When Dead Rising was released in 2006, Americans consumed 28.1 billion pounds of meat. By the end of 2022, that number had risen slightly to 28.2 billion pounds. 18 years later, the core message of Capcom’s popular zombie action game – and its scathing critique of unbridled consumerism – remains just as relevant. Dead Rising Deluxe is an excellent remake of a classic. I think it’s a great addition to the Dead Rising Deluxe collection. Everyone Go experience it.
For those who don’t know, Dead Rising is a fantastic love letter to Dawn of the Dead and other classic zombie media. You play as Frank West, a photojournalist who suddenly finds himself at the Willamette Mall during a zombie outbreak. There, he must fight for survival while trying to uncover the truth behind the undead plague that has suddenly struck the heartland of America.
It’s a dramatic, entertaining, and frightening game with a well-written plot that ties into classic zombie fiction and criticizes overconsumption, especially in American consumer culture. All of this has been retained in the remake, thankfully untouched, while the more material aspects of the game have been brought up to modern standards.
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The quality of this remaster is astounding. Capcom has managed to modernize an iconic game in their catalog brilliantly, hand-repairing a great portrait in a decaying frame. Sure, the original game still holds up, but it’s not a controversial point to say it’s outdated. Thanks to the Dead Rising Deluxe remaster, though, I don’t see a reason to go back to the original other than nostalgia.
Let me explain why. Dead Rising Deluxe includes everything from the original. Everything. Every challenge, every survivor, every magazine. Playing Dead Rising Deluxe is like walking through a scene from your favorite movie. I rescued all the survivors in the order I remembered them, just like I did when I was 13. The katana is still on the awning near the source of unlimited orange juice in Paradise Square. The Wonderland Square shortcut is still nice to encroach on, and the mini chainsaw is still awesome when paired with the right magazine.
What made the original Dead Rising so great has transitioned beautifully into the remake without unnecessary changes. Little has changed in terms of balance and difficulty; I only noticed a few tweaks. Adam’s boss fight remains a challenge early in the game and a perfect example of Capcom’s approach, as OG players will remember that baiting his balloon attack to deal damage quickly and easily was the best way to do it back then. This has been fixed. Adam rarely does this, forcing the player to rush in close to deal damage. It’s a small change, but a significant one, in my opinion.
Perhaps the most significant improvement comes in the form of an overhaul of the survivor AI. In the past, the process of dragging a single survivor you found in a mall could be a bit annoying, and dragging five or six at once was masochistic. Now, you still have to keep an eye on your companions, but they’re less desperate when it comes to avoiding zombies. Meanwhile, players who manage to find the magazines that improve the survivor AI will still be rewarded – another example of how the remaster updates something without betraying the original vision.
This improvement also affects boss fights: instead of getting stuck into trees, everyone’s favorite group of escaped prisoners will be scurrying around the park, which is really hard to deal with. deliberately You can go all-out for a challenge. Bosses will still get stuck in shops or occasionally throw knives at walls in desperation, but it’s not too distracting, just an occasional blemish. It’s a feature, not a bug.
And then there are the graphics. They are fantastic. Honestly, this was one area where I was a little worried about the remake. Seeing Frank’s new look in the initial trailer didn’t exactly excite me at first. But after playing the game, those concerns were put to rest. Every character looks great, and the zombies look genuinely scary (especially in the movie).
But what really stood out to me was the psycho boss fights. In the original game, these characters were very different from the normal survivors. They were all caricatures, some looked more normal than others, and all moved and emote in an off-puttingly exaggerated way. I saw this as a positive – it added to the horror atmosphere of the game.
I’m happy to report that the remake not only retains the original’s features, it enhances them. There’s so much more emotion you can get from the characters in this game than there was in the original. Adam, probably the most memorable boss in the original, really benefits from this visual upgrade, but so do Paul, Cletus, and the others. It might not sound like much, but it adds another layer to the tone of these climactic moments.
The visual improvements have also carried over to the arcade itself, but there are some areas that annoy me – I’m not proud enough to blame nostalgia. Maybe it’s because some of the colors have been replaced with more realistic environments… I can’t really say. Objectively, it’s a better-looking game, and I had a lot of fun playing it, marveling at the little landmarks I remembered and their new coat of paint. But some of the original style is gone. Of course, your reactions and feelings toward this change may vary.
What really stood out to me, though, were the little quality-of-life details. These details feel like special gifts to first-time players. Some of you won’t realize what a gift that little staircase next to the vent in the safe room is. You also won’t salivate over being able to move slightly while aiming a gun; these weapon enhancements are significant.
The motorcycle’s ability to pass through doors to access different areas of the mall is a big boon for an otherwise bland vehicle, and any survivors you carry with you when you pass through those doors are also carried with you when you enter the next area. These little details add up to make Dead Rising Deluxe an engaging and enjoyable experience.
The story of Dead Rising Deluxe Remastered remains as compelling as it was when the game was first released twenty years ago. Bad News. If you’re new to it, you’ll get a story about anti-consumerism, government conspiracies, and American culture, all seen through the eyes of an occasionally ethically questionable journalist. So you’re fine.
This is only terrible news, as the relentless problem of hunger in modern Western society hasn’t changed much since Dead Rising was first released. Governments and corporations still abuse and destroy communities around the world for their products. As recently as June, banana producer and distributor Chiquita Brands International was ordered by a US court to pay $38 million to Colombian families after the company paid for a firing squad while operating in the region. Globally, the food and agriculture sectors are hotbeds of human rights abuses. Towns like Santa Cabeza may not be destroyed by a zombie outbreak as they are in the game, but the destruction wrought in the name of food production that the original game criticized still exists today.
Playing this remake, over a decade after I played the original, was eye-opening to realize that not a whole lot has changed in that time, and that somehow the story as a whole feels even more powerful than it did in 2019.
Dead Rising Deluxe Remastered is the epitome of how a remaster should be made. It doesn’t cut or change things. What Capcom has added and improved only enhances the experience of the original game. For Dead Rising fans, it’s like reopening your favorite childhood fast food restaurant, wearing a new, unripped version of your favorite T-shirt, or returning to a beloved vacation spot and finding that all the places you missed are still there, with a fresh coat of paint.
For new players, you’re getting one of the best zombie games ever made, made even better. This is the game that raised the bar, and it’s raising it again a few years later.
Dead Rising: Deluxe Remastered will be released on September 19th and will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The game was reviewed via code from Capcom and played on a PlayStation 5.
