At the outset of the Xbox 360 generation, Capcom was struggling to get a new hit out, and with a brand spanking new console to play around with, they went for broke with the very first Dead Rising game. It showed off impressive technical features in the form of huge crowds of enemies, a condensed world in the form of the Willamette Parkview Mall, as well as the insane clock-based gameplay structure that set the gaming world afire in 2006.
Since then, the franchise has had its ups and downs, and following the messy last entry, Dead Rising 4, which came 10 years after its debut, it seemed like there was nowhere left to go for its games but straight into the grave. Still, Capcom tried to do what they do best by re-releasing entries as remasters for the – at the time – next batch of systems, bumping up both Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2.
Back then, no new features were added outside of the increased resolution and framerate, but that was enough to make them somewhat more playable, given that the two tended to have shaky performance elsewhere. Now, nearly another 10 years later, we have yet another version of the original to play with Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, blurring the line between being a remaster and a bonafide remake.
This new release has got a lot going for it. First and foremost, it’s the first game running on Capcom’s excellent RE Engine, with vastly upgraded character models, not to mention the bells and whistles of HDR. It’s got an alternative control scheme that runs literal laps around the original’s tank-like movement and a host of improvements when it comes to making the player’s life easier.
Against the general outcry online for the changes to protagonist Frank West’s looks, I for one liked the even more cartoonish face that was given to the man who covered many wars, as the rest of the cast remains basically the same, only with much higher visual fidelity. Granted, not all returning fans will take his voice actor being changed kindly, everything else about the man is as arrogantly lovable as it’s always been, really.
Dead Rising became famous for a variety of reasons, not all of them good. Its story, albeit full of slapstick fun, had some sections where it turn to a more exploitative affair especially when it came to women, which extended to gameplay where, Frank West being a photojournalist, could take “spicy” pictures of female survivors and zombies in order to score PP, the game’s name for experience points.
Deluxe Remaster does away with most of that offending content while also turning an eye to other problematic characterizations of some of the psychos that West faces off throughout the game, like the cook who in the original was designed as an exaggerated asian stereotype as is now a much more toned down character. Other designs though remain unchanged but have been rewritten, as the case is for the war vet boss, who now has no references to Vietnam.
For all that was changed in this new package, a whole bunch remains untouched, for the better. Dead Rising was easily one of the most busy games ever released, having you strictly adhere to a tight schedule if you ever hoped of seeing all there was to be seen, given that the cases you would chase had time limits that forced you to draw plans in order to fit it all within the 72-hour story constraint.
The biggest pet peeve with fans of the original was the game’s archaic progress recording that forced them to restart it from the very beginning when the smallest of mistakes happened. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster draws improvements around that premise by allowing you to save the game over more than one slot and having automated checkpoints, both of which help alleviate the pressure giving you some wiggle room to fix mistakes and think of alternative routes or rearrange your mission order.
Smaller changes like the ability to upgrade Frank’s camera by collecting parts scattered throughout the shopping mall and better and much more reliable follower A.I also work to make the overall experience much more enjoyable, making this the best way for newcomers to get into the game that started it all. For veterans like myself, on the other hand, it is a tougher sell, as the broad strokes of the Willamette disaster are exactly as we remember, and the hours spent picking through everything it had in store in 2006 might not be worth revisiting in 2024.
Still, for what it is, an improved go at what came to be one of Capcom’s best new franchises of its generation, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is a step in the right direction, a smart one at that considering the company’s excellent track record with the RE Engine. Although it’s nowhere near the shakeup that were the numerous Resident Evil remakes, Dead Rising’s rejigger shows that there still some life left in the brand.
