Box Art
Game: Dead Rising 3
First Released: November 22, 2013, Xbox One
Developers: Capcom Vancouver
Platforms: Xbox One, Windows
Rated: M, for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Intense Language,
Sexual Themes, and Use of Alcohol
First Released: November 22, 2013, Xbox One
Developers: Capcom Vancouver
Platforms: Xbox One, Windows
Rated: M, for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Intense Language,
Sexual Themes, and Use of Alcohol
How I Came To Play This Game
Heads go splat
By the time I got my Xbox 360, the Xbox One was already out. Many of my friends had already upgraded to the new system, but I wanted to finish my experience with my Xbox 360. I heard rumors that Xbox Live service for that console would be shut down sometime in 2016, so I wanted to make the most of the service while it was in operation. After playing dozens of games though, I eventually ran out of stuff to do. So I decided to get my Xbox One so that I can play the latest entry's in my favorite series from the seventh generation. Dead Rising 3 was one of the first I got and played.
Story
Zhi, a psychopath
The story takes place in 2021, ten years after the events of the Fortune City outbreak. It follows a young mechanic named Nick Ramos and his attempt to survive a massive zombie outbreak in the fictional city of Los Perdidos, California. The game begins three days after the initial outbreak. After returning from a failed search for supplies, Nick reunites with some other survivors at a diner including his boss Rhonda, a girl named Annie and a trucker named Dick. After the zombies break into the diner and two more survivors are killed, Annie runs back to her own group of survivors. Nick and the others make it to Rhonda's auto shop and learn that the government is going to bomb the city in six days to stop the outbreak. The group drives to a military checkpoint, only to find everyone there dead and be ambushed by a rogue biker gang. After defeating the bikers, Nick reunites with his old friend Diego, who is now a soldier, and learns from him that there is a plane at the old museum in town that can be fixed up and used to escape the city before it is destroyed. However, before starting to work on the plane, Nick is bitten by a zombie and heads to the crematorium in town to search for some Zombrex, meeting a man called Gary on the way, who is looking for a certain girl under orders from his boss. Unable to find any Zombrex, Nick loses all hope until Gary notices that his wound has healed, revealing that he is somehow immune from turning. Realizing that the girl Gary is looking for is actually Annie, Nick agrees to help him retrieve her in exchange for fuel for the plane. Nick then tracks her down but fails to convince her to come with him. The leader of her group, Red, tells Nick that the military is in fact not evacuating survivors but killing them off instead, and the mechanic agrees to help them in exchange for the fuel he needs. After retrieving some evidence of the military's crimes, Nick learns from Red that all of his friends, including Annie, were captured by them. While infiltrating a military encampment to rescue the captives, Nick learns that government officials General Hemlock and Marion Mallon are responsible for the outbreak and witness them turning the U.S. President into a zombie as well to assume full control of the government. After rescuing the captives, Nick learns that the government is offering five million dollars as a reward for anyone who captures certain individuals with numbers tattooed on their neck, like him and Diego. Having finally obtained the fuel from Red, Nick returns to Rhonda and Dick only to find out that a deranged Diego has fled. Nick confronts him at the museum and has him return to his senses. After retrieving parts for the plane Nick learns from Rhonda that she's not going with them because she wants to stay and attempt to reconcile with her ex-husband. Nick then leaves to round up the other survivors but he and Diego are captured by the military. Nick awakens in a room, restrained next to Diego, who is killed in front of him, and the hundreds of parasitic bees and parasites swarming out of his body create a confusion that allows him to escape, meeting Isabella Keyes on the way, who reveals that he is the one the military is looking for because of his immunity. After surviving an attack from Mallon, Nick discovers that Gary had captured Annie and he refuses to let her go, but upon learning that Gary is actually Rhonda's ex-husband, Nick have the two reunited in order to rescue her. Once reunited with the others Nick learns from Isabella that he, among Diego and other orphans born from U.S. soldiers stationed in Santa Cabeza, Mexico were experimented upon by her brother Carlito in order to become live biological weapons, with each of them carrying the virus, except for him, who is immune to it instead, and he must leave the town alive in order to have a cure developed. However, interested in the reward for Nick, Red turns on the group and fights him. After Red is killed, Nick uses a transceiver, and pretending to be a military agent, tells Hemlock that they need more time to apprehend him. The general agrees, extending the time before the bomb deployment by an extra day. Soon after, Chuck Greene arrives with Rhonda and Gary, revealing that Annie was actually his daughter Katey and that Gary was working for him. Gary and Rhonda volunteer to stay and help rescue any remaining survivors before leaving the city by another mean and Nick is about to take off with the others, when he overhears on the radio that Hemlock is planning to create a biological weapon with the zombies. Nick and Chuck then decide to team up to stop Hemlock's plan before escaping. After Hemlock kills Mallon upon being angered of her disrespect to him, he proceeds with the extraction of king zombies from the city, but Nick and Chuck stop him and the General is ultimately killed in a confrontation with Nick, who escapes the city with the others, leading to the creation and distribution of a cure to the zombie infection. After the credits, it is revealed that Isabella was truly responsible for the outbreak, convincing Mallon to begin it so that the carrier of the immunity would be revealed, and successfully making herself the creator of the cure while clearing her family name from Carlito's crimes in Willamette. Back in the present, Isabella destroys some evidence incriminating her and leaves the city with the others.
Pros And Cons
Story
A Combo Vehicle
The story starts out pretty standard. It was stale because it didn't seem to have any connection with the rest of the series. If you wait long enough though, it eventually starts to make those connections. So if your disappointed when you first play like I was, give it some time and you'll be rewarded eventually. However, their are many inconsistencies with the previous game. Some things from Case West apparently never happened, and the wasps are called bees now. I wonder if Capcom Vancouver ever really cared?
Characters
Nick and "Annie"
Like previous installments, the only characters you ever care about are the main ones. It was nice to see both Chuck and Katey to see what happened to them after Fortune City. However I at first had a problem with Nick. He's a wimp compared to Chuck or Frank. He complains too much about his surroundings. However, by the end of the game you figure out how he belongs in the world Dead Rising.
Gameplay
Zombies... can't... do that
Okay... I'm going to tell you how the game both succeeds and fails as a Dead Rising game. The gameplay hasn't changed very much from the first two installments. You go around and complete missions to save survivors and advance the story. The main source of combat is with the zombies, and you can pick up pretty much anything and use it as a weapon, and can even combine items together to make Combo Weapons. There are many enhancements though. The biggest difference is that the game takes place in a city now instead of a mall. The area you can explore is more than twice the size of the areas in either of the previous games. The city takes the place of the malls, and the buildings take the place of the mall stores. Cars are found everywhere and can be driven around. The time limit has been quadrupled, and you now have 6 days instead of 3 to complete the story. The story missions never expire, and you can take as long as you want to complete them. However, the side missions to save or help survivors still expire after a while. Regardless of what you do though, the game will still end after the 6 day time limit. There are many collectibles such as Blueprints, Frank Statues, Tragic Deaths, and ZDC Speakers that you can see on the map, and collect to complete challenges for extra PP. Blueprints replace Combo Cards as instructions for Combo Weapons. Nick is a mechanic, so he can make Combo Weapons anywhere without the need of a workbench. Survivors are now taken to safe zones found throughout the city, and can be dropped off or picked up whenever you choose. There are also Clothing Lockers and Weapons Lockers at these safe zones, which keep a record of all the clothing and objects you've picked up, and you can get infinite amounts of them from the lockers. This makes combo weapons much easier to create. While overall this game is great, there are some severe flaws that I'd like to point out. This game is a buggy mess. All over the place I see dead bodies floating in mid air, random explosions that happen for no reason, and there's no consistency with the amount of abuse objects can take. Cars explode just from you tapping them with your car, sometimes a head on collision won't affect Nick at all while a slight tap to a wall will send him flying out the window, explosive barrels are placed everywhere in your path, explosives blow up just by punching them, it take Nick forever to start running, and the zombies... ARE TOO STRONG!!! They got the zombies perfect in Dead Rising 2, but they messed them up in Dead Rising 3. They made the game too realistic. Dead Rising games are supposed to be funny and comical. However, since the zombies now had realistic gore, they had to make them with realistic durability. You can't hack and slash zombies like you could in the first game until your character level is maxed out. I wouldn't mind this so much, except that they also made the zombies physical strength stronger as well. Zombies are undead, so they are rotting. They can't ever for any reason be as strong as a human. They can only get weaker over time. So how do you expect me to believe they can hang onto your car while your driving? If a zombie tried that, it's muscles would fail, and it's arms would rip off. The zombies also have extremely fast reflexes too. Zombies that are too far away to grab you somehow instantly reach over to you and pull you into their grasp within a split second. If a zombie did that it's muscles would break and it would become a useless body and fall to the ground. They are more likely to grab you too. They are like how the zombies were at night in the previous two games, and then get even worse at night in the third game. The zombies also attack you by hitting you! Zombies can't do that, they are too weak! Their mouths are the only thing you need to worry about! If you were trapped in a room with a single zombie, there is now way it could harm you unless you let it walk right up to you and bite you! Zombies are only strong in groups because there's too many mouth to track the locations of. While you trying to keep three mouths in front of you from biting you, another mouth could come up behind you. That's how zombies work! There is no need for this kind of bull crap in a George A. Romero style zombie game. If the zombies are this strong, then that must mean they aren't really zombies. They aren't really undead. They are just people infected with a rabies like disease like the ones from Left 4 Dead. I wonder if Capcom Vancouver ever really cared?
Graphics
So many zombies
Once again, the graphics have been updated. Everything looks much more realistic than they did in the first two games. I don't like the style they chose though. It reminds of the styles from Dead Island or Battlefield 4 where everything is sunny. I liked the more toony and brightly colored styles of the first two games better. Supposedly the game can render three times as much zombies on screen than in Dead Rising 2, which means at least 21,000 zombies at once! That is once again, very impressive. The zombies also have anatomically correct blood and gore.
Releases
Dead Rising 3 was originally released for the Xbox One worldwide on November 22, 2013. A Windows version was later released on September 5, 2014. Later, four DLC packs that added on extra scenarios, weapons, combo weapons, vehicles, and costumes were released for both Xbox One and Windows. They were Operation Eagle, Fallen Angel, Chaos Rising, and The Last Agent. Then an exclusive DLC for Xbox One was released called Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX+Alpha. The name was a reference to the Street Fighter series, and featured a plethora of references to other Capcom game series. The DLC itself was set up like a game show where you complete many odd challenges such as killing zombies, saving 8-bit survivors, and destroying a giant Sudan.
My Rating
I give this game an 8/10. While this game is still more fluent than the first game, it still isn't a worthy successor to Dead Rising 2. Mainly because it failed with the most important aspect of any zombie game, as in they messed up the zombies. Did Capcom Vancouver even care?