Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster Review

Let's face it, you've probably played Dead Rising before. If you didn't know it when it originally launched in 2006, you've probably experienced it by now, maybe even with the HD Remaster in 2016. It's also safe to say that the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster doesn't exactly stand out as anything special. It's a game that's not even two decades old, and yet it's been remastered twice. Twice. For that very reason, I'm not really going to review Dead Rising as a video game this time around. I'll point out a few things here and there, but in this Deluxe Remaster edition, I'm mostly going to focus on the parts of this game that are actually different, and that mostly revolves around performance and graphics.

Yes, things look very different this time around. It's actually a very pretty game and one where you can see Capcom testing the limits of what remasters can offer, as the graphics are completely remastered and stunning. Thanks to the RE Engine, this is a title that's more akin to Resident Evil 4 and Dragon's Dogma 2 than the original product, and with such fidelity and graphical complexity, you have to wonder what stopped Capcom from simply considering this version a full remake. And that carries over to the performance and technical elements too, as the Deluxe Edition runs like a charm, loads quickly and otherwise has only a few hiccups along the way. As for those, we're mostly talking about the odd texture seeping into or cutting through a surface. Otherwise, this version of Dead Rising runs like a dream. At the end of the day, that's about as much as it should be, it's 18 years old and has had plenty of time to be perfected, but it's a positive point nonetheless.

Next up are the various quality of life changes that have been enacted. Some of these are genuine improvements, such as the slightly friendlier and easier to navigate UI and an updated control scheme that makes caving in a zombie's skull all the more thrilling. The use of RE Engine seems to cause the same issues with aiming that we see in Resident Evil games, where it feels like you're struggling with the controls to be accurate. For a survival horror that quickly feels thematic, but for an ultimate zombie killing sandbox like Dead Rising, it would have been a huge boon to have a more responsive and accurate targeting system that allows Frank to really abuse the wild mechanical depth of the gameplay.

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In fact, the main objective also brings out and ties into another, traditional problem in the Dead Rising experience. The boss fights that the story constantly forces you into are just plain abhorrent, proving more than ever why the firefight should be an afterthought rather than the best possible solution for dealing with zombies and enemies. This wouldn't be such a big problem if they were less frequent, but that's simply not the case, and they also point to a glaring and massive problem that also affects one of the new QoL additions: auto-saving.

On one hand, it's brilliant that you don't have to physically save your progress, but it means you forget to jot down manual save files to go back to when you need them. Why would you do that? Maybe you stumble headfirst into a boss fight without a full health bar and limited weapons and tools at your disposal… Yes, that happened to me and the only solution (to save my sanity from constantly being slaughtered by three insane prisoners in a military truck with a machine gun on the roof) was to either suck it up and manage to beat the task at hand, or start the game over to make sure I'm better prepared for that moment when I return to it. Neither was a compelling option…

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Additionally, when you add the typical and familiar Dead Rising quirks (like the funky zombies that often run through your attacks, or the NPCs to command and protect) to the new Deluxe Edition, you get a version that's a bit random. With massively improved performance and graphics that are effectively remake quality, you have to wonder why Capcom didn't just remake the game and fix the long-standing issues that were always there, rather than just partially ticking off those tasks and leaving elements like loading screens intact between the smaller gameplay areas. Is it fun to have access to the variety of costumes and weird outfits? Sure, but at the same time, this is still exactly the Dead Rising we've all known for years, just with a much shinier coat of paint.