outright bad is that all these new features feel unrefined, like an early access game that’s still trying out different things and not finishing or changing what doesn’t work.

I’ve tackled most things that trouble but what did I like? The bugs I encountered were harmless or even fun (with the exception of one) and for once it wasn’t a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CURVING FRYPAN. DR4 had me using a variety of Combo weapons, not just the same three. The vehicles were entertaining and being able to drive everywhere was such a joy (I’m looking at you DR3). Killing zombies isn’t perfect (there’s a video of DR4 vs DR1 that highlights a lot of things DR4 was just lacking) but it’s still fun. The Mini Golf game mode is fun and I absolutely loved Frank Rising. You know, the DLC where made you look and you play as thankfully not Chuck Greene. And I appreciate the effort that was put into the collectibles and the stories you get from them. I also think you could’ve done the tags and gotten stories from them instead of having six different collectibles. Fashion Rising is still present, you can use any fully body mirror to change your outfit and the Servobot Head changes expressions based on Franks. The camera being back is a feature I enjoyed, selfies included. The skill trees were also well done for the most part.

I do not hate this game. I don’t like it as much as I use to though. DR4 has the same good foundation every Dead Rising I’ve played has, yet still has the same issue as the rest but in different ways. The story is far too short, the characters have no time to get fleshed out and we have far too many collectibles. Yet killing zombies is still fun, combo weapons are great and spending my game dressed as Servobot Knight was great. So in a sentence…

Dead Rising 4 has the same core as the rest with half-baked ideas tossed on top and shipped out before anyone took a second look.

It’s not good, but it’s not any worse than DR2 for me. You might think otherwise, all I ask is you remember that you don’t have to like or dislike anything because it’s good or bad. But I see now I must finish my Dead Rising journey with were it all began. Until then…

May Your Travels Lead You To Warm Sands Friend,
Ody

This game is the perfect intersection of the original Dead Rising premise (Dawn of the Dead but you can run around the shopping mall using everything as a weapon) Dead Rising 2 (combining items to make comical weapons) and Christmas. I've never turned off the Christmas extras, so take that with a grain of salt if you wouldn't.

It's embracing the fully absurd, far and away unrealistic but also so, so funny when you do ridiculous stuff.

As you unlock more and more, you start honing in on certain items because you're also burning through them. Although, as you rescue more survivors (who need a lot less help once you kill the mob attacking them, since they have a higher level of self-preservation than the first game) you unlock a lot of these weapons, which is good because finding a garden gnome to make a wizard staff is harder than it sounds.

I'm almost all the way through it, but I will recommend that you get the particular skill that makes exo suits last longer before you start getting the blueprints that are underground in the time capsules. It's still possible to get them, but you're gonna have a bad time. Worse than you might imagine, because you're usually about 5 to 10 seconds too far away from one when you put on the closest exo suit. Several times I've been so close, sprinting the entire way, and it just collapses.

The story is another one where Frank gets dragged into things, like Off the Record, but this time he can really have fun, make laser swords, dress up as Bass or Guile (among many costumes), the good stuff.

The vehicles are even more absurd than the chainsaw motorcycle, an achievement to be sure. It starts with a 4 wheeler ATV and humvee hybrid that fires a chaingun and rockets, and then gets weirder. A combination hearse and tow truck that sucks up and flings zombies. A combination oldsmobile and snowmobile that fires snowballs at deadly speed. And of course, a combination segway and golf cart, the Bogey Monster. There's more but that's for you to discover.

The graphics are good for the time. You will neither be horrified nor blown away. The music is usually Christmasy but if it's a dramatic enough moment you'll be thrown background music that better fits. No, this is a game for the gameplay and the writing, where you'll be glad the writing isn't trying to tug at your heart because you are going to, over the course of the game, kill the entire population of Willamette. Again. There's so many, they're respawning constantly, frankly it's obscene how many times a trip between two locations has Frank covered in blood like he was feeding them into a woodchipper and running to the other side to bathe in the gore.

7/10, and my favorite Dead Rising.

It's not bad