Dead Rising 4 Review - Dreaming of Red Christmas

"Rumors of human trials, psychopaths, illegal human experimentation, abandoned missile sites. How can you say no to this Frank ?  This is our change please!"

Frank West is back for Dead Rising 4, and he is kicking serious butt just in time for Christmas.  This time around Dead Rising puts you in a small town of Willamete, where you must use your journalism skills to uncover a scientific mystery, report your findings/evidence and save the world from another deadly zombie outbreak.  Dead Rising 4 is a fill good button masher mixed with a little over the top drama, challenges to overcome impossible odds, and utilizing your environment to be creative and dominate maniacs that want you dead or zombies that want you for a meal.

What's New?
Capcom nailed Frank's personality, bizarre charm, presentation and story.  Fundamentally, combat has not evolved nor the challenges from the three prior dead rising games.  The biggest change is the removal of the countdown timer which allows you to explore more and have fun without pressure to get everything done in 72 hours deadline.  The reason the developers removed the timer was because this dead rising world is dense and loaded with challenges to encourage you to have fun!  There are endless amounts of survivors to save, blueprints to find, and weapons/vehicles to craft.  A big bonus is you are no longer forced to seek out a workbench to craft your combo weapons or vehicles from the blueprints.  All you need to craft from blueprints are the required materials.

Photography plays more than a tool to level up. Frank's camera has new batman like filters that let you detect hidden clues, use night vision or take selfies. They borrowed the exo-suit from the call of duty series which will give you an advantages in hoards melee fights or maniac boss battles.  There are no longer stronger zombies at night.  They are replace with a fresh infected zombies that come out at all hours and they are faster, smarter and stronger.  You can't throw melee weapons anymore as well.

What's wrong?
If you are familiar with the Dead Rising series, then you know glitches are bound to happen.  Textures pop in and out, frame rates stutter, clipping and collision issues get annoying, new crafted vehicles are undriveable,  and you can fall through levels.  They drop the co-op player mode and replaced the mode with a multi-player mode.  It's good in theory but with glitch issues and lost connections, it can really make the game unplayable.

Overall
I feel Dead Rising always found a way to capture an audience share culture and break down walls of what is expected from a good game.  Instead of zombie outbreak/weapon, the experiments are used to mass produced unskilled labor to do mundane task like farming or manufacturing.   If you're a fan of Dead Rising, then you know what you're getting.  If you not a fan, then you aren't going to find a hidden gem here.  Dead Rising 4 is a care free, have fun, and laid back game with enough content to keep the story paces and side quest to challenge you.  I'm a fan of the series so I give Dead Rising 4 a 8.5/10