Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Review: Dead Rising 3 packs in the zombies and the next-gen fun

It might not be a looker, but that doesn’t mean the Xbox One’s power is wasted.

I know I said this last time, but this time it's even more true... that's a lot of zombies...

Every time a new wave of video game systems comes along, so do the high-tech buzzwords and techspeak. Once upon a time it was "blast processing," sprite counts, and “Mode 7” graphics. Then it was polygon counts, texture maps, fill rates, anti-aliasing, particle effects, teraflops, the “emotion engine,” and on it goes. For the most part, these terms all boil down to describing the amount and detail of stuff rendered on your TV set—in short, how shiny things will look.

After the new-console smell wears off, though, and the graphics become expected, fans usually focus on how new tech has transformed the way games play. Bigger worlds, user-generated content, more frantic action, crazier online battles—that's when new systems really start to look attractive.

Xbox One may glisten with sexy-looking launch fare like Forza Motorsport 5 and Ryse, but visually, Dead Rising 3 is the system's day-one sore and severed thumb. It shambles and lurches in the graphics department, almost resembling an Xbox 360 title at times. That’s because here is the rare, next-gen launch game that tries to apply its new powers to the play, not the appearance.

That focus is kind of a necessity, considering this is maybe the 4,000th zombie video game ever made. With that in mind, Capcom Vancouver went out on a (severed) limb to make a key design decision: Put as many zombies on the screen as possible, whatever the visual cost. The result isn't a revolutionary zombie game, let alone a game-changer in the wider, open-world genre, and it definitely reeks of launch-day development rush. In spite of that, DR3 succeeds with a careful balance of polish, restraint, and wild zombie slashing.

A story and a world packed with zombies

The game opens in the middle of what seems like an already-unfolding story, showing protagonist Nick Ramos running toward a zombie quarantine zone with no context or explanation. You're just a panicky young man in post-apocalyptic pseudo-California who decides to look for supplies in a place with 200 or so zombies hanging out in a giant cage. From there, Ramos finds his small crew of fellow survivors and goes on an open-world journey, completing "story" and optional missions in kind, to find a way out of the city of Ingleton before shady members of the government blow the city up.

The plot that unfolds from that jarring introduction is surprisingly clever and amusing, loaded with memorable tweaks on horror-movie archetypes, just-cheesy-enough B-movie dialogue, and startlingly solid vocal performances. Nick is never annoying as the unsteady protagonist, while a brooding, gothy sidekick, a perverted policewoman, and a mob boss' errand boy stand out among the game's giant cast. Sadly, Capcom added a completely unnecessary scene of implied sexual assault in DR3's early going, which comes across as a troubling, disgusting moment in an otherwise funny, self-aware romp.

From the moment you run right into a crowd of hundreds of zombies in that opening, though, Capcom seems to be saying, look, we can handle a lot of zombies on screen at once. It’s a bit cheesy on the developer's part, sure, but the effect really can't be understated, whether those hordes hide in a controlled, indoor cage or fill out disheveled city streets.

To really appreciate DR3's technical achievement, consider the other common ways crowds appear in modern video games—what I call the Madden Stadium Crowd. Most recent sports games have this issue, where the camera will pan after a touchdown, and the same seven people repeat in the crowd over and over, animating in unison. Everyone wearing a jersey pumps their arms at the same time, and every shirtless fan rotates in time, as if a freakish Broadway number is underway at Lambeau Field.

In Dead Rising 3, the zombies that appear hundreds at a time come with different builds, disfigurements, outfits, attacks, and animations to set them apart from each other. What’s more, while the Dead Rising series has always pushed giant zombie counts, this time around the game moves out of a controlled, cramped shopping mall and into the sunny streets of Ingleton in a semi-open environment.

The crowds that fill those open spaces—and the detailed, gory, explosive violence you inflict on them—apparently push the Xbox One to its limits, though. The game runs at a less-than-full HD 720p resolution and tops out at 30fps, and it's noticeable. The engine makes further obvious sacrifices on occasion; it's not rare to see a distant building materialize out of thin air, or a building texture take a few seconds to un-blur.

Disappointing, certainly, but it pays off in allowing for the absolutely huge zombie crowds. Whether you're fearfully running through a terrifying scene or Bruce Campbell-ing a bloody path through zombietown, the sheer scale of the throng chasing you is absolutely engrossing.

Small, dense, and filled with zany weapons

Enlarge / Little-known fact: Teddy bears are one of zombies' greatest weaknesses.

The bizarre zombie-clearing weapons that Dead Rising is known for return in this sequel with the crazy dial cranked even higher. You can still duct tape two weapons together to make zany combos (the leafblower plus "personal massager" combo is a favorite), but DR3 takes it further by letting you combine those combined weapons. The crazy dragonhead outfit that turns you into a karate superstar gets even better when you duct tape a katana sword to it. The robot-teddy-bear gun turret becomes a lot more mobile and useful when you tape it into a wheelchair.

DR3 maintains fantastic fluidity as you mow these undead jerks down, even just with default, mix-and-match attacks like crushing blunt blows, head-splitting sword slices, grenades, and shotgun blasts, not to mention weird stuff like explosive footballs, twin chainsaws, and sword-mounted boxing gloves.

Your hero Nick also prides himself in his skills as a mechanic, meaning he not only drives cars through Ingleton's streets—and runs down hundreds of zombies in the extremely satisfying process—but also combines them. You don't get as many car-combo options as you do for weapons, but they are one of the game's biggest delights. Attach a steamroller to the front of a motorcycle, for example, and you concoct a nutso "steamhog" that, for whatever reason, also shoots fire out of its front. Or you can slam two sports cars together to make a "junk car" that you can drive into a crowd of zombies, jump out of, and set to explode once you've run away.

Ingleton and its surroundings aren't all that huge, really; it's hard to come down from current-gen giants like GTA V and Saints Row 4 to a town that's easily one-eighth their size. Capcom tries to make up for the small map with utter density. Every building has an interior, and a distinct one at that, from shops to homes to museums to transit stations. You'll want to walk through and on top of every building to seek out the game's weapon-combo blueprints, not to mention collectibles and safe zones that add to your experience point total, which you'll need to crank up for survival's sake. Personally, I'll take a dense, well-populated city over an oversized snoozer any day.

As the game runs its course, it checks most of the expected open-world norms off—fetch quests, escort missions, 60-second kill-as-much-as-you-can challenges, and so on. They're all mostly an excuse to lay bloody waste to crowds, but Capcom has also made sure to dole out a good mix of powers, weapons, and helpful computer-controlled survivors to fight by your side. DR3 manages to stuff about a dozen hours of single-player or co-op gameplay into its dense campaign, and that's before bothering with the crushingly difficult "nightmare" mode. And, hell, it's stupidly fun the whole way through.

Zombies aren't your worst foes in Ingleton, though. Government conspirators, roving gangs of vagrants, and occasional, optional battles against survivors-gone-nuts show off another side of Dead Rising, one that forces players to use agility and weapon-juggling to survive some particularly explosive encounters. Kudos to Capcom for making its battle system as fun and fluid against dumb zombies as it is against crafty humans, and also for differentiating its zombies by turning the likes of police, firemen, military personnel, and even football players into the more brutal zombies among the crowds.

Dead Rising 3 is not the showcase game you'll use to stir up your friends' tech envy, nor is it the must-have software that will put the Xbox One over the top in the first round of the next-gen wars. But it's everything fans and newcomers alike could want from a launch-window sequel, holding to series tenets while never fumbling in its attempts to expand Dead Rising's core gameplay. Kudos to Microsoft for securing a next-gen exclusive that neither overreaches nor underdelivers.

The Good

  • Absolutely huge, terrifying zombie crowds
  • Tons of fun ways to clear those crowds out
  • Solid, even funny script, pulled off by a terrific vocal cast
  • Small but densely packed map contains plenty to do and explore
  • Dead Rising + cars = better Dead Rising

The Bad

  • The game has to sacrifice a lot visually to pack in so many zombies.
  • Co-op seems like an afterthought, with very little content optimized for two-player battling

The Ugly

  • Make sure to disable the "Kinect menu commands" option; otherwise, the game will frequently unpause itself for no reason.
  • A couple of really awful writing decisions mar an otherwise stellar B-movie horror story

Verdict: It doesn’t sell the $500 hardware on its own, but if you’re getting an Xbox One, definitely pick up its most substantial, exclusive launch-day title.

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