Dead Rising 3 review by Tyson

Overall

Buy

     The Dead Rising series have been one of those heavly flawed yet super fun games. Thankfully Dead Rising 3 fixes some of the previous games flaws and continues on with the fun zombie killing gameplay. If you own or plan on getting an Xbox One console then I recommend buying Dead Rising 3..


Gameplay

     Dead Rising 3 follows the stories of the previous games. Another zombie virus outbreak has occured in the city of Los Perdidos and its up to our every day mechanic Nick Ramos to find a way to escape the city and save the day. I found the story to be enjoyable and like the other Dead Rising games there is tons of other characters you meet and they each have their own fun charm to them. Dead Rising still has you doing various missions while progressing the story. These missions will have you going out and finding survivors while helping them out. You may need to clear a group of zombies around them or do more complex things like search for some spray cans or supply them with guns. Once you have helped a survivor many of them will join your group and you can drop them off in various safe houses around the environment or have them tag along with you to help you fight the zombie horde. Thankfully the survivor A.I. is pretty good and I never had problems with them getting stuck around the environment or in groups of zombies like in the previous Dead Rising games.

     The Dead Rising series has always shown that killing zombies is a blast. Just as in the other games you can pick up and use just about everything as a weapon. Something like a wrench or a piece of 2x4 can be a fun way to kill zombies. The weapon crafting system from Dead Rising 2 is also carried over. As you play the game you will find plans that allow you to combine various items together to make stronger and really fun weapons. I liked how you no longer need to find workbenches like in Dead Rising 2 to craft weapons. It is so much nicer to be able to craft stuff on the fly. The only real downside to the weapons is that they still break but that does give you some incentive to always try out new weapons as well.

     In classic Dead Rising fashion you will also have to fight various humans throughout the game. This can be a bit frustrating since many will have guns and can quickly shoot your health away. A few of the humans you fight are also used for the boss battles. These battles can be very challenging but are all fun and unique. There is something weirdly fun about fighting some obese lady riding a jazzy in the all you can eat buffet resturant.

     I noticed that Dead Rising 3 fixed many flaws from the previous games. There is very little load times in this game. Being able to travel around the world without hitting several loading screens is aweosme. I enjoyed how you had much more control of how your character levels up this time. Instead of getting preset abilities or bonuses you now get abilities points as you level up. You can use these points to do things like make certian attacks stronger, get more health, more inventory slots, or various other things. I liked how the story mode is very lax with the timer as well. You can actually go through and do all the side missions and not have to worry about getting screwed out of the story by a strict timer. Still people who love the strict timer experience do have a nightmare difficulty version of the story mode that they can play. So its a win-win for everyone.


Control

     Dead Rising 3 pretty much uses the control scheme of the other games. The analog sticks move your character or the camera and the various buttons will attack or perform actions like jumping or moving through your inventory. The big innovation here is that you can use the kinect voice features at certian points to help you out in the game.


Graphics

     Graphically I am not sure what to think about Dead Rising 3. The game doesn’t necessarily look better then the previous games which is a bit disappointing. It also has some of the problems that the previous games had such as objects phasing in. Though the one area that I feel there is an improvement is the amount of zombies on-screen. There is way more then the previous games and it gets pretty crazy with the zombie count later in the game.


Sound

     Much like the graphics there doesn’t really seem to be a huge improvement here over the previous games. Sure the character voices sound well but the dialog still isn’t the best. Much like the other Dead Rising games you always have some sort of music or noise going on throught the games enivorment which is kind of nice.