Closing out a decade of Dead Rising, the fourth and final entry in the series is a flickering candle, a sputtering flame compared to the galactic supernova that was its forefather. The wick burns dimly, a slow glow fading from an empty room; Dead Rising’s found-family, Capcom Vancouver, returned to ash with the ill-received launch of Dead Rising 4, leaving the neglected to quietly parish among the ruins. The black sheep rests, each prolonged second snuffing out the light, a foregone conclusion coming to fruition. From Frank, to Chuck, to Nick, all pawns in the dawn of the dead, we turn our sights to the final era of Frank West. It comes to this. The beginning and the end, Capcom’s Memento Mori of the Dead. The eternal end of Dead Rising.
Inside that decrepit tomb, sheltered from the wages of perpetuity, you lie. Tattered and ragged, the skin stretched thin over creaking bones, I’m struck with pangs of reminiscence. You’re Frank West, but not the one I know. You’re Willamette, but one from a different world. You’re "Dead Rising", but not one I recognize. Each moment with you is a recollection of better days, and for that, I have nothing but contempt for you. The mechanisms beneath have faltered, the smile has decayed, toothless and rotten, your very self torn away, stripped clean from the hollow skeleton I stare at.
But as much as I’ve been told to hate you, to despise this so-called resting place, I can’t force myself to do so. Engulfed in the soft glow of enmity, my experience with you was not moments of anger, misery, or malice. Locking eyes with the evanescent embers, my goal was clear: Acceptance, in the face of loathing. Embracing the light that was in my life, and not the shallow hollowness in front of me. And most of all, letting sleeping ghosts rest peacefully. Once, I would look upon you, a ray of cosmic brilliance piercing my retinas, a direct concentration of everything I loved and would come to love, a burning beam of sunlight. Now, the flame has died, smoke rising from an ashen stem. Surrounded by encroaching darkness, I can finally bury my memories of you, a peace deserved but long-delayed.
Minutes pass, hours, and now weeks. Every instance apart stings, a double-sided blade dividing my being; You killed the heart of a man I found myself endeared to, but would I have been endeared if not for you in the first place? You stole the essence of time from me, but would I have missed it without you showing the importance of the time I have? You gave me a universe of options and opportunity, but could I ever appreciate it after you taught me to thrive within limitations? Away from it all, I’ve come to accept that you, the creature known as Dead Rising, could never be what I need. Under the ocean sands, your body resides, a forbidden mistake upon the world's unforgiving gaze. But sitting on the shore, I will never bring myself to hate you, not as is so easily done by those near and dear to me. For your missteps, every half-cocked misfire that led me to this point, you showed me something that will stick with me until my dying breath. For that, I thank you. And with that, I need to move on.
Nostalgia’s high tide engulfs the rubble, the seafoam of loss eating into bygone shores. The waves have drowned the memories I made, but as I peer over the crystalline beaches, the deep washes over your grave. For as often as you are buried below the sand, an endless repetition of undying death, I still am drawn in by your ghost, pulled in by the beloved song of Dead Rising. But my love, desecrated as it is, can only fall victim to the same charms so many times.
You are beyond recall, buried in the abyssal plain… and for what it’s worth, I’m at peace.
Inside that decrepit tomb, sheltered from the wages of perpetuity, you lie. Tattered and ragged, the skin stretched thin over creaking bones, I’m struck with pangs of reminiscence. You’re Frank West, but not the one I know. You’re Willamette, but one from a different world. You’re "Dead Rising", but not one I recognize. Each moment with you is a recollection of better days, and for that, I have nothing but contempt for you. The mechanisms beneath have faltered, the smile has decayed, toothless and rotten, your very self torn away, stripped clean from the hollow skeleton I stare at.
But as much as I’ve been told to hate you, to despise this so-called resting place, I can’t force myself to do so. Engulfed in the soft glow of enmity, my experience with you was not moments of anger, misery, or malice. Locking eyes with the evanescent embers, my goal was clear: Acceptance, in the face of loathing. Embracing the light that was in my life, and not the shallow hollowness in front of me. And most of all, letting sleeping ghosts rest peacefully. Once, I would look upon you, a ray of cosmic brilliance piercing my retinas, a direct concentration of everything I loved and would come to love, a burning beam of sunlight. Now, the flame has died, smoke rising from an ashen stem. Surrounded by encroaching darkness, I can finally bury my memories of you, a peace deserved but long-delayed.
Minutes pass, hours, and now weeks. Every instance apart stings, a double-sided blade dividing my being; You killed the heart of a man I found myself endeared to, but would I have been endeared if not for you in the first place? You stole the essence of time from me, but would I have missed it without you showing the importance of the time I have? You gave me a universe of options and opportunity, but could I ever appreciate it after you taught me to thrive within limitations? Away from it all, I’ve come to accept that you, the creature known as Dead Rising, could never be what I need. Under the ocean sands, your body resides, a forbidden mistake upon the world's unforgiving gaze. But sitting on the shore, I will never bring myself to hate you, not as is so easily done by those near and dear to me. For your missteps, every half-cocked misfire that led me to this point, you showed me something that will stick with me until my dying breath. For that, I thank you. And with that, I need to move on.
Nostalgia’s high tide engulfs the rubble, the seafoam of loss eating into bygone shores. The waves have drowned the memories I made, but as I peer over the crystalline beaches, the deep washes over your grave. For as often as you are buried below the sand, an endless repetition of undying death, I still am drawn in by your ghost, pulled in by the beloved song of Dead Rising. But my love, desecrated as it is, can only fall victim to the same charms so many times.
You are beyond recall, buried in the abyssal plain… and for what it’s worth, I’m at peace.
Prince Phillip has more soul than this game
I've softened up on this enough to admit that it's playable (the extent of good things I have to say) but I still don't know what was going on here.
Dead Rising was never about playing Dynasty Warriors with zombies for me and that seems to have been the main takeaway. Everything else is either shallow or missing. It's a very hollow experience.
If you wanted a more laid back (no timer) or open world styled Dead Rising game Dead Rising 3 is much better and is right there. Play that instead. If it isn't cutting it for you, Dead Rising just might not be for you and I suggest going to play an actually good zombie game and not this.
Dead Rising was never about playing Dynasty Warriors with zombies for me and that seems to have been the main takeaway. Everything else is either shallow or missing. It's a very hollow experience.
If you wanted a more laid back (no timer) or open world styled Dead Rising game Dead Rising 3 is much better and is right there. Play that instead. If it isn't cutting it for you, Dead Rising just might not be for you and I suggest going to play an actually good zombie game and not this.
I don't want to talk about it
Dead Rising 4 is pretty much my Devil May Cry 2. I hate this game. As someone who classifies himself as a fan of Dead Rising, this game pretty much took away almost everything that made the series enjoyable. I get they wanted to make the game beginner friendly and try to draw in new people, but this was not the way to do it. It's glitchy, unfunny, and they ruined Frank West and everything that made the series fun to begin with. This game will be the reason why we won't be seeing Dead Rising again in years, if not at all. The only reason why this isn't half a star is because I kinda like the Christmas theme, and the exo suit is kind of cool.
I get what happened, how this was made in so little time and the staff knew it was going to suck, how It used assets of one other (or more than one) cancelled games, and how the talented staff left before or during the development.
But with that being said, this is the WORST, they butchered Frank's character, replaced the voice actor and made him complete Mcdoofus. The gameplay is terrible, the new UI is awful, killing zombies here feels the most unresponsive of the entire franchise, the batman vision investigation is a completely idiotic new mechanic, the combo weapons don't have animations and you have to go through menus now instead of easy it was in Dead Rising 3.
There's many, many more problems but overall, don't bother even testing out this game.
But with that being said, this is the WORST, they butchered Frank's character, replaced the voice actor and made him complete Mcdoofus. The gameplay is terrible, the new UI is awful, killing zombies here feels the most unresponsive of the entire franchise, the batman vision investigation is a completely idiotic new mechanic, the combo weapons don't have animations and you have to go through menus now instead of easy it was in Dead Rising 3.
There's many, many more problems but overall, don't bother even testing out this game.
Had zero charm but it's still a pretty fun zombie-killing sandbox.
I'm surprised Capcom hasn't killed Resident Evil
Dead Rising 5
Dead Rising 5
this frank didn't cover wars
Não sei a que a ponto a Capcom tinha de expectativa ou ganância de trazer um jogo como esse, simplesmente tudo é mau executado.
Um remake do primeiro jogo talvez traga algum sentido pra essa franquia
Um remake do primeiro jogo talvez traga algum sentido pra essa franquia
Gonna be honest the gameplay isn't bad but the MCUfication of Frank West, The over reliance on the silly humor and the stupid exo suits ruin it. Obama hated this game
Dead Rising 4? More like... Dead Rising Bor-ing!
Christmas!
Easily the worst Dead Rising i have ever played, a LOT of bugs, terrible story and characters.
This review contains spoilers
True ending is locked behind DLC.
It's finally done..
I find it so comically ironic that this game takes place near Christmas, a time of capitalistic soul sucking. Where sales and profit are at the utmost high and workers are treated like shit, devilishly masking itself under the innocence of child-like Christmas Santa Claus and snow flurry wonder. Dead Rising 4 could not be anymore soulless, just a pure husk of what once was. And it wasn’t even planned to be the last of the last, since this game’s horrible reception wasn’t even enough to stop Capcom Vancouver from continuing on like nothing had happened. Apparently not by their own volition, but Papa Capcom's instead. That is, until they were ended.
I really don’t have any anecdote to express in the same sentiment as my last review of Dead Rising. Like a lot of people who despise this game, I am just a big fan of the original game who watched as the series was slowly tortured to death by the studio it was shoved off into the arms of. I’m trying to put a word on how I feel, but can’t really conjure it up in my brain. I don’t think that bitterness is the right one. I think that if I had played it back when it came out in 2016, instead of avoiding it, I’d be angry I guess. But, now it’s 2024 so I suppose overall pathetic disappointment is leaning more towards the right answer. I’m just… so disappointed, my son.
There is a lot that I find wrong with this game, so bear with me. Dead Rising 4 fails at being a Dead Rising game and also fails at being a good game. I will try to get more into the former part later as it reaches into narrative territory, but if you remove what would be considered the staples of a Dead Rising game from Dead Rising, then all that you’re left with is another zombie game. And while some zombie games are pretty fun, this one is not. I want to try my absolute best to not compare this one with the previous iterations, but they’ve made it impossible to do so by turning Dead Rising 4 into “fan service”, which is weird calling it that since it might as well have served fans a plate of dogshit for dinner instead. I tried very hard to get through this without raising an eyebrow and I was almost successful through the prologue but that was it. “Frank West” is back as the protagonist of this game, although voiced by a completely different person for seemingly no reason at all. I was willing to swallow that pill and put it aside, but as soon as the game actually opened up and “Frank” was standing in what was considered the mall’s FOOD COURT?? They completely lost me. Immediately.
I can’t find a good picture of it, but this aspect of the game is what made me despise the direction Capcom Vancouver went in for this series. The Food Court of this damn mall is like… an Aztec?? Amazonian Forest replication with all these winding Planet Zoo ass elevated pathways and movie studio quality set pieces that only exist to look nice with zero function. Sir, this is a mall in Colorado. The Food Court alone, in this game, is the size of a fucking city. It’s a layout that is not only confusing to look at, but to traverse as well. Now put a bunch of zombies in it and you’re in for a really annoying time. This layout bleeds into the rest of the mall as well, as this game claims that Willamette mall was rebuilt into a megaplex after the events of the first game. Now the whole place is broken up into themed “towns”, like medieval and Tokyo. This is for completely no reason at all, other than having cool things to look at, but at the end of the day it doesn’t even matter because you’re only in the mall for 5 minutes before being thrown out into the open world that is the actual town of Willamette in Dead Rising 3 style map layout. The initial charm of the setting of the first game came from how tightly built the map layout of Willamette mall was. It was small, but there was always something to do, there were always things to find, and it was easy to memorize where things were and how to get there. There was a guiding arrow to point you in the right direction of the scoops, but you master the layout so quickly in that game that you end up not needing it. Here, you have to open the map just to turn a fucking corner down the street, with an ugly mini-map covering the corner of the game with waypoints that tell you distance. That distance being 1,000 yards, so get walking, idiot. It’s not good. It was already terrible in Dead Rising 3, and they somehow made it even worse in this game. News flash game executives, bigger is not always better!! Please stop!!!
There’s no point in destroying the map to look cooler, or larger, just for it to have nothing in it. There’s no reason to explore in this game aside from finding more dumbass combo weapon recipes, which are barely hidden in the first place. You can literally just purchase the ability for them to appear on your map and then grab them like a checklist, or like a chore (a recurring theme for this game). The fun of Dead Rising came from rewarding the player for their initiative to explore the area and find new ways to kill the enemies with. You weren’t finding useless garbage just made for achievement hunting back then, you were finding better weapons, hidden food items, and survivors that turned into leveling you up after escort. The magic of that is just completely lost here when the rewards are just Steam Trophies and already built combo weapons that break as quickly as you pick them up. There are no survivors in this game, technically, and there aren’t any missions aside from the linear main story content. Survivors are now relegated to Red Dead Redemption style world events where it’s just some randomly generated schmuck getting pounded by zombies until you rescue them, then dropping a random combo weapon and running away, never to be seen again. They no longer have personalities or quests. They are nothing but very ugly. Everyone, including “Frank”, looks like moldy cheese in this crusty ass game. Briefly too, there are no psychopaths in this game as well, those who were considered to be the bosses of these games. Again, they’re “here” but the lights are on and nobody is home. No cutscene to introduce them, no special battle mechanics or music, no real spotlight for them to shine. They’re just here with their minions, and get snuffed out as swiftly as candle light. Ironic, isn’t it?
Combo weapons are the actual bane of my existence. They weren’t initially this egregious, but were an ability given to Chuck Greene in a similar vein to Frank’s photographic abilities that were unique to him. He was a guy who had already seen some shit before the Fortune City outbreak and was intuitive enough to connect his knowledge of motocross with engineering makeshift weapons to fight with. They then expanded on it by making Nick Ramos a literal car mechanic to justify that skill now being used on vehicles, which is stupid but still made some semblance of sense. Frank West does not have the ability to do this and never has. You could argue that Off the Record Frank West can, but Off the Record is a non-canon alternate universe. He should not have the ability or want to hot glue grenades onto pitchforks, or combine a shopping cart into a go-kart with fucking laser beams. It’s all just stupid! They trivialize the shit out of these games without the work to obtain them. It gave them the excuse to just plaster combo weapons all over the place and overwrite what made the original game so fascinating. In this game, combo weapons are not an outlier, they are the norm. It’s no longer about using what you can to survive, it’s all about using annoying particle effects and flashy execution animations that drop the frame rate and pop the audio. It’s been overhauled into an action game where the enemies parry you like Dark Souls while you dodge roll your way around the arena. The action takes way more a precedent now than everything else that made Dead Rising cool.
The zombies in this game act like sand bags and it’s aggravating. Not only are there so many more, but “Frank” isn’t able to push through them easily. It’s like as soon as their hitboxes collide, he’s walled into a stun and stopped in his tracks first. Both them and the hostile humans are also so annoyingly tanky as well, either in their defense or just the sheer amount of health they have. It takes god damn forever to kill them in this game and therefore your inventory suffers because of it. The weapons break more often than they ever have, leaving you empty handed way too much. The normal items no longer seem to deal any damage, only the combo ones. So either make combo weapons on the fly or get fucking pummeled to death, I guess. That's if the game would even let me. Sometimes I would open the crafting menu and "Frank" would just stand there frozen, and I'd have to do gymnastics to get out of the menu for it. I hate it. I think that they knew this too, because the really shitty boss fights in this game have items and food littered around the floor all over the place, knowing that your shit would be busted upon walking into it. These fights are the most shallow, boring, pot shot back and forth bullshit you’ve seen in 100 games before this one and it doesn’t even try to re-invent it. Remember when you had to quickly maneuver yourself around the butchered cows that Larry left hanging up so that he wouldn’t immediately charge and overpower you? Or how Cliff would use his makeshift tunnels to avoid your attacks? Well, here you have to use a gun to lower the boss’s health enough to coax him into the arena where you can just slice him with the one of 45 battle axes they left near your feet. That boss's name by the way? He’s just called “Lieutenant”. Riveting stuff, guys.
Don’t even get me started on the exo suits. Yeah, because what Dead Rising needed were these over the top and flashy exo suit armor sets that “Frank” puts on to deal AoE damage. You find them all over the place with virtually zero explanation. Some of the enemies and bosses wear them as well, like they’re the latest fashion. I just want to find the literal one person who probably thought this was cool and gently ask them… why? In most instances you put them on for like 5 seconds and then after the objective, the cutscenes just tear it off of you. It’s all so pointless, so bland. It’s so stupid. They gutted everything that makes these games actually fun and put a shiny chrome coating over it to such an unrecognizable degree. They even went and overhauled the perfectly fine inventory mechanics and greased up their skill tree they crammed into the game from Dead Rising 3. A huge gripe of mine for this game was that they made going through your inventory a huge pain in the ass for seemingly no reason? Before you had a limited amount of slots, but the slots were always visible. You could always see what was in your inventory very clearly, and could sift through it quickly by using the controller bumpers. Now? You have to hold the D-Pad, then sort through 3 different inventories to select which weapon you want to use. Sure, they give you more slots to work with, but they’re divided into thirds and you can only throw items that are considered “throwable” meaning that dropping items is also a pain in the ass. You can only carry 2 food items at a time until you upgrade the ability to carry more. It’s just a terrible design for the sake of being different and makes inventory management a complete nightmare. I don’t know what they were thinking when they decided to change this.
Overall, this is just not Dead Rising. Just because the title of the game indicates otherwise and they dragged Frank back to Willamette, does not make a Dead Rising game. It’s just a terrible zombie game with a husk of the man that just says “I’ve covered wars, ya know?” like it’s one of those rage comic memes you made when you were 12 and tried to forget about. This character is not Frank West, and it’s not just the change in voice acting that showcases that. This is a completely different person and he’s annoying as shit. I talked a lot more about Frank West as a character in my Dead Rising 1 review, but he isn't this MCU, “Erm, well THAT just happened!!” annoying shithead that this game claims him to be. He never shuts the fuck up!! Capcom Vancouver just does not know Frank West and should have never had the rights to write whatever fanfiction they wanted to about him. He’s either rendered to be a running fat joke or this obnoxious, lippy asshole that has to commentate on everything around him. Not to mention, the other terrible characters in this game seem to keep suggesting that Frank West has always been this money hungry, fame seeking, terrible human and I just do not buy it. Frank’s initial motivation for entering Willamette in the first game was to put his neck on the line to find a big scoop that could have propelled him into making a name for himself, but becomes much more empathetic to the cause after hearing Isabela out, which drove him to reporting the outbreak. You know, so that the US government would be held responsible for the irresponsible war crimes they committed and covered up?? He didn’t just do that because it would make him money, it could have quite literally gotten him killed. He cared! The suggestion that he was always out for fame and money just trashes this arc he went on that showed the actual human side of his character. He is not a human in this game, he is an unfunny guy who’s reading a script that would rival Forspoken.
Now let’s put Frank out of his misery finally. There are other characters in this game, but I would use that term very lightly. The combo weapon designs in this game have more personality designed into them than the wooden cast of supporting characters you meet. You have Vick Chu, who is Frank’s student and that’s really all you get to know about her. You’re told that they have a mentor/student relationship, but the way that Vick screams and berates “Frank” in this game leads us to believe that they’re more like a surrogate father/daughter type of deal and it’s completely un-fucking-earned. She disappears for 95% of the game and there’s no establishing scenes that showcase their relationship aside from dialogue. So, when Vick comes out of left field reaming “Frank” about how she disagrees with his motivations in the plot, she just comes across as this huge gigantic asshole. Seriously, what the hell is Vick’s problem? LMAO. You can see that they were trying to somehow shoehorn her into being Frank’s successor, but it’s so painful to watch because she’s the most unlikable person in the whole game. Calder is a nobody character who we know nothing about, that gets randomly upgraded to supervillain half way through the plot. He barely has any lines and doesn’t integrate well with the story progression. He virtually has nothing to do with it at all. Hammond and her group of survivors have little to say and add nothing, but have a conflict shoved down your throat in Frank Rising that makes you feel more confused than anything else. And who is Brad? The only Brad I know of is Brad Garrison. They seriously couldn’t think of a different name for this pointless, useless character? They’re all just horrible, unlikable, and unfunny “characters” so why should the player give any shit about what happens to any of them?
I’ve been guilty of saying this myself, but there’s this sentiment that people “don’t play Dead Rising games for the plot” and I find that to be a reductive way of ignoring criticism after having played this game. Dead Rising as a series does have an interconnecting plot that they chose to continue on their own terms. Those plots range from goofy to pretty mediocre, with some satirical glimpses into US politics. While those glimpses exist to move the story along, they don’t really have anything that serious to say at the end of the day. It’s just that the gameplay mechanics tend to carry the weight of this series. When you remove all of the fun mechanics out of Dead Rising, you are left with the story. Dead Rising 4 not only has terrible gameplay mechanics, but it also has a terrible, terrible story. The events set up in the first two games at least made narrative sense and didn’t introduce plot inconsistencies anyone paying even the smallest bit of attention could point out.
I am genuinely wondering if anyone in the remaining shambles at Capcom Vancouver even played Dead Rising 1 before getting their hands on this series, because Dead Rising 3 already had some questionable revisionist decisions that meddled a bit with the aftermath of the events of the initial Willamette outbreak. I wouldn’t call it retconning, but they definitely did some unneeded meddling in the lore of this series that just raises more questions than answers and completely pisses on the mystery of the Santa Cabeza cover-ups that were already set in place. We did not need any further explanation of what happened in Santa Cabeza or why, at all, but they decided to bring back Dr. Barnaby’s corpse through the use of recorded testimonies he had made before his death 16 years ago. Ohhhhhh no guys, get it? Dr. Barnaby was actually playing 5-D Chess the whole time and was 15 steps ahead of everyone else!! Ohhh, noo he was actually spoilering his spoiler in a spoiler the whole time. Ohhh!!! Shut the FUCK up, no, he was not LOL. I really just despise when long-standing series feel the need to add into their mysteries. What’s the point of a mystery if you’re just gonna yap and explain away everything about it later? You’re giving away so much information that the whole thing just falls through your hands like sand. The more you add, the more inconsistencies there are to question. This just devalues Dr. Barnaby’s role in the first game for, again, no reason other than they wanted to. It just sucks.
And guess what, the ending isn’t even included into the game. It’s paid for DLC that adds an extra hour of content and a terrible ending. When I asked for a timer in my Dead Rising game, this is not what I meant. They give you a literal hour and a half to complete this content and for whatever reason, if you die, the timer doesn’t reset back to the point it was at upon Game Over. For some reason, there are challenges you have to do to get the good ending of this DLC, and you have to do all of them. There’s really no explanation for this. If you look at it in hindsight, the lack of challenge wins does not have any connection to what happens, it’s just if you don’t win them all, you get the bad ending. The distance this DLC makes you traverse on foot eats up most of that timer, meaning that any death is basically a loss for the player and results in the bad ending. However, the bad ending results in a different fate for characters you probably do not give two shits about, so who even cares anyways? Then it ends abruptly without any closure or follow-up. Cool use of $10, huh?
And after all of that, like a whimpering dog in the backyard, Capcom Vancouver was finally put out of their misery, shuddering their doors and never to work on these games again. (Very cool of you, Capcom Japan.) They wanted to bring Frank West back into their own game and play dress up with him under the guise of “bringing the games back to their roots” to a fanbase that was desperate for Dead Rising to be fun again. Instead they revised the shit out of the story, painted Christmas lights all over it, gutted all of the mechanics, made it wildly unfun and unimaginative, added mini-golf mode to try to extinguish the fires they made, and then DIED. It's not abundantly clear really who's fault laid where in the developmental mess of this game. It was set up to fail from the get go, with Capcom Japan not helping them in virtually anyway at all. There's several whisperings in the wind regarding how it wasn't meant to be a Dead Rising game in the first place and that obviously shows, but either way, we got this shit. There were people who told me that maybe I’d find something in it I liked, but that just did not happen. It was a sinking ship before it even left the dock. And it’s unfortunately still considered canon until Capcom HQ themselves decide to reboot this series, if that even happens. It’s definitely for the best that this series died when it did and it’s not a triumphant “finally” or even a sigh of relief. It’s just a disappointed shrug and life goes on. I didn't even get any catharsis out of writing this review like I do with some other 1 star games I've written about. How unfortunate.
I find it so comically ironic that this game takes place near Christmas, a time of capitalistic soul sucking. Where sales and profit are at the utmost high and workers are treated like shit, devilishly masking itself under the innocence of child-like Christmas Santa Claus and snow flurry wonder. Dead Rising 4 could not be anymore soulless, just a pure husk of what once was. And it wasn’t even planned to be the last of the last, since this game’s horrible reception wasn’t even enough to stop Capcom Vancouver from continuing on like nothing had happened. Apparently not by their own volition, but Papa Capcom's instead. That is, until they were ended.
I really don’t have any anecdote to express in the same sentiment as my last review of Dead Rising. Like a lot of people who despise this game, I am just a big fan of the original game who watched as the series was slowly tortured to death by the studio it was shoved off into the arms of. I’m trying to put a word on how I feel, but can’t really conjure it up in my brain. I don’t think that bitterness is the right one. I think that if I had played it back when it came out in 2016, instead of avoiding it, I’d be angry I guess. But, now it’s 2024 so I suppose overall pathetic disappointment is leaning more towards the right answer. I’m just… so disappointed, my son.
There is a lot that I find wrong with this game, so bear with me. Dead Rising 4 fails at being a Dead Rising game and also fails at being a good game. I will try to get more into the former part later as it reaches into narrative territory, but if you remove what would be considered the staples of a Dead Rising game from Dead Rising, then all that you’re left with is another zombie game. And while some zombie games are pretty fun, this one is not. I want to try my absolute best to not compare this one with the previous iterations, but they’ve made it impossible to do so by turning Dead Rising 4 into “fan service”, which is weird calling it that since it might as well have served fans a plate of dogshit for dinner instead. I tried very hard to get through this without raising an eyebrow and I was almost successful through the prologue but that was it. “Frank West” is back as the protagonist of this game, although voiced by a completely different person for seemingly no reason at all. I was willing to swallow that pill and put it aside, but as soon as the game actually opened up and “Frank” was standing in what was considered the mall’s FOOD COURT?? They completely lost me. Immediately.
I can’t find a good picture of it, but this aspect of the game is what made me despise the direction Capcom Vancouver went in for this series. The Food Court of this damn mall is like… an Aztec?? Amazonian Forest replication with all these winding Planet Zoo ass elevated pathways and movie studio quality set pieces that only exist to look nice with zero function. Sir, this is a mall in Colorado. The Food Court alone, in this game, is the size of a fucking city. It’s a layout that is not only confusing to look at, but to traverse as well. Now put a bunch of zombies in it and you’re in for a really annoying time. This layout bleeds into the rest of the mall as well, as this game claims that Willamette mall was rebuilt into a megaplex after the events of the first game. Now the whole place is broken up into themed “towns”, like medieval and Tokyo. This is for completely no reason at all, other than having cool things to look at, but at the end of the day it doesn’t even matter because you’re only in the mall for 5 minutes before being thrown out into the open world that is the actual town of Willamette in Dead Rising 3 style map layout. The initial charm of the setting of the first game came from how tightly built the map layout of Willamette mall was. It was small, but there was always something to do, there were always things to find, and it was easy to memorize where things were and how to get there. There was a guiding arrow to point you in the right direction of the scoops, but you master the layout so quickly in that game that you end up not needing it. Here, you have to open the map just to turn a fucking corner down the street, with an ugly mini-map covering the corner of the game with waypoints that tell you distance. That distance being 1,000 yards, so get walking, idiot. It’s not good. It was already terrible in Dead Rising 3, and they somehow made it even worse in this game. News flash game executives, bigger is not always better!! Please stop!!!
There’s no point in destroying the map to look cooler, or larger, just for it to have nothing in it. There’s no reason to explore in this game aside from finding more dumbass combo weapon recipes, which are barely hidden in the first place. You can literally just purchase the ability for them to appear on your map and then grab them like a checklist, or like a chore (a recurring theme for this game). The fun of Dead Rising came from rewarding the player for their initiative to explore the area and find new ways to kill the enemies with. You weren’t finding useless garbage just made for achievement hunting back then, you were finding better weapons, hidden food items, and survivors that turned into leveling you up after escort. The magic of that is just completely lost here when the rewards are just Steam Trophies and already built combo weapons that break as quickly as you pick them up. There are no survivors in this game, technically, and there aren’t any missions aside from the linear main story content. Survivors are now relegated to Red Dead Redemption style world events where it’s just some randomly generated schmuck getting pounded by zombies until you rescue them, then dropping a random combo weapon and running away, never to be seen again. They no longer have personalities or quests. They are nothing but very ugly. Everyone, including “Frank”, looks like moldy cheese in this crusty ass game. Briefly too, there are no psychopaths in this game as well, those who were considered to be the bosses of these games. Again, they’re “here” but the lights are on and nobody is home. No cutscene to introduce them, no special battle mechanics or music, no real spotlight for them to shine. They’re just here with their minions, and get snuffed out as swiftly as candle light. Ironic, isn’t it?
Combo weapons are the actual bane of my existence. They weren’t initially this egregious, but were an ability given to Chuck Greene in a similar vein to Frank’s photographic abilities that were unique to him. He was a guy who had already seen some shit before the Fortune City outbreak and was intuitive enough to connect his knowledge of motocross with engineering makeshift weapons to fight with. They then expanded on it by making Nick Ramos a literal car mechanic to justify that skill now being used on vehicles, which is stupid but still made some semblance of sense. Frank West does not have the ability to do this and never has. You could argue that Off the Record Frank West can, but Off the Record is a non-canon alternate universe. He should not have the ability or want to hot glue grenades onto pitchforks, or combine a shopping cart into a go-kart with fucking laser beams. It’s all just stupid! They trivialize the shit out of these games without the work to obtain them. It gave them the excuse to just plaster combo weapons all over the place and overwrite what made the original game so fascinating. In this game, combo weapons are not an outlier, they are the norm. It’s no longer about using what you can to survive, it’s all about using annoying particle effects and flashy execution animations that drop the frame rate and pop the audio. It’s been overhauled into an action game where the enemies parry you like Dark Souls while you dodge roll your way around the arena. The action takes way more a precedent now than everything else that made Dead Rising cool.
The zombies in this game act like sand bags and it’s aggravating. Not only are there so many more, but “Frank” isn’t able to push through them easily. It’s like as soon as their hitboxes collide, he’s walled into a stun and stopped in his tracks first. Both them and the hostile humans are also so annoyingly tanky as well, either in their defense or just the sheer amount of health they have. It takes god damn forever to kill them in this game and therefore your inventory suffers because of it. The weapons break more often than they ever have, leaving you empty handed way too much. The normal items no longer seem to deal any damage, only the combo ones. So either make combo weapons on the fly or get fucking pummeled to death, I guess. That's if the game would even let me. Sometimes I would open the crafting menu and "Frank" would just stand there frozen, and I'd have to do gymnastics to get out of the menu for it. I hate it. I think that they knew this too, because the really shitty boss fights in this game have items and food littered around the floor all over the place, knowing that your shit would be busted upon walking into it. These fights are the most shallow, boring, pot shot back and forth bullshit you’ve seen in 100 games before this one and it doesn’t even try to re-invent it. Remember when you had to quickly maneuver yourself around the butchered cows that Larry left hanging up so that he wouldn’t immediately charge and overpower you? Or how Cliff would use his makeshift tunnels to avoid your attacks? Well, here you have to use a gun to lower the boss’s health enough to coax him into the arena where you can just slice him with the one of 45 battle axes they left near your feet. That boss's name by the way? He’s just called “Lieutenant”. Riveting stuff, guys.
Don’t even get me started on the exo suits. Yeah, because what Dead Rising needed were these over the top and flashy exo suit armor sets that “Frank” puts on to deal AoE damage. You find them all over the place with virtually zero explanation. Some of the enemies and bosses wear them as well, like they’re the latest fashion. I just want to find the literal one person who probably thought this was cool and gently ask them… why? In most instances you put them on for like 5 seconds and then after the objective, the cutscenes just tear it off of you. It’s all so pointless, so bland. It’s so stupid. They gutted everything that makes these games actually fun and put a shiny chrome coating over it to such an unrecognizable degree. They even went and overhauled the perfectly fine inventory mechanics and greased up their skill tree they crammed into the game from Dead Rising 3. A huge gripe of mine for this game was that they made going through your inventory a huge pain in the ass for seemingly no reason? Before you had a limited amount of slots, but the slots were always visible. You could always see what was in your inventory very clearly, and could sift through it quickly by using the controller bumpers. Now? You have to hold the D-Pad, then sort through 3 different inventories to select which weapon you want to use. Sure, they give you more slots to work with, but they’re divided into thirds and you can only throw items that are considered “throwable” meaning that dropping items is also a pain in the ass. You can only carry 2 food items at a time until you upgrade the ability to carry more. It’s just a terrible design for the sake of being different and makes inventory management a complete nightmare. I don’t know what they were thinking when they decided to change this.
Overall, this is just not Dead Rising. Just because the title of the game indicates otherwise and they dragged Frank back to Willamette, does not make a Dead Rising game. It’s just a terrible zombie game with a husk of the man that just says “I’ve covered wars, ya know?” like it’s one of those rage comic memes you made when you were 12 and tried to forget about. This character is not Frank West, and it’s not just the change in voice acting that showcases that. This is a completely different person and he’s annoying as shit. I talked a lot more about Frank West as a character in my Dead Rising 1 review, but he isn't this MCU, “Erm, well THAT just happened!!” annoying shithead that this game claims him to be. He never shuts the fuck up!! Capcom Vancouver just does not know Frank West and should have never had the rights to write whatever fanfiction they wanted to about him. He’s either rendered to be a running fat joke or this obnoxious, lippy asshole that has to commentate on everything around him. Not to mention, the other terrible characters in this game seem to keep suggesting that Frank West has always been this money hungry, fame seeking, terrible human and I just do not buy it. Frank’s initial motivation for entering Willamette in the first game was to put his neck on the line to find a big scoop that could have propelled him into making a name for himself, but becomes much more empathetic to the cause after hearing Isabela out, which drove him to reporting the outbreak. You know, so that the US government would be held responsible for the irresponsible war crimes they committed and covered up?? He didn’t just do that because it would make him money, it could have quite literally gotten him killed. He cared! The suggestion that he was always out for fame and money just trashes this arc he went on that showed the actual human side of his character. He is not a human in this game, he is an unfunny guy who’s reading a script that would rival Forspoken.
Now let’s put Frank out of his misery finally. There are other characters in this game, but I would use that term very lightly. The combo weapon designs in this game have more personality designed into them than the wooden cast of supporting characters you meet. You have Vick Chu, who is Frank’s student and that’s really all you get to know about her. You’re told that they have a mentor/student relationship, but the way that Vick screams and berates “Frank” in this game leads us to believe that they’re more like a surrogate father/daughter type of deal and it’s completely un-fucking-earned. She disappears for 95% of the game and there’s no establishing scenes that showcase their relationship aside from dialogue. So, when Vick comes out of left field reaming “Frank” about how she disagrees with his motivations in the plot, she just comes across as this huge gigantic asshole. Seriously, what the hell is Vick’s problem? LMAO. You can see that they were trying to somehow shoehorn her into being Frank’s successor, but it’s so painful to watch because she’s the most unlikable person in the whole game. Calder is a nobody character who we know nothing about, that gets randomly upgraded to supervillain half way through the plot. He barely has any lines and doesn’t integrate well with the story progression. He virtually has nothing to do with it at all. Hammond and her group of survivors have little to say and add nothing, but have a conflict shoved down your throat in Frank Rising that makes you feel more confused than anything else. And who is Brad? The only Brad I know of is Brad Garrison. They seriously couldn’t think of a different name for this pointless, useless character? They’re all just horrible, unlikable, and unfunny “characters” so why should the player give any shit about what happens to any of them?
I’ve been guilty of saying this myself, but there’s this sentiment that people “don’t play Dead Rising games for the plot” and I find that to be a reductive way of ignoring criticism after having played this game. Dead Rising as a series does have an interconnecting plot that they chose to continue on their own terms. Those plots range from goofy to pretty mediocre, with some satirical glimpses into US politics. While those glimpses exist to move the story along, they don’t really have anything that serious to say at the end of the day. It’s just that the gameplay mechanics tend to carry the weight of this series. When you remove all of the fun mechanics out of Dead Rising, you are left with the story. Dead Rising 4 not only has terrible gameplay mechanics, but it also has a terrible, terrible story. The events set up in the first two games at least made narrative sense and didn’t introduce plot inconsistencies anyone paying even the smallest bit of attention could point out.
I am genuinely wondering if anyone in the remaining shambles at Capcom Vancouver even played Dead Rising 1 before getting their hands on this series, because Dead Rising 3 already had some questionable revisionist decisions that meddled a bit with the aftermath of the events of the initial Willamette outbreak. I wouldn’t call it retconning, but they definitely did some unneeded meddling in the lore of this series that just raises more questions than answers and completely pisses on the mystery of the Santa Cabeza cover-ups that were already set in place. We did not need any further explanation of what happened in Santa Cabeza or why, at all, but they decided to bring back Dr. Barnaby’s corpse through the use of recorded testimonies he had made before his death 16 years ago. Ohhhhhh no guys, get it? Dr. Barnaby was actually playing 5-D Chess the whole time and was 15 steps ahead of everyone else!! Ohhh, noo he was actually spoilering his spoiler in a spoiler the whole time. Ohhh!!! Shut the FUCK up, no, he was not LOL. I really just despise when long-standing series feel the need to add into their mysteries. What’s the point of a mystery if you’re just gonna yap and explain away everything about it later? You’re giving away so much information that the whole thing just falls through your hands like sand. The more you add, the more inconsistencies there are to question. This just devalues Dr. Barnaby’s role in the first game for, again, no reason other than they wanted to. It just sucks.
And guess what, the ending isn’t even included into the game. It’s paid for DLC that adds an extra hour of content and a terrible ending. When I asked for a timer in my Dead Rising game, this is not what I meant. They give you a literal hour and a half to complete this content and for whatever reason, if you die, the timer doesn’t reset back to the point it was at upon Game Over. For some reason, there are challenges you have to do to get the good ending of this DLC, and you have to do all of them. There’s really no explanation for this. If you look at it in hindsight, the lack of challenge wins does not have any connection to what happens, it’s just if you don’t win them all, you get the bad ending. The distance this DLC makes you traverse on foot eats up most of that timer, meaning that any death is basically a loss for the player and results in the bad ending. However, the bad ending results in a different fate for characters you probably do not give two shits about, so who even cares anyways? Then it ends abruptly without any closure or follow-up. Cool use of $10, huh?
And after all of that, like a whimpering dog in the backyard, Capcom Vancouver was finally put out of their misery, shuddering their doors and never to work on these games again. (Very cool of you, Capcom Japan.) They wanted to bring Frank West back into their own game and play dress up with him under the guise of “bringing the games back to their roots” to a fanbase that was desperate for Dead Rising to be fun again. Instead they revised the shit out of the story, painted Christmas lights all over it, gutted all of the mechanics, made it wildly unfun and unimaginative, added mini-golf mode to try to extinguish the fires they made, and then DIED. It's not abundantly clear really who's fault laid where in the developmental mess of this game. It was set up to fail from the get go, with Capcom Japan not helping them in virtually anyway at all. There's several whisperings in the wind regarding how it wasn't meant to be a Dead Rising game in the first place and that obviously shows, but either way, we got this shit. There were people who told me that maybe I’d find something in it I liked, but that just did not happen. It was a sinking ship before it even left the dock. And it’s unfortunately still considered canon until Capcom HQ themselves decide to reboot this series, if that even happens. It’s definitely for the best that this series died when it did and it’s not a triumphant “finally” or even a sigh of relief. It’s just a disappointed shrug and life goes on. I didn't even get any catharsis out of writing this review like I do with some other 1 star games I've written about. How unfortunate.
Dead Rising 4 is souless. It feels like some corporate guess work into "what do Dead Rising fans like, oh Frank?, the Mall?, okay just do that again." Indeed it is a person named Frank West (a completely different character), there is a mall (that you are barely in except for the beginning), and it does do it again (but worse).
I kind of like this character named Frank West, he's kind of a middle aged Himbo, not super charismatic, and worse than original Frank, but he's fine. Still the worst DR protag, but fine, he just should not have been Frank West.
The map is definitely better than DR 3's map because there aren't constant road blocks to impede your progress, you just drive. The town is more interesting to look at and it does have the mall, gimped as it may be from previous entries.
The story is so fucking bland and nothing. Vick is one of the worst characters I have bared witness to with horrible motivations and STUPID decisions. "Hey Frank, why would you rather expose this bad government facility through journalism and not blow it up right NOW!!" She also goes on about Frank like selling out his news to the highest bidders, but nothing ever really points Frank out to be that type of guy, like, he is a pretty nice guy all things considered. He saved like a lot of people during the original outbreak, and continues saving a lot in this one! So what if he is kind of sarcastic.
Along with Vicky being terrible there are other characters that are so paper thin they are worthless, and are barely in the story anyways. There are like, barely any cut scenes in this game, and Dead Rising usually has pretty good cut scenes! It feels like the story is there because there has to be a story (and to give a reason why we are in Willamette again).
I will say the gameplay is fun, I still like to play it, but it kind of feels like empty serotonin watch numbers go up. Then after dabbling in the Capcom Heroes mode afterwards I can see some actual fun ideas that could have been implemented into this series (or something else made by the studio possibly).
I think Capcom Heroes has the soul that this game lacked, a fun little arcade replay of the main story (I dont really like that you have to play through main story missions again, since it feels weird in this game, why not just drop you off in the open world for free play, but whatever). I saw another review about that mode call it a Musou, and I think with some more work this mode could easily be a fun Musou game.
Overall: this isnt Frank West, the map is decent, the story blows ass, and the gameplay is fun and has promises of being a full blown action game. Like I would have rather seen them ditch a lot of the stuff that makes Dead Rising Dead Rising if they went all out and not this mediocre half assery.
I kind of like this character named Frank West, he's kind of a middle aged Himbo, not super charismatic, and worse than original Frank, but he's fine. Still the worst DR protag, but fine, he just should not have been Frank West.
The map is definitely better than DR 3's map because there aren't constant road blocks to impede your progress, you just drive. The town is more interesting to look at and it does have the mall, gimped as it may be from previous entries.
The story is so fucking bland and nothing. Vick is one of the worst characters I have bared witness to with horrible motivations and STUPID decisions. "Hey Frank, why would you rather expose this bad government facility through journalism and not blow it up right NOW!!" She also goes on about Frank like selling out his news to the highest bidders, but nothing ever really points Frank out to be that type of guy, like, he is a pretty nice guy all things considered. He saved like a lot of people during the original outbreak, and continues saving a lot in this one! So what if he is kind of sarcastic.
Along with Vicky being terrible there are other characters that are so paper thin they are worthless, and are barely in the story anyways. There are like, barely any cut scenes in this game, and Dead Rising usually has pretty good cut scenes! It feels like the story is there because there has to be a story (and to give a reason why we are in Willamette again).
I will say the gameplay is fun, I still like to play it, but it kind of feels like empty serotonin watch numbers go up. Then after dabbling in the Capcom Heroes mode afterwards I can see some actual fun ideas that could have been implemented into this series (or something else made by the studio possibly).
I think Capcom Heroes has the soul that this game lacked, a fun little arcade replay of the main story (I dont really like that you have to play through main story missions again, since it feels weird in this game, why not just drop you off in the open world for free play, but whatever). I saw another review about that mode call it a Musou, and I think with some more work this mode could easily be a fun Musou game.
Overall: this isnt Frank West, the map is decent, the story blows ass, and the gameplay is fun and has promises of being a full blown action game. Like I would have rather seen them ditch a lot of the stuff that makes Dead Rising Dead Rising if they went all out and not this mediocre half assery.
Hank East
Killing zombies by the hundreds in a santa suit makes for the perfect christmas game.
Fucks me up that Dead Rising 4 served as the bookend of Capcom's dark age.
every time i think about this game i get sad
This review contains spoilers
After loving Dead Rising 3, despite it's lukewarm reception, I was ready to really enjoy this game too despite knowing people hated it. Unfortunately this games flaws are either too big to ignore and/or there's not as many saving graces as 3 had.
Every time I start a Dead Rising game I swear I feel like the controls are shit and think "Were they always this bad?", then I get used to them which is what I assume allows the cycle to happen every time. But I never really got used to 4's controls. Could it be that they are just worse than the rest? Or maybe I've just grown standards...
The game is a buggy mess. One bug that kept popping up was Frank just not moving. It happened a lot and it just freezes him for like 5-10 seconds.
Admittedly some of the most common complaints don't bother me too much. The lack of the game being a giant timed mission is whatever (since when did games most hated aspects become something people demanded?). There's still no escorting survivors, which actually started in 3 (funnily enough escort missions are another thing people hate in other games). I know escorting is a big thing in the first 2 games, but I did feel like it wouldn't fit as well in the more giant open world, with faaaar more zombies on screen, of 3, and I feel the same here.
Also Frank has apparently been ruined as a character but I don't see it. He's still a snarky, sarcastic zombie killing journalist, but now with 15 years experience in a zombie infected world.
The lack of psychopaths is a change I definitely did not enjoy though. They instead have been replaced by "Maniacs", which still have the fun identities (a crazy Santa, evil pirate, cultist scarecrow etc), but they lack introductory cutscenes and are way too easy to take down. They are no longer big events like they were before, but are now minor distractions.
The game has simplified a lot of things too. Food now has its own inventory, and all food heals exactly the same. So a chocolate bar heals the same as a med kit. You can no longer get drunk from drinking too much alcohol etc.
Though weirdly it also un-simplified some things from 3. Like in that game all weapons had a strong and weak attack. The "strong" attack is now a command you get after getting a certain hit combo. It also only works for combo weapons, as regular weapons will just do a usual cutscene-type kill. I don't mind this change as it gives you a reason to use the regular attack, while in DR3 there was no reason to do anything but spam the much better strong attack except for weapons with very context specific movesets.
The worst part about this game missing its potential is that the actual world its set in is fantastic for Dead Rising. DR3 had a big town, but it was very bland and all areas looked the same. This game makes Willamette a huge zombie killing playground, with locations varying from malls, farms, shopping districts, residential areas, dams and more. It's such a damn shame that such a fun map is ruined by such mediocre gameplay.
It's just kind of a shell of a game with nothing to really do but go through the boring story. Killing zombies doesn't even feel fun anymore since a lot of weapons feel weightless. Plus there's far too many zombies on screen at once - something that also originated in Dead Rising 3, but at least in that game the majority of stuff took place outside with lots of space, and vehicles and overpowered combo weapons were a huge element to dealing with these crowds. Both those elements have been toned down, and a lot more of the game takes place in cramped places. The game also includes a lot of very dark areas to force you to use the cameras new night vision mode, which just makes you move slower, be defenceless and unable to see your inventory for managing weapons. Fun.
Every time I start a Dead Rising game I swear I feel like the controls are shit and think "Were they always this bad?", then I get used to them which is what I assume allows the cycle to happen every time. But I never really got used to 4's controls. Could it be that they are just worse than the rest? Or maybe I've just grown standards...
The game is a buggy mess. One bug that kept popping up was Frank just not moving. It happened a lot and it just freezes him for like 5-10 seconds.
Admittedly some of the most common complaints don't bother me too much. The lack of the game being a giant timed mission is whatever (since when did games most hated aspects become something people demanded?). There's still no escorting survivors, which actually started in 3 (funnily enough escort missions are another thing people hate in other games). I know escorting is a big thing in the first 2 games, but I did feel like it wouldn't fit as well in the more giant open world, with faaaar more zombies on screen, of 3, and I feel the same here.
Also Frank has apparently been ruined as a character but I don't see it. He's still a snarky, sarcastic zombie killing journalist, but now with 15 years experience in a zombie infected world.
The lack of psychopaths is a change I definitely did not enjoy though. They instead have been replaced by "Maniacs", which still have the fun identities (a crazy Santa, evil pirate, cultist scarecrow etc), but they lack introductory cutscenes and are way too easy to take down. They are no longer big events like they were before, but are now minor distractions.
The game has simplified a lot of things too. Food now has its own inventory, and all food heals exactly the same. So a chocolate bar heals the same as a med kit. You can no longer get drunk from drinking too much alcohol etc.
Though weirdly it also un-simplified some things from 3. Like in that game all weapons had a strong and weak attack. The "strong" attack is now a command you get after getting a certain hit combo. It also only works for combo weapons, as regular weapons will just do a usual cutscene-type kill. I don't mind this change as it gives you a reason to use the regular attack, while in DR3 there was no reason to do anything but spam the much better strong attack except for weapons with very context specific movesets.
The worst part about this game missing its potential is that the actual world its set in is fantastic for Dead Rising. DR3 had a big town, but it was very bland and all areas looked the same. This game makes Willamette a huge zombie killing playground, with locations varying from malls, farms, shopping districts, residential areas, dams and more. It's such a damn shame that such a fun map is ruined by such mediocre gameplay.
It's just kind of a shell of a game with nothing to really do but go through the boring story. Killing zombies doesn't even feel fun anymore since a lot of weapons feel weightless. Plus there's far too many zombies on screen at once - something that also originated in Dead Rising 3, but at least in that game the majority of stuff took place outside with lots of space, and vehicles and overpowered combo weapons were a huge element to dealing with these crowds. Both those elements have been toned down, and a lot more of the game takes place in cramped places. The game also includes a lot of very dark areas to force you to use the cameras new night vision mode, which just makes you move slower, be defenceless and unable to see your inventory for managing weapons. Fun.
An insult to the series. God what a mess.
Plays like absolute shit. Frank feels so loose like he might take off away from your control at any moment. Every character is either bland as cardboard, or too obnoxious to pay attention to, with Frank himself being the worst of them. They've made him into a constantly quipping arsehole type that feels so out of place in a game that only released in 2016.
I'm glad this killed the series after what DR5 was apparently going to be. It's bad enough doing this to Frank, no need to drag Chuck down into the shit as well.
Plays like absolute shit. Frank feels so loose like he might take off away from your control at any moment. Every character is either bland as cardboard, or too obnoxious to pay attention to, with Frank himself being the worst of them. They've made him into a constantly quipping arsehole type that feels so out of place in a game that only released in 2016.
I'm glad this killed the series after what DR5 was apparently going to be. It's bad enough doing this to Frank, no need to drag Chuck down into the shit as well.
This game sucks I could go Into detail on why but It's not deserving of that effort.
Nul, lent, court, manque de respect au scénar et prota du premier, zéro intérêt et en plus de tout ça il se permet de tuer la série ce fils de pute
nothing hurts more than seeing a franchise and character you love being butchered in real time
You ruined Franks character. Utter trash.
"We're going back to our roots!"
Had no involvement in the development of the first game IE: The roots.
"We wanted a more mature sounding Frank."
Doesn't ask or rather didn't want to ask original VA.
Takes out timers
Takes out psychopaths
*Doesn't add escorting survivors back in
Terrible story, worse gameplay than DR3, Frank is basically a different character, world is pretty badly designed and more I don't feel like typing about.
Yeah, this feels exactly like you went back to "your" roots.
Had no involvement in the development of the first game IE: The roots.
"We wanted a more mature sounding Frank."
Doesn't ask or rather didn't want to ask original VA.
Takes out timers
Takes out psychopaths
*Doesn't add escorting survivors back in
Terrible story, worse gameplay than DR3, Frank is basically a different character, world is pretty badly designed and more I don't feel like typing about.
Yeah, this feels exactly like you went back to "your" roots.
The ending of the game is blocked behind a DLC. It also doesn't have a time limit. I don't need to say anything more.
A game that literally killed it's franchise that decided to lock it's true ending behind a f***ing dlc paywall. That removed psychopaths, a tension to do something within a certain timeframe, and multiple ending. Butchered the best and first protag, Frank West. This game is a pile of shit that killed a great franchise, such a shame.