Dead Rising 4 marks the return of Dead Rising’s original protagonist, Frank West, in an all new chapter of ridiculous weapons and too many zombies… I’m talking hordes of zombies – from the typical to the insane.
Dead Rising is the one zombie game I can never take too seriously, so it’s great for the faint hearted who wants to act like a badass. Out of all the zombie survival games I’ve ever played, I’ve never laughed this hard. Frank West has the kind of humour that I appreciate greatly. I guess you could say he’s… quirky?
It also seems like Frank’s got a camera upgrade, with which you can use to take ‘zealfies’ (selfies with zombies… get it? Too much?) which help to commemorate your zombie slaying adventures. I would honestly say that it is the best feature I’ve seen in a video game in 10 years, it’s hilarious. I can’t remember when I laughed that much in a video game.
But then the game takes a dip. Apart from the humor, there’s quite little holding it together and all it then becomes is a very arcade-ish affair that is a couple of years behind the times. While I did have high hopes after watching the trailer, the graphics aren’t something I would rate highly. Pretty standard stuff for this day and age. While it’s a definite upgrade over the previous editions of Dead Rising, but it just isn’t up to the same level as most other games released this year. It’s not bad, just nothing impressive.
The controls are easy to pick up, even for a first time player, and the objective markers were very easy to follow – bright, blinking and right in your face, just the way I like it. You can’t skip cut scenes though, which was a little annoying since other characters in game started to get on my nerves.
Playing Dead rising 4 was honestly almost relaxing, in a button mashing beat ’em up kinda way, compared to other zombie games that try to scare the living essence out of you. The humour and wittiness takes the edge off when you’re faced with a “practically insane” hordes of zombies.
In combat, you can basically turn anything into a weapon – candy cane crossbows and powered axes to baseball bats and concrete pylons. The introduction of an Exo-suit means that you can now use and swing things Frank normally wouldn’t be able to lift at all, like concrete slabs and such. Basically anything to add to the mayhem.
There are glitches however, really bad glitches. To be completely honest, I played the first bit of the game and went on my own rampage killing zombies, because the story couldn’t hold me long enough. I eventually discovered a horrible glitch where the game flung zombies away when they got near me. Made me laugh at first but it kept making irritating sounds when I walked by a horde.
Dead Rising 4 is great for the Christmas season if you just want a game where you run around and blow things up. There’s no deep premise, just mayhem. If you’re looking for something deeper, it’s definitely not the game for you.
Dead Rising 4 is a timed exclusive for the XBox One and Windows 10. It will only be available on other platforms later.