Dead Rising 3 Xbox One Launch Title Review

"And the devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility" 

                                          -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Well, I made the decision of purchasing the Xbox One 1st for the next generation consoles.  Hate me if you like, but I'm american.  The first game i'm reviewing on the Xbox one is Dead Rising 3 by Capcom.  I feel Dead Rising is as much a launch staple to Xbox as Zelda is to Nintendo.

Dead Rising has always been one of my favorite underdog titles that pushed the Xbox to its limits, but fail short with a random script that never made sense.  This time around Dead Rising 3 actually did a remarkable job with presenting a well connected and a plot driven storyline.

The main character is Nick Ramos an orphan that has an interesting past and future. Nick is a young, insecure, but pure-hearted mechanic working for Rhonda Kreske at Wrench O'Rama.  For most of his life, Nick has been surrounded by bad people but protected by the tough mother figure, Rhonda, but the zombie outbreak forces Nick to mature in order to over-come his circumstances.

When the group of survivors are trapped by a horde of zombies, Rhonda establishes that Nick is a master mechanic that can build anything, and that's where the fun starts.  The best part of the Dead Rising 3 is the improved crafting introduced in Dead Rising 2.  Players no longer have to track down an work bench.  If you have the blueprint and part, then you can craft anything from combo weapons to combo vehicles.

Nick and the group of survivors escape, but soon Nick is bitten by a zombie and goes on a search for the Zombrex cure.  Nick's dilemma cause him to run into a few interesting characters and a love interest named Annie.  Later, players connect the dots and learn Annie is really Katie Greene from Dead Rising 2. Another connection is Nick is one of Carlito's time bomb children from Dead Rising 1.

Within the plot Dead Rising 1, 2, and 3 are connected by Isabella from Dead Rising 1.  Isabella is working with Marian, the villain from Dead Rising 2, but it is a 7th deadly sin bonus that I will not spoil.

Gameplay
The game itself is not visually stunning.  I admit there are improvements, such as more zombies on screen and inventory management, but honestly I feel like Dead Rising 3 could have been a Xbox 360 game.  You will run into the same glitches such as unresponsive or unintelligent NPC's in your party or invisible walls. These obstacles could be a reference to the Silent Hill franchise where developers admit they designed slow characters or glitches to handicap the player, but I attribute Dead Rising 3 design  flaws to rushing the game for the Xbox One launch release.

Graphics and Sound
Blood stays Nick as players slash through 1000s of zombies, mutants, and psycho bosses.  The graphics are a modest increase in design at best but not the innovation i'd expect from a next gen console.  Sound is a problem because I feel the zombie noise is a backtrack.  I killed every zombie in the room one time, and I could still hear zombie noises.

Storyline
I gave max points for storyline in Dead Rising 3 because this was the first time every character had a purpose in the storyline and helped carry the plot.  The psychopaths were a play upon the 7 deadly sins with Isabella being the finally deadliest sin, Pride.  I like the cameos from previous characters that I fell in love with such as Isabella, Chuck Greene, and Marian.  The only person I didn't see was Frank West, but I got a feeling the way he was referenced...a DLC may be on the way.

Score
Overall, Dead Rising 3 was a welcomed revisit to the first zombie horror survival series started in 2006. Dead Rising was the walking dead before the walking dead was created.  I have a lot of personal attachments to the game because I grew up on the Dead Rising series since 2006 to 2013.  Dead Rising 3 is not the best game of the next gen consoles, but if you're a fan of the series, you'd love Dead Rising 3.
I give Dead Rising 3 an 8.0/10.