Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster review: Modernized mall mayhem

Dead Rising was an absolute treasure of early HD gaming. Straying away from the usually more serious tones of Resident Evil and Dino Crisis, Capcom chose an outright wild new approach to zombie survival that started with putting countless groups of the undead on the screen, in motion, at once. Then, Capcom made a zany game where you fight monsters and people with literally anything you can get your hands on. It wasn’t without flaw, but that’s one of the best reasons for the Deluxe Remaster. It doesn’t change things drastically, but rather puts a fresh coat of paint on what works and straps on just a few quality-of-life bells and whistles. This is still a tough game for first-timers, but after 18 years, it’s also very much worth the trip back to Willamette, Colorado.

Picture this

If you didn’t know the story of Dead Rising, here’s a quick refresh. Freelance photographer Frank West gets a tip to come to the fictional backwoods town of Willamette, Colorado. The military has blocked off the roads and when its aircraft takes unkindly to Frank’s intrusion by helicopter, he gets left on the roof of the town shopping mall with three days to get his scoop before the helicopter pilot either picks him up or leaves without him. So, what’s the scoop? Zombies of course. Some mysterious disease has hit the town, zombifying just about everyone. The survivors barricaded in the mall, but after one of the dumbest slip-ups in video games (keeping an old lady from her poodle), the zombies get inside and start looking for fresh meat.

This results in Frank banding together with a few key survivors, including Otis the janitor, who welds a security office door shut to make a safe room, and government agents Brad and Jessie. Frank gets a walkie-talkie from them and goes about trying to dig up the truth behind what’s happening at Willamette. That includes saving other survivors and bringing them back to the safe room or fighting off people who have cracked, dubbed Psychopaths and essentially the game’s boss fights.

I was a little worried the updated voice acting would have less oomph than the original, but actually everyone delivers pretty close to the original and maybe even a bit better. I especially liked Brad’s updated performance, and even Frank’s new gruff voice grew on me as the game went on, but grocery store owner Steven Chapman was always my favorite and he’s as ridiculous as ever.

I will say Capcom stayed one-to-one on nearly everything gameplay and narrative-wise about the original Dead Rising. The progression of events plays out so closely to the 2006 game that I was actually able to use my memories from the original to find some secrets and get ahead of the curve on where to go. All the while, it’s a very pretty coat of paint on the 2006 game, though not the best thing I’ve seen come out of the RE Engine. Characters, zombies, and Psychopaths look thoughtfully updated, but that doesn’t stop them from sometimes having some robotic or uncanny valley performances which were also faithful to the original game.

One place I was surprised to see Capcom go all-out on faithfulness was the music. The original Dead Rising had a lot of licensed music, not the least of which was Lifeseeker’s Gone Guru track for the escaped criminals in the park and Drea’s Justified track for the ending credits. Grabbing all of that music for this version couldn’t have been easy, but it’s a treat if you’re a fan like me that would notice if it was absent. Good news for livestreamers, too. You can play this game without worrying about content strikes because there’s a soundtrack toggle that will swap the music for royalty free tracks, which is just as smart to include as the original music.

Make time for the important things

During the events of Dead Rising, your job as Frank West is to unravel the story and get out in three days. The Willamette Mall is, with very few boundaries that evaporate in short order, a completely open playground full of secrets and opportunities to explore as you survive. However, for the purpose of the story, you absolutely have to be at certain objectives occurring at various times. Time moves at a brisk pace, so some of the windows for case milestones are very tight. If you fail to take part in any one of the main case objectives when it’s meant to happen, you lose the ability to continue the story and the game reverts to an endless mode. All that’s left to do then is play as much as you want or reload a save.

Fighting is very much melee-based and getting your hands on anything and everything you can swing at the dead is still the name of the game. Most of the stronger and weaker weapons are just like we remember, as well. A potted plant will be okay for hitting one or two zombies, but get your hands on a katana or a mini-chainsaw and you’ll be in serious business. All of Frank’s unarmed attacks also return and unlock as you level up through just about everything and moves like the Face Smasher and Judo Throw are as pulpy as ever. For their part, when the zombies are in huge crowds, they still represent a decent threat that can quickly turn a run to the safe room into a blood bath.

So how do you level up? Well, through anything really, but mostly photography. You can kill zombies and Psychopaths till the cows come home, but if you use Frank’s camera to take pictures of key moments, you get a massive amount of Prestige Points (PP) that will raise his level in a jiffy, especially if he hones in on categories like Drama, Horror, Outtakes, and Brutality (Erotic has been dropped by the wayside). Also returning is the option to go back to the beginning with the levels you’ve gotten so far to make Frank more formidable if you end up at a dead-end and need to start fresh. Dead Rising’s time-based progression and Frank’s general weakness at the start almost guarantees fresh players will have to take a first playthrough just to get the hang of things, then take a second or third playthrough more seriously if you want to see the True Ending.

Thank goodness timing is one of the few things that are hard here. It’s certainly not the AI of the enemies, even the human ones. Smart AI was never a strong part of enemies in Dead Rising, but even now, the behaviors of the enemies and survivors are pretty crummy. I killed several of the Psychopaths just by putting them in positions they couldn’t respond to, like getting the convicts to run their jeep into a tree in the park and then just wailing on them. Some bosses are better than others, but most of them are sitting ducks if you just know how to manipulate them.

Thankfully, other aspects of the game got upgraded. Shooting doesn’t feel great, but it does feel better, including being able to move while aiming. Also, Otis doesn’t start his walkie-talkie dialogue over if you interrupt him anymore. He’ll talk through zombie attacks, climbing, jumping, and plenty more. You can also see the durability of every weapon you carry to know when it’s going to break. It’s a lot of little things that add up to eliminate many of the issues this game had back in 2006.

A scoop to die for

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster doesn’t take what we had and try to do it drastically different. Instead, it actually stays ridiculously close to where it came from functionally. The progress, survivor locations, points of interest, secrets, Psychopaths, the time they show up, and more are all intact, so much so that seasoned players will feel right at home. That said, many will appreciate creature comforts like durability meters and skippable dialogue. Newcomers are in for a challenge. This game is as unforgiving at the start as it was in 2006, but if you want a solid zombie survival experience akin to Dawn of the Dead, you can’t do much better than the mall mayhem of Willamette in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.

This review is based on an early PS5 copy supplied by the publisher. Dead Rising; Deluxe Remaster comes out on September 19, 2024, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.