Quick Critique: Dead Rising 4 (Patreon)

I really like Dead Rising 1, but I like it despite its mechanics. The timers made the game tedious and took away exploration, leading survivors was a pain in the butt because the AI was pitiful and they were so weak, you were expected to start the game over and over again to build up stats, and it was chock full of inventory management and weapon degradation. So hearing that DR4 got rid of some of that, I was in. Also, it's a horror game set during Christmas. I'm... kind of super into that. I think I'm one of five people that genuinely has positive feelings towards Blue Stinger and totally want to see a fixed up modern version of that game and was hoping Dead Rising 4 would fill that void.

From the very beginning, my experiences with DR4 were not great. I installed the disk, downloaded the patch, downloaded the extra content (because that wasn't on the disk for some reason despite that being a selling point of the PS4 version), started it up, and... you're stuck on the title screen unable to enter any mode because it's “Downloading...”. Downloading what, I have no idea. Then the bar just kind of hangs there for several minutes, so I thought something was wrong, minimized it, went off to do something else, came back, and the download bar hadn't progressed. I uninstalled everything, installed the disk again, cut the network connection so the system wouldn't try to download any updates, and... got the same “Downloading...” screen. After looking it up online, you find a lot of people complaining about how slot it is to install the game and how it doesn't seem to download anything while minimized. So several hours into trying to play the game, the best I have seen is the title screen and options menus. The “Downloadable Content” button that's supposed to launch the store doesn't even work and pops up an error, even though I can load the store just fine from outside the game. After leaving the game running on the title screen for some time, I was finally able to play.

They changed Frank. He's no longer a kind of schlubby every-man. He's just a generic dude that's off-putting in how abrasive he is. Original Frank was a lovable dick. New Frank is kind of just a dick. A dick that despite what he's been through in the previous games and this one, is willing to abandon a civilian that helped him and leave her group of injured people in danger for no good reason. That follows through for all of the characters in the game. The other main character is detestable and not a single one of the side characters is likable. The whole game feels like a half-assed reboot. They should have either made it more unique and set it somewhere completely different and not tied to the first three games or done a full reboot. What you get is something that recycles the plot of the main game and many of the same beats, a worse version of the same character, and a worse location, but with nothing really interesting to set it apart. There are dozens of things to collect in the chapters, but movement isn't fun, combat isn't fun, and making your way through the maps isn't fun, so they created a semi-open world that you just don't want to be a part of. It has a more modern (and rather good to its credit) upgrade system, but that's the only hint of modernity on display. It's so clunky and poorly put together that it feels like a game made ten years ago. Frank constantly gets caught on objects, can sometimes climb objects but other times can't, gets caught in animations, can't interact with something you're right in front of but if you turn around and walk away then you can open it, sometimes just can't walk forward, and has a bizarre turning radius. There were times I found myself having fun (mostly seeing how high I could get my combo counter while driving through hoards of zombies or playing with explosives) only to smack into getting caught on something or stumbling into a situation that almost instantly kills you or the controls not working or any of a number of other problems and it all came crashing down. Frank's camera is now a Metroid Prime style scanner and you get missions to scan things but it's super finicky and gives you the most useless feedback on trying to hunt down which object it wants you to scan.

The core gameplay leans heavier into the Dynasty Warriors style button mashing. There can be hundreds of basic zombies on screen, but they're never interesting or fun to fight. Every encounter with the evolved zombies plays out the same way and every military fight just has you constantly rolling towards whatever enemy is shooting you the most. There is sooo much gun play in this one. Ranged enemies are ludicrously powerful and humans are ridiculously resilient (like taking multiple RPGs, having to run over a person five or six times, punching them several times while wearing a mech suit, and hitting them with an axe while wearing a mech suit only to have them stand back up levels of resilient). It's just not fun and Dead Rising should not be a third person shooter, especially one this bad.  DR4 has the same tedious inventory management and weapons breaking, but the game is super finicky about picking things up so restocking is a pain.

It's also rather buggy. Watching enemies warp in and out of cover, fly through the air, or rapidly change position like you were playing a laggy online game is a common sight. A boss glitched out on me and I spent 15 minutes trying to follow the game's instructions on how to hurt it before giving up, looking up a video walkthrough, and then realized the boss was stuck in the level so I couldn't kill him and had to restart from the checkpoint and do the entire fight all over again. I had the same thing happen a few times with enemies that were part of missions, but they thankfully were never mission critical so I could just leave trapped and twitching in parts of the level. Multiple times, I had cutscenes fail to load so I was stuck on a black screen. If you mash the buttons on your controller, it eventually loads.

The PS4 version includes the DLC that at least makes things different, making you immune to zombies and giving you powers, but then it takes that away from you, imposes a strict time limit, makes you vulnerable to zombies again, takes away the ability to drive, and locks upgrades behind godawful side quests and challenges. Dead Rising should be the Saints Row to Resident Evil's GTA. I want the wacky, fun zombie game that makes me overpowered and opts for the “make the game more fun for the player” choice every time. Give me unbreakable weapons. Give me a better inventory. Let me have dumb fun and experiment with ways to amuse myself with the zombie crowds and playing around in the mall. As it stands now, it's not scary enough to be a horror game, it's not funny enough to be a comedy, and the controls, missions, and world aren't good enough for it to be a competent action game.