Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster achieves exactly what it set out to do—but maybe that's not enough
We're finally back, baby! Dead Rising is a Capcom gem and a true original, but boy did the publisher fumble it after the original. Heavily inspired by George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising would be arguably the last masterpiece from Capcom production genius Keiji Inafune (it was released in 2006—Inafune worked on a variety of other projects subsequently, but left in 2010) and was a cutting-edge technological feat with that '80s/'90s arcade DNA running right through it: something old and something new, all at once.
Dead Rising is an open world game, in the limited sense of the open world being a shopping mall, and it operates like no other open world game you've played. It begins with a scene-setting flight into Willamette, during which you take control of protagonist Frank West, photojournalist extraordinaire, and start snapping the scenes on the streets. Even now it's an effective, albeit highly choreographed, introduction to a world where the zombie apocalypse is here but no-one is quite sure that's what it is yet. The most brilliant touch, as you take snap after snap and the rating system praises your work, is the poor souls on the ground trying to wave down the chopper as you capture their horrific last moments.
Once Frank's at the mall, after agreeing that the chopper will return three in-game days later, the first hour or so of Dead Rising is carefully guided. There's a non-optional opening where you meet a boatload of other survivors in the mall lobby, and are free to take your time chatting away to them and listening to incidental dialogue, before the zombies break through the mall's doors in a flood and, as you struggle to escape, the death notices pop up one-by-one. It's hard to overstate how effective this is: the slow build before the combination of a dozen videogame-y pings one after the other saying «SO-AND-SO HAS DIED!»
After this you're in the mall's security room, meet a pair of mysterious government spooks and get access to a save point,
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