Capcom was kind enough to send a PC build of their upcoming Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster for hands-on impressions. I got to play through the first day of the Xbox 360 classic and it felt that perfect amount of fresh yet familiar. You are Frank West, traveling to Willamette Colorado after receiving a “big tip”. Turns out Zombies are ravaging the town and you’ll find yourself bashing their skulls for 72 hours as you try to save survivors and uncover mysteries.
Capcom has done much work here, porting the game over to their new RE Engine. It’s still the original Dead Rising, this isn’t one of their ground-up remakes like the Resident Evil series has been receiving. Multiple quality-of-life improvements like a more modern UI that shows your weapon’s current durability, and the ability to aim while moving are a few of the biggest gameplay differences on offer. The star of this Deluxe Remaster is the RE Engine. DRDR is pretty, and running on my decent PC rig (5800x CPU and 7900XTX GPU combo) I held a locked 4k/120fps using FSR3 on Quality Mode.
In the video of this write-up, you can watch the first hour of the game. They have given more characters voiced lines, and updated character models, but have not fixed the constant fade-to-black issue that always drove me crazy in the original. Every time something happens, say a cutscene or you go through a door into a new area the game fades to black, and sometimes it happens non-stop during the cutscene-heavy parts. Capcom did make sure to point out that this is an in-progress build that was set up for us to check out early. Objects popped in as scenes shifted but it ran great otherwise.
For fans of the series and potential newbies alike be ready for a lot of arcade-like action, mixed with cheesy voice acting that maintains the charm of the original. I found it far less frustrating to play with a modern control scheme and both on controller and mouse and keyboard it’s a lot easier to tap zombie heads for that satisfying pop animation and sound effect combo.
The Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster releases on September 19th, 2024. It’s a big ask at $50, especially for a game most people have at least a few copies of in their digital libraries. It’s fully voiced and even has auto-saves now to keep the frustration down. Keep an eye on Xbox Era before launch for our full review of this beautiful new take on a classic.
Really excited for this, so many great memories with the original. Not to mention it’s on £40.
This is easily my most anticipated game of the year. Time to kill some zombies.
Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 were some of the best games of the 360 with some of the most impressive tech to this day.
Dead Rising 1 came out of nowhere as an Xbox exclusive and it felt special. I remember some articles praising it as some clever adaptation of the Romero’s classic Zombie flick. I wonder if it didn’t inspired and helped, in some ways, shape the whole survival genre that birthed a few years later.
I can’t wait to get back in with modernized gameplay , features and mechanics that didn’t age well in the original game to be honest.