In 2006, I had a decision to make. Christmas was coming up, and three new gaming consoles were on the market: Sony's super-expensive PS3, the impossible-to-find Nintendo Wii, and the Xbox 360, which came out the year prior and already had an established library of great games. Still, after a decade of only owning PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, I wasn't sold on the Xbox 360. That was, until I read about Dead Rising in a gaming magazine. There had been plenty of zombie video games before, but nothing to its scale, with the promise of hundreds of zombies on-screen at once and all the action taking place in a Dawn of the Dead-esque shopping mall. Dead Rising pushed me to ask for an Xbox 360 for Christmas that year, and I did not regret the decision. Now, an eye-watering 18 years later, Capcom has brought Dead Rising back as Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. Upgraded for a new generation of consoles, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is in many ways better than the Xbox 360 original, even if it drops the ball in some areas.
One of the first things I noticed when booting up Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster was its graphical pop-in. The game's opening cutscenes and the helicopter photography sequence suffer from distracting pop-in problems where characters, zombies, far-off trees, and chunks of buildings suddenly phase into existence. These opening areas also have some odd flickering textures, which did not leave a good first impression.
Once I was in the mall, though, the graphical issues mostly subsided (except for Leisure Park), and I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. From saving Jeff and Natalie on the mall's rooftop to exploring all the different shops in Paradise Plaza, Dead Rising's opening hours have stuck with me for nearly two decades and getting to revisit the game on modern hardware is a treat.
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster Has Major New Quality-of-Life Features
I went with Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster's new control scheme, but those that want even more nostalgia can go with the original controls. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster's new control scheme makes it so the Y button is used to pick up objects, whereas it was B in the original. This change takes some getting used to, but the decision to relegate survivor commands and radio calls to the sticks is a huge improvement. This way, players can answer calls without moving their fingers away from the sticks, which sounds small but is a huge convenience when out exploring the mall.
Players are let loose to explore the mall as much as they'd like fairly early on in Dead Rising, though there's always a time limit hanging over their heads. One reason why the original Dead Rising stands out so much is its time limit, with players needing to manage their time over the 72 hours that they're in the mall to save as many survivors as possible, kill any Psychopaths that get in their way, and ultimately solve the mystery at the core of the main story missions. The time limit adds a great deal of pressure to the proceedings and ensures the stakes are always high. It's a divisive mechanic for sure, but I personally loved it in the original and I love it now. It makes Dead Rising incredibly unique and forces players to think strategically about every move they make in Willamette Mall.
Navigation in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is significantly improved. Whereas the original game used a big ugly arrow at the top of the screen to point players to their next objective, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster uses a far more helpful compass that lets players select multiple objectives at once. These objective markers tell players the exact distance they are from any given task, which in turn makes it easier for players to make decisions about where to go next. If a Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster survivor is relatively close by, players can make the choice to snag them before rushing back to the security room, whereas before they may not have realized where the survivors were and needlessly left them to die.
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