Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (PlayStation 5)

Geoffrey Wright | October 31, 2024 | Review | No Comments

Capcom have been hard at work remastering & remaking a bunch of games from yesteryear, primarily the Resident Evil series, so it’s no surprise to see their attention turn to another series. The original Dead Rising released near the launch of the Xbox360, and there’s been a few more since, yet its a series that been dormant for several years now. Worth heading back to the mall for Frank’s original adventure? Lets take a look.

Frank West, a freelance journalist, smells a scoop and makes his way into the peaceful town of Willamette, Colorado, which is currently under a media blackout and put under quarantine by the U.S. army. Landing atop the only shopping mall in town, things take a turn for the worse as the mall has turned into a living hell, crawling with countless zombies. Help will arrive in 72 hours, so it’s up to him to find out the truth behind this incident before it’s too late!

The story hasn’t really changed at all for the remake, there’s some tweaks with characters and presentation, but that’s about it. The big improvement comes in voiced dialogue, there’s much more of it added here over the original release and is probably the most noticeable improvement outside of graphics. While there’s a 72 hour in-game limit, it won’t actually take that much time to finish it, but you’ll still get plenty of opportunities to explore the mall for side stories, quests, collectibles, and extra loot, to make the most of that time.

As mentioned previously in the last section, it’s not quite on the level of the Resident Evil remasters, but there’s still quite the visual jump over the X360 version I remember. Character models have had a hefty uptick, Frank now looks like the grumpy middle-aged dude his character seemed to be (contentious for some tho), and the story segments now look much improved. The main character, the mall itself, also benefits from the resolution and detail improvement across the board.

Speaking of resolution, the games aims for a native 4K/60 and does a decent enough job of keeping to that. I say decent as it keeps that 60fps in large sections of the game, but can noticeably drop when the screen fills up with zombies. It can often pack a lot on the screen at once, but luckily it doesn’t become a mess of hefty frame drops or anything – more like a noticeable stutter that VRR doesn’t always seem to catch

Being a remaster of a game from a couple of generations ago, there are some QOL improvements included here as you would expect, but the experience for the most part is just as you remember. You still have the mall to explore, with all manner of objects to pick up and weapons to swing at the hordes of enemies, you can even craft some things together, but only have a limited time to get things done. Outside of fighting the undead, photography is the most important job. Getting good snaps for the cases is best, and taking some pics in between of situations and events can net you additional PP points. These PP points go towards levelling up, boosting health and unlocking additional perks to customise Frank a little to suit your play style.

The aforementioned limit is what the game is mainly structured around, you have to get as much done in the 72 hours available until the rescue arrives. Events & side missions are sometimes only available at certain times, and the some also feature a time limit themselves, in particular rescues, as you can’t expect them to survive forever on their own. Time can now be bypassed a little so you don’t really have to wait it out, and is just one of several little improvements. The QOL boosts don’t really change up how the game plays thankfully, instead focusing on smoothing things out and making it a little less clunky than it was before.

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster isn’t quite on the level of something like the recent RE4 remake, but its probably a more worthwhile proposition. The QOL improvements are seamless, Graphical boost appreciated, 4K/60 a surprise, and there’s no forgetting the additional work put into voiced story delivery. The series has slowly waned with each new iteration, so returning o the original with a fresh lick of paint does a good job of highlighting the appeal of the formula in the beginning. It’s arguably the best way to play the original, especially if its been a while or your first time, so long as not being rewarded for dick pics anymore is where you draw the line.

Summary

Going the remaster route works well for Dead Rising, instead of trying to remake, as it manages to remind you of exactly why you got hooked into visiting the mall in the first place.