Dead Rising 3 review

The successful launch of a console usually comes down a handful of contributing factors, one of the biggest deciders however is usually the games the console launches with, these games give perspective players an opportunity to see what the console could offer them and if your games are underwhelming you might be overlooked. At the current time Microsoft’s Xbox One has not exactly been the biggest console around and part of this is because of the offerings, when the Xbox One first launched we received a handful of games which were already available for the older consoles and a handful of exclusives. Among these was Deadrising 3 an exclusive game delivered to us by Capcom, and this was probably the biggest game on the console and the one that defined the consoles future, or so I believe.

Deadrising 3 is a very neutral game, on one side the game is a shining example of the capabilities of the Xbox One, but on the other it is a mess. The streets are literally littered with Zombies walking the streets in hordes, it is hard to go anywhere without seeing these horrid creatures roaming slowly across the streets and on one side this is just incredible, these capabilities would not have been possible on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. However the dark side of this game is that there is graphical glitches and texture problems scattered all throughout the game, some that are even game breaking and forced me to do many restarts, this is the part that dampens the experience and ruins some of the game.

Capcom’s Deadrising franchise is known for its open world environments, and Deadrising 3 is no different, in fact the city of Los Peridos is the biggest open world in the franchise’s history acting as a wonderful playground for the player to navigate. But in terms of improvements if it could be enhanced Capcom has gone ahead and improved it, weapon crafting is now easier and the game itself has seen substantial improvements which improve the games potential. In story mode an otherwise suffocating death clock has been extended in standard gameplay to allow players to run through the game and attend to side quests without concern. Players looking for the classic suffocating feel need not dismay as the games nightmare mode forces the traditional speedier countdown which is better for those wanting a more tense experience, personally though I think this way of playing is actually better and allows you the chance to enjoy the game properly.

Of course the changes made do allow a little bit more breathing room to actually help the game and provide freedom in all different forms. Attending to side quests is so much easier that you can lose hours without concern for the clock and without even realizing while attending to these quests. This is all actually helped by the excellent map system, the city of Los Peridos is split into four different sections all connected by a decayed highway filled with zombies, this is easy to navigate with the excellent map system which perfectly shows off all paths around as well as additional collectables which fill the world. Side missions are easy to find through this system as well, as missions become available (each for a limited time) their location is added to the world map and it is easy to find them and follow the objective to its location, overall the system is great but some little things are tiresome.

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I appreciate all the side missions that litter the game world, there are so many and these can keep you busy, the problem is that many are not that much fun. Most of the available missions that you tackle optionally are simple fetch quests that task you with going and killing a zombie to get something for somebody or going and finding a specific item, fetch quests are just tiresome and many these missions felt uninspired and made the side missions dull, they may be easy to get to but they are not much fun. The alternate side to these is the Psycho missions which task you with going to a location to investigate and force you to fight a person who has gone completely mental, these missions at least were enjoyable albeit a bit disturbing at times.

One of the things I really loved about Deadrising 3 was the weaponry, on the surface things seem pretty simplistic, walk into a room, grab random object, look there’s a zombie hit it, and in part this is a pretty accurate reading to the game especially when you can waste a lot of time walking into crowds of zombies and fighting with a swordfish or other random item. However things extend a whole lot further with the games heavy reliance on combination weaponry, throughout the game you can find blueprints all of which offer new opportunities for random weapon combinations. These range from simplistic yet cool, to simply bizarre, to just plain awesome, I am not a huge fan of the general crafting systems of games so finding so much love for this was an honest and much welcomed surprise.

The best part is just how simplistic the whole system is, if you have the required pieces in your inventory you can simply click a button a handful of times and in seconds you will have a brand new really powerful weapon. There are so many cool weapons that can be made in Deadrising 3 and all can be found and built from simply running into a random building and collecting these random items. Take a microwave and a motorbike engine and you can create some kind of beam attack, or grab a katana and a spear and you create the awesome grim reaper weapon, there are so many great options and this is just two examples.

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Taking these creations and using them in combat is so very satisfying, grabbing a combined weapon you can run into crowds of zombies and quickly see your kill combo build as you progress, seeing your combo build to exceed three hundred is actually easy and all this adds to your overall experience point gain. Durability is a major factor within the game and each weapon only lasts so long breaking with prolonged use, often this means you have to be careful before ploughing through a horde of zombies as I discovered many times over when my weapons would break in the middle of a crowd. Of course the loss of good weapons is softened quite a bit with the addition of weapons lockers which can be found across many of the games safe houses, in these you can get any weapon or item you have ever used and even get straightforward combination weapons that you have built, at times this came in handy but in another way this set back the need to be resourceful on some occasions as my items were always available. However, this does make it easier to build up those zombie kill scores with satisfying pieces of weaponry I grew to love. Luckily creating items is easy, you can find anything as you go along and rather than have to find a special table you can just build on the go which I found to be really handy.

Much like weapons you can also build vehicles in the same way, there are some cool vehicles in the combination as well. Certain cars you find in the world can be combined to create a brand new vehicle powerhouse, this can be performed within a garage or just out in the world and is all handled by simply parking two combination cars next to one another. There are some really cool death machines that are created with my personal favorite being a simple combination of a standard sedan and a muscle car, this fires off some kind of weapon that massacres zombies that are unfortunate enough to be in its path which is well and truly awesome.

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I loved the skill tree offered to me in Deadrising 3, at its core the skill system is quite simplistic you have your standard range of different points from health to combat, you can adjust your character as you see fit and develop yourself to your own specifications which is something we were unable to do in past games in the series. It is nothing special when compared to the offerings of other games but the system was manageable and free, meaning I was playing to my specifications not the games.

There is story found through the games story mode which I think is worth mentioning and this is strictly because of how bland it is, we play as Nick Ramos a mechanic stuck in Los Peridos after the outbreak. Through the game we work to try and free ourselves from the city by completing pretty dull missions, and fighting numerous bosses, my problem with this overall is that the game in part needs the story to push us forward but I never cared less about the characters, and I was just bored with the story. Deadrising 3 is lucky to have the gameplay to back it up.

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Deadrising 3 is certainly an interesting game and I love running into hordes of zombies with my custom weapon and seeing my death count rise, my problem however is that this thrill slowly wears off, sure it’s fun but I grew tired the longer I played this. This game is worth playing and certainly provides enough reason to own a console but with greater reasoning considered Deadrising 3 is really a small zombified fish lost in a rather large pond. There is a good game here with many great ideas but this is just one example of why the Xbox One has not been quite so popular as it should have been, it’s a game that pretty much had a consoles original fate weighing it down and was left unpolished.

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