Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster Review – Chopping Spree

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster on PlayStation 5

Ah, Dead Rising. Has there ever been a zombie game that’s quite so much fun? Not fun in the sense that any game is fun, but fun in the sense that we all think such an apocalypse would be. Sure, realistically 90% of us would be dead in the first few days, but we all think we’d have fun doing exactly what’s done here.

Unfortunately, there are a few serious issues in the original version of Dead Rising. While it’s still a fantastic game, it’s also very much of its time. The controls are clunky by modern standards, the AI often feels like it was programmed by AI, and there are a few deeply questionable design decisions. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster aims to modernize things, and oh boy does it succeed.

The plot is the same as it was the last time around, just wrapped in a shiny new bow. You play as Frank West, an ambitious photojournalist investigating the Willamette Mall after it’s attacked by a horde of zombies – 53,594 to be exact. How you proceed from there is up to you. You can investigate the source of the outbreak for the big scoop, focus on rescuing survivors, or simply wander around in a sundress hitting zombies across the head with a piece of wood. The world is your oyster.

Dead Rising is well known for its divisive time management mechanic. You have three days in the mall – plus an extra day if you successfully discover the root of the problem – and each day lasts around two hours. It’s possible – albeit difficult – to save everyone in the mall, kill every psychopath, and still uncover the cause of the outbreak, but doing this is a puzzle that relies on being in the right place at the right time, and you might not manage it in one playthrough.

Yes, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is a short game, but it’s also one where death is a game mechanic. Whenever you die, you can immediately restart your game with all your accrued levels – and you’ll likely die a lot, especially at first. Yes, zombies can go down in a hit or two, but there are a lot of them, so be prepared to get swarmed. There are also a number of “psychopaths” dotted around the mall, ranging from a veteran having a flashback to a chainsaw wielding clown. These psychopaths make up the boss flights of the game, and range from “ordinary person who snapped” to “irredeemably evil”.

Luckily, levelling up is fairly fast. You’ll get it for killing zombies and psychopaths, rescuing survivors, or taking photographs. In fact, I gained a few levels just from rescuing the first few survivors. You’ll learn new skills as it goes on which you can incorporate into your playstyle, ranging from a judo throw when you’re grabbed to a rugby tackle and the ability to do a knee drop.

Crucially, you never really feel like it’s a waste to go back. Yes, you know what’s coming, but that doesn’t lessen the satisfaction of seeing a zombie’s head explode or blithely steering a lawnmower through the crowd. Going back just makes it easier to rescue survivors, and gives you more chances to use the new tools in your repertoire.

Of course, the most notorious enemy in Dead Rising was the AI. Luckily, the improvements are startling. Most notably, DRDR has a new affinity mechanic. Give your companions items they like, like a favoured weapon, and they’ll become more proactive in battle. This can be great if zombies are surrounding you, but it does cause an issue in some cases. At a few points, I’d be leading my survivors to safety only for one to decide to play the hero, zombies chewing through their health bars as another dived into the fray to save them.

This issue was especially bad during the psychopath battles. There’s one early boss fight against a group of escaped convicts in a truck, and while they go down easily enough, my companions’ insistence on trying to help ended up with them running into the path of the truck, and one of them running directly into the path of my shotgun just as I pulled the trigger. He died, but I found that I was more attached to him than to any survivors in previous games. 

Even better, survivors will occasionally point out things like a PP sticker (which you can photograph for EXP) or mention hearing unannounced survivors, right down to the location. It’s always worth having a few survivors around where you can, both to help you along in the game and just because it feels good to save them. The AI can be frustrating at times (more on that later), but it’s a little change that really added to the characterization and made them feel less like a crowd of interchangeable folks.

It’s also worth noting that they’ve added stairs to the shaft leading to the Security Room. It may seem like an oddity to highlight this in a review, but fans of the original will know exactly what I mean when I say that this addition really gets rid of one of the biggest annoyances of Dead Rising.

The visuals have also seen a significant overhaul. The RE Engine is used to full effect, and while some of the designs are a tad cartoonish, including leading man Frank’s, it’s the little details that stand out. If Frank and his allies get their clothes dirty, they’ll stay dirty for a long while. There are wrinkles and creases, and at times you can even pick out the tiny details that are often ignored in other games, such as a few stray hairs Carlito missed shaving, or the beard beneath Adam’s face paint. It makes the whole thing feel a little more realistic, despite the cartoonish feel.

And it is a cartoonish game. While it’s not quite as crazy as the sequels, which let you create a laser sword out of a flashlight and a handful of gems, Dead Rising has always been a franchise that thrives on camp appeal, however it’s perfectly balanced with moments of serious drama that let the horror of the situation sink in. It takes a delicate hand to go from the hilarity of beating a zombie to death with a mannequin torso to the tragedy of meeting a grieving woman who just watched zombies eat her child, but Dead Rising manages it. The voice acting takes it to the next level, and it doesn’t feel like anybody is phoning it in. It doesn’t take itself as seriously as something like Silent Hill, or even Resident Evil, but DRDR knows when to pull its punches and when to go for the gut.

A lot has been made about DRDR “wokifying” (read: modernizing) certain elements. Most notably, the removal of erotica points. While there’s a case to be made for keeping some of these elements in (such as the idea that it satirized the media’s habit of ignoring the real impact on humans for the sake of sensationalism), it’s a reflection of how far we’ve come. Do we need an achievement called “Frank the Pimp” for escorting a full team of female survivors? Is there a point in getting EXP for taking a photo of an injured woman’s cleavage? Not in our opinion. It’s the sort of small change that doesn’t really affect the game, but it makes things feel a little less… well, icky. Yes, you can still take photos of the women if it’s a dealbreaker, but it’s no longer a gameplay mechanic you’re rewarded for.

Elsewhere, the game is an almost exact recreation, albeit with updated gameplay and graphics, and a few changes to character models. It’s not just the storyline, it’s things like timings and item placements. At one point early in my playthrough I instinctively jumped over a railing to an awning where a katana was hidden in the original, and it was still there.

Elsewhere, I headed to where a survivor was trapped in the original and found him exactly where I expected him to be. You could easily take a guide for the original and follow it to the letter here, which really says a lot about the quality of the original. It wasn’t a game that needed a lot of changes, or even one that would necessarily have benefitted from them. It’s a campy game that doesn’t pretend to be anything but a lot of fun, and oh boy, it’s a lot of fun.

There are a few criticisms, of course, but it’s an odd case where several elements of the original proved divisive. If you didn’t like the timed elements of the original (for example) you’ll probably dislike them here. For one, there was an issue with clipping. There are a few DLC costumes based on various Capcom franchises, and in some cases elements of these costumes clipped right through other characters in cut scenes, and it was annoying enough that I exclusively went for “simpler” outfits. There were a few moments where zombies would be stuck in the floor, but with so many zombies I suppose a few ignoring the laws of physics is understandable.

The camera controls were also a tad annoying. You can autofocus or do so manually, but the issue is that doing so manually often makes the image more blurry. As much as we love Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster and the inclusion of photography, it feels a tad pointless since you’ll get a high score for even the blurriest or poorly-timed photograph at times. I got 10,000 PP at one point for a photograph of a man standing around, having missed the Outtake prompt I’d seen by a second or two. Given the fact you can find upgrades to your camera around the mall (which I never found myself needing), this aspect is perhaps a tad underbaked, but not enough to really affect the game. It’s there if you want to take it seriously, but just as easy to ignore.

It’s also worth noting that as much as the AI has evolved, it does still have its issues at times. Nothing too major, but occasionally you’ll realize that a survivor has gotten caught in an endless loop of fistfighting zombies, or gotten caught behind a plantpot. There are a few survivors that require a few extra steps to recruit, and you’ll sometimes find yourself repeating these steps. In one case I ended up in a loop of speaking to a few survivors, getting shot at, and leaving the store they were holed up in, before returning to continue the conversation. These issues aren’t major, but they are frustrating, and could result in losing a few survivors along the way.

If you want something that updates the game significantly, you’ll be disappointed in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster – but if you want to revisit the original, this is the definitive way to do so.