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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Dead Rising 4 Review: Is It Worth Buying Now? No

Now I'm such a fan of the Dead Rising series I spent cash money on two pre-order items on ebay; a severed hand holding mistletoe and a Dead Rising 4 snow globe. Hell, my Christmas special, that's what I called my Christmas party, was themed after the game! We even had a combo weapon making contest!
Christmas Special Combo Cards

Dead Rising 4 loses some things from the previous games. You can't throw anything in your items list at the undead for laughs, you can't drink liquor until you vomit and then see zombies slip on that throw-up.

A lot of bloggers and writers online are using some arguments that don't seem to be their own and to be cobbled off of Reddit or other sites. Such as the in-game clock and rescue missions from the previous games being fun and it be a shame that they're gone. Those were never fun. Why do you think they made an edition of the game called Off The Record where you just kill zombies? Whomever keeps saying Capcom made a misstep by changing the game by cutting the nuisance of time or that fans cared obviously never played the game.

No, Capcom misstepped per usual in a lot of different ways. Let's just get the list done here.
-PC version is a mess, my play-through on my PC, which is more than capable of handling the game, had various problems.
*Sub-list of PC Problems:
- Out of the gate not even a game play issue, a purchasing issue. It was hard to pre-order the game on PC as no physical copies came out. The Microsoft Store listed the game in other languages on it's store page for a long time and not in English.
*Sub-sub-list A variety of PC issues of gameplay.
-At one point the game screwed up and Frank somewhat walked into an invisible box, so moving him so slightly had him acting like a mime every few inches stuck in an invisible box.
-Frank's ability to run disappeared and the use of stamina at a point in the game. The stamina gauge shows you how much energy you have to sprint away from zombies, it was clear gone for a chapter of the game. Meaning, through multiple play-throughs of closing and opening the game the gauge was gone.
-Clones of vendors. Now this was a creepy fun one. At rescue shelters you have vendors selling you weapons and food and junk. Now, at one rescue shelter the game somehow loaded three sets of the same vendor type standing in the same place. I believe the game loaded two other various vendors from other rescue shelters. It was weird to hear them all try small talk at once. This also stayed in the game through multiple play-throughs.
Update: Looks like it's a common bug
-Interest points on the maps not going away. After rescuing a survivor or not rescuing a survivor the in-game map would keep showing their location for no reason. Happened multiple times.
-Ending boss battle failed to continue correctly had to reload checkpoint.
-Game crashed a few times or wouldn't load a few times.
*end of sub-lists
- The game is easy, way too easy.
Sadly, whomever did the pacing of this game didn't workout making boss fights or maniac fights fun was making them a bit hard or that they should last longer then a few seconds. I killed most bosses with so much ease I hardly cared when fighting them. I had so much health that I never felt afraid of dying. I think I died once throughout my entire play which was around 37 hours.
4. DLC needed for true ending? For a real shot to the balls Capcom committed the sin of making you have to pay extra for a yet-unreleased ending to the game. The current ending is no holiday Christmas special ending or really as funny as the rest of the game was. It's dang depressing.
5. Exo-suit use
In this game you're introduced to the exo-suit. An exo-skeleton that increases your strength and let's you pull off super powerful attacks. For my game play through the suit was usually underutilized in variety. It wasn't until the very end of the game that I got to use abilities from the suit, like an electrical mode. Why it wasn't allowed to be near more mods so you could pull of zanier attacks is strange when it was such a major point of the new game's release.
6. Save system?
I'm not sure how they hell you save your game. I've played so many gamesover the years it's pretty easy to find it on any menu system. Not this time. I just thought the game saved all the time, though it in no way indicated that it was ever doing so.

For those reasons I can't tell anyone to pay for the game with a $60 price tag, definitely not on PC. I'm saying wait until the Ultimate edition comes out and the give you the real ending with the base price of the game. If you have an Xbox One, rent it for the holidays.

So giving it a nice bashing I'll go over why you should rent the game. Because after all it's problems it's still a game with oddball humor where you kill zombies for fun.

1. It's Christmas!
Abso-freaken-loved they went with a holiday theme here. It's Christmas time at the mall and around Williamete. You have weapons based on Christmas including an Ornament Gun and the Nutblaster, based on a nutcracker; that shoots bullets. Oh, I love attaching an Electric Wreath and hearing a Christmas jingle as the zombies sizzled. You have Holiday Junk, which is essentially a ball of junk of Christmas to beat zombies with that throws up items.
It's not just the weapons, but seeing the mall have Christmas areas like a deadly Santa's Village. Or just outside the mall with different areas having a Christmas tone. Still would have loved to killed someone with a Menorah or some sort of dreidel weapon.
2. Combo weapons
The game continues the tradition of letting you make great combo weapons to expunge the world of zombies in a wide variety of ways from acid to fire all those undead have gotta be mercilessly  murdered. As already written, I had a penchant for the holiday based weaponry. But,  how can you pass up shooting a swordfish at someone? Or using the Gandelf which fires garden gnomes and summons them;  truly amazing.
3. Selfies
I love being able to wear a dumb costume and have a horde of the undead on me while taking selfies with my camera. Now you can kill maybe one zombie with a neck break in selfie mode, but I would have liked being able to kill more zombie in more intricate ways while taking a selfie. Still you can't beat how nuts the idea is of just grabbing a zombie and taking a picture with it before breaking its neck.
-On PC there's no simple way of taking that selfie and then putting in on social media, which I think that Xbox One can do.
4. Story/Continuity/Writing
-Dead Rising 4 does take place after DR 3. All the previous games add up though there's no cameos from previous talent you might read about them in the extras you can find in game.
-The story is stupid dumb fun. Reasoning on why Frank goes back is never as insane as the Japanese teams writing or their idea on what America is like.
-What stands out is Frank West's himself, who's a jerk, but your jerk who cracks dumb lines and deals with A serious situation with the care of a frat boy out for a night of partying. The game wants you have fun as Frank.

So for the massacre of zombie parts and just hanging with Frank parts the game is great for Christmas season. The rest is just worth a rental as Capcom slowly poors out DLC over the next month or so. The full game coming out next Christmas.

Oh, wow mini-golf DLC?!! Capcom, get your sh*t together.