![]() ![]() Sidequests are fairly repetitive–you can only clear out identical-looking emergency shelters so many times–but they work well enough as excuses to wreak havoc on the formerly living citizens of Willamette. I learned to resent missions that asked me to find a path, because the waypointing wasn't always immediately clear and I didn't want to fight off zombies while also trying to find my way. Those moments are perfectly empowering and the various elemental-based power-ups for the suit make it that much easier to take down swaths of zombies.Īll those toys in this playground makes for some awkward mission design from time to time. These are problematic or all the same reasons, though the addition of it as a game mechanic also naturally means Frank can equip the Exo-Suits as well. Some human enemies use Exo-Suits, powerful armor that gives them much more endurance as well. It feels dull and tedious to swing your melee weapon or fire endless bullets into a single undead, which makes the last hour or so a lot more challenging at the expense of some of the fun. ![]() One late-game zombie form takes many more hits to defeat, though, and this isn't a combat system built for longer encounters with a single enemy. The human soldiers and occasional Maniac bosses work well enough, and split up the pacing nicely. The combat falters somewhat when the game begins introducing tougher enemies. As long as you can find a car with the lights blinking, you can drive to your next location in style with a row of ragdoll zombies flying in your wake. Similarly enjoyable is the vehicle mayhem, which punctuates the travel between most missions. It can get tiring to slowly swipe your way through a horde with a mere sledgehammer, but freezing them in a wide arc with an ice sword never gets old. ![]() The weapon crafting is ingenious as always, making blueprints the most valuable collectibles in the game. This is where Dead Rising 4 shines, giving a wide array of weaponry to tear through zombies like wet tissue paper. You won't have much time to appreciate the vistas, though, since almost every square inch of the map is crawling with the undead. It was surprising how much area I traversed, because stopping in any one location felt well-crafted and individualized. The area feels sprawling for one that is so littered with objects to pick up and combine into zombie-smashing weaponry. The campaign spends only a short time inside the mall proper, and quickly whisks you to the larger Willamette area. To that end, Dead Rising 4 is a giant sandbox made up of smaller, more carefully constructed sandboxes. And like the original, it works best when it's functioning as a pulp-inspired toy. ![]() It's another starring role for Frank West, another visit to the sleepy town of Willamette, and even another shopping mall. After two departures, one even more cartoonish and the other oddly straight-faced, Dead Rising 4 gets back to its roots. The zombie series began as a blatant homage to Dawn of the Dead, and that afforded it a certain camp value that made mowing down countless undead feel right at home. The cockamamie story exists in little stasis pods, ready to be deployed when you’ve had your fill of mass mayhem.Dead Rising has always been a better playground than storyteller. No time pressure also means there’s no pacing to speak of, no hurry to be anywhere but clowning around and hunting down fresh blueprints for ever more demented – and rarely less than entertaining – botch-job weapons. And the characterful confines of the Willamette Memorial Megaplex Mall are only a tiny fragment of the open world map. Where once an electric guitar and the pointier end of a sporting goods shop’s range might see you through, you’ll now need to cobble together sturdier combo weapons to make serious headway through the hundreds of zombies on-screen. Time limits, which had grown steadily more generous across the series, have now evaporated from the single-player game. Yet the return to old curb-stomping grounds is still more reminiscent of Dead rising 3 than the original, for better and for worse. He’s roped back into town by the ZDC (think CDC for zombies), but also a rivalry with former pupil Vick, who has taken issue with her ex-mentor’s story-first approach to the discovery of a fresh outbreak in the area and gone rogue. West has lived through this nightmare once already, of course, back when he kicked off the series in the Willamette mall. Sure, his acerbic wit and not-very-professional detachment are a front, but it’s still soothing to spend time over the shoulder of a character who’s happy to wade through a scrum of the undead and bust into a military fort dressed like Captain Commando, wielding a swordfish crossbow and cracking wise all the while. Frank’s back, but is he still a big man on Krampus?įrank West is exactly the kind of hero we needed after 2016: a man who knows how to enjoy himself in spite of circumstance. ![]()
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