Our Verdict
The Dead Rising remaster fixes every small problem from the original, in turn allowing the spirit of Capcom's open-world to exist more freely. That increased polish however robs Dead Rising of some of its crucial character.
From Resident Evil to Silent Hill 2, Age of Empires to Assassin’s Creed 3, Command and Conquer, and myriad others; during the last decade, developers have done incredibly well out of remastering and remaking their most beloved legacy works. At the worst of times, these efforts can’t help but feel cynical – naked attempts to re-profiteer from games that, although aged (at least by the consumerist, amnesiac standards of the gaming business) are still perfectly good. The Remakaissance becomes, by this interpretation, a craven appeal to misplaced nostalgia, with the vicarious effect of editing and erasing videogame history. On the contrary, the Dead Rising remaster feels like an example of where games, even if they are less than 20 years old, might benefit from a second draft. It achieves more than preserving the essence and energy of the original game. It heightens it, and enables you to experience it in more direct and concentrated form.
Compared to some other remasters, which perhaps undermine or supersede the original games, this new version of Dead Rising serves as an accompaniment; a complementary ‘recut’ that is more enjoyable and deeply appreciated if you’ve played the 2006 version. In short, Dead Rising Remaster is very good and feels considerably less ‘dirty’ than some of the other, various re-issues that game-makers have produced in recent years – but (thankfully, because I think this is how it should be) it really only works if you’ve played the original.
The 2006 Dead Rising is, in one sense, the best open-world game of its era. It’s tactile, it’s interactive, but it also benefits from a number of deliberate constraints. Especially in the past 15 years, with the influence of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto Online, there’s become a misconception as to what constitutes good or compelling open-world structure. We expect to be able to go anywhere and do anything, and for the game and its creators to function essentially as providers of tools, and allow our entire experience to agnate from how we decide to use those tools.
The quality of an open-world game is today measured correlative to the amount of freedom that it provides. But if you look at the response to and reputation of Red Dead Redemption 2, which shepherds players in particular narrative, dramatic, and mechanical directions, as opposed to the response to and reputation of Starfield, which doesn’t, there’s perhaps an argument to be made that although the best open-world games provide for freedom and expression, it’s always with context and consistently implied direction and meaning. There is a lot you can do of your own volition in Cyberpunk 2077, but it’s all framed by, and detectably contributes to, a firm, credible narrative.
The original Dead Rising also achieved this. Though it allows for a large amount of customization and agency (choose your weapons, clothing, approach to play; prioritize certain side missions over others; abandon the main story if you want; there are multiple endings) it’s also curtailed within a very finite geographical area, a character with a clear motivation, and a story with a hard finish. The Willamette Parkview Mall is full of possibility, but in terms of raw square footage, it’s a small space. You can dress Frank West in dozens of often wacky outfits, and further alter his character depending on which of his unlockable abilities you decide to use most, but he’s still always looking for survivors, trying to photograph his scoop, and scheduled to be collected by the helicopter in 72 hours.
Dead Rising is malleable, but it has a shape. This is the game’s greatest quality, and a legacy that I’d hope more open-world and sandbox games might attempt to build upon. Nevertheless, the original Dead Rising has problems, and while they’re smaller in comprehension – micro as opposed to macro – they often undercut the game’s vision.
The save system, for example. In the original Dead Rising, you have to save manually, which naturally means that if you die and you haven’t remembered to save in a long time, you may lose a significant amount of progress. In some games, that kind of system is helpful – it creates tension, it creates stakes. But in Dead Rising, it means that – consciously or otherwise – you’re always aware that missteps could lead to, what is in videogame terms, a harsh punishment, and so you’re less amenable to seek out, experiment, and toy with the game’s sandbox mechanics and flourishes. I know the .50 caliber machine gun is thrilling to use, but I’m not going to try and beat the convicts on the Humvee again, because I might die.
The weapon system also discourages the playfulness and abandon that feel like they ought to be intrinsic. Guns, naturally, run out of bullets but melee weapons also deteriorate, so you can only use them a limited number of times before they have to be replaced. The problem in the 2006 game is that it’s very possible to fail to notice when your weapon is about to break. The icon in the inventory bar at the top of the screen might start to flash, but otherwise you can’t predict when a sword, baseball bat, or battle axe is going to reach the end of its life, so again, that open-world, sandbox urge for recreation – that mischievous or sportive energy – is moderated. You’re not going to explore over here or explore over there, because there’s an indeterminate threat that your weapon could break.
The biggest problem in Dead Rising, however, is the pathfinding behavior and artificial ‘intelligence’ of the non-player survivors; if the save and weapon systems are minor buzzkills, contrary to the greater tone and would-be experience of the holistic game, the fact that most of the time the people you rescue will get stuck on walls, surrounded by zombies, and die, and you’ll therefore fail whatever mission you’re trying to complete, makes a lot of the game feel like more trouble than it might be worth.
The majority of Dead Rising’s NPC survivors have heightened, cartoonish dialogue and designs – rather than the somber Resident Evil, the game’s atmosphere is more closely comparable to the horror comedy of Sam Raimi. But as soon as their cutscenes or introductory conversations are over, the jocularity of Dead Rising’s survivor characters is undercut by their aggravating and fussy AI. It looks like it should be fun, in a very carnival, toyshop kind of sense, but in practice the 2006 Dead Rising is a real pain.
And this is where we get to the remaster. There’s now an autosave system. All your weapons have health bars. The survivors, like in Dead Rising 2 and all of the sequels, are smart enough to dodge zombies; to use weapons; to keep up with you. A useful symbol for what’s different between the original and the Dead Rising remaster is Frank West’s dodge roll.
In the 2006 game, you could dive out the way of zombies, or roll through the big, shambling crowds, but when Frank finished his roll, he would stagger forward a couple of steps and remain crouched on the floor for a second, which left you open to be attacked and often negated the roll’s usefulness entirely. In the remaster, this doesn’t happen – you just roll and get straight up. It’s more fluid, more forgiving, and makes it easier to play – and play with – the game and its open-world contrivances. This is the essence of the remaster expressed in a single, slightly amended mechanic. It’s still fundamentally the same, but edited in such a way that the broader qualities of the game are more greatly embellished and accommodated.
But in doing all of these things, Dead Rising Remaster inherits some new flaws. The visual overhaul is impressive and seamless, and it makes the game look ‘better,’ but in the same way that the general, culture-wide push for detail, high resolutions, and photorealism makes a lot of games look the same now, the remaster loses the imperfections and quirks that characterized the aesthetic of the original.
It’s the inevitable result – the objective, in fact – of remasters and remakes, and so we go back to that idea of erasing videogame history. In a forensic, technological, heartless kind of way, Dead Rising Remaster’s visuals are ‘improved,’ but in terms of personality, flavor, distinction, and evoking the time and the ambience of when the game was made, and what it represents historically, it’s considerably worse.
This isn’t the fault of Dead Rising Remaster. This homogenization of aesthetics and this willingness to sacrifice artistic and contemporaneous individuality for the sake of ‘quality,’ in the banal, consumer-electronics sense of the word, is not being perpetrated by the makers of Dead Rising Remaster exclusively. But despite all the other ways that it feels like a celebration – an accentuation, in fact – of the original game, the way Dead Rising Remaster looks reminds you that it is, generally, a calculated means of recycling former profit into new.
It also, by smoothing the save system, the weapons, and other key components (the map is much more interactive now; you can save during the infamously difficult Infinity Mode, and come back later) eliminates basically all challenge. While it’s true that I played the original game several times and know by heart all of its secrets and workarounds, like, for example, where to find the katana in Paradise Plaza, or how to mix the drink that stops you getting bitten by zombies, I was surprised to reach the end of Dead Rising Remaster without having died or failed a mission even once. Everything’s easier. Everything’s more accessible. And while in some cases this is welcome (the boss fight against Cletus, the gun shop owner, is thankfully more forgiving) Dead Rising Remaster’s commitment to open-world playability also robs it of friction – and friction is often what makes games compelling to play.