Preview - Dead Rising 3
The Dead Rising series has a lot of fans, and that's for good reason. Who doesn't enjoy the slaughtering of thousands of undead zombies with weapons as varied as chainsaws taped to kayak paddles or just a simple broomstick? But it definitely wasn't without its faults. Long loading times, a hard difficulty curve with few save points and fiddly controls were some of the issues that blighted Dead Rising 2. Capcom is hoping to put all that right in Dead Rising 3 and release the most exciting next-generation game in the process.
How do you go about such a task? Well for starters you set Dead Rising 3 in a massive, sprawling open world. The first games in the series mostly saw players confined in small spaces before walking through doors - and going through loading times - to get somewhere else. That's no longer the case, as now there's a massive city to run and drive across with even more undead than ever before. We're told that the locations in the first two Dead Rising games could fit into Dead Rising 3 several times over.
The reason for the bigger world is obviously the extra power that the Xbox One has at its disposal, and that also means that tons more zombies can appear on screen at any one time. Some critics complained about frame rate slowdown when they watched gameplay demos at Gamescom but those issues appear to be fully gone now, as our experience included the massacre of hundreds of zombies in seconds with no problems at all.
Performing the butchery was made easier with the use of the Rollerhog, a combination of a motorcycle and a steamroller that might as well be described as zombie kryptonite. Oh, and there's a flamethrower attached to the front just for good measure. The Rollerhog was heavily featured in previous gameplay demos, but having played around with it ourselves we can confirm that, yes, it is one of the most fun things you can do in a videogame.
You can combine vehicles when you see two parked next to each other and the outcomes are both deadly and hilarious. Later on in our hands-on we created a vehicle that ended up shooting fireworks at zombies and lifted them up into the sky before they exploded into a beautiful, bloody mess. Zombies aren't completely helpless, if you drive through a crowd there will be some who manage to grab onto the side of your ride and try to stop you, but let's just say the odds are weighted in your favour.
As ever you can also combine two weapons to make something even more lethal, and hours could be spent just experimenting with what you've crafted. One of our favourites had a machine gun-wielding stuffed teddy bear stuck to a shopping trolley. We were heading downhill and got distracted, so the bear carried on rolling along by itself and shot down any zombie that got in its way. It was quite a sight.
These examples should calm the anxieties of players who worried that Dead Rising 3 was taking itself too seriously. This is a darker world, a bigger world, but it's still as tongue-in-cheek as ever before. That much is evident in the various costumes that you can wear throughout the game, including a gimp suit if that's your type of thing.
The third game in the series also goes deeper into RPG territory. Levelling up gifts you with attribute points, and you can spend these on seven different stats - such as health or attacks - or even 22 different crafting categories. Progression is a key part of Dead Rising 3. Having trouble getting through a certain section? Go out and slaughter thousands of zombies, level up to get more skills, create stronger weapons then go and do it again.
We didn't get to try out much of the story but we're told Capcom is working hard on making it a key part of the game, and there won't be any annoying time limits that blighted the first two Dead Rising titles. There's also a co-op element so you can experience all the action with a friend. Instead we were too focused on trying out different weapons and exploring the open world. There was also the case of murdering 2000 zombies in just over 15 minutes, but who's counting?
This is shaping up nicely to be a stellar addition to any player's collection, and in the process it could end up being the most fun next-generation game around, at least in the short-term. Now, where's that Rollerhog? We've got some zombies to steamroll.
