Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster review - Frankly Flawless

For the past few years, I've sat and watched as people get excited about incredible remakes of games from their past. From Resident Evil 2 to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and while I've enjoyed my first foray into those experiences via an incredible remake, I’m yet to have that excitement of a game I loved in my youth being transformed. I’m glad to say my time has finally come, and Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is better than I ever thought it could be. 

The elephant in the room is, of course, the game’s title of “Deluxe Remaster”. While Capcom officially classed this game as a “remaster”, they say, “it sits in the middle of both a remaster and a remake”.

What makes this more confusing is this is not the first remaster Dead Rising has had, but it’s by far the most in-depth. In 2016, the original game received an HD upgrade with improved frame rates and other quality-of-life features. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is much more than that, and I personally think this should have been called Dead Rising Deluxe Remake. While the core gameplay and story are identical to the 2006 version, the world around it has been completely rebuilt in the RE Engine. This is not just a simple graphical upgrade and shouldn’t be treated as one.

Hot off the press

For the uninitiated, Dead Rising is a B-movie zombie flick turned into a game. Inspired by the likes of Dawn of the Dead and other genre classics, you play as Frank West. He’s a reporter sent to the small town of Willamette, where things aren’t as they seem. Your aim is to get the scoop on what's happening in the town, and, in doing so, find yourself in the Willamette Parkview shopping mall, which has now been invaded by the undead. With 72 hours until help arrives, Frank must try to uncover why zombies have invaded and rescue as many survivors as you can.

Frank is just like you or me and is pretty unprepared for the apocalypse (although he has covered wars, you know). This means that when overwhelmed, he’ll have to use anything and everything to try and make his way through the mall.

You’ll pick up coat hangers, golf clubs and even lawnmowers to help take out the hordes. It’s become a series staple and it’s clearly encouraged as the game consistently displays your zombie kill count in the bottom right of the screen.

The shopping mall is your violent playground, and you have to use everything you can to your advantage. As you level up, Frank gains more skills like roundhouse kicks and, for some reason, the ability to ride on zombies' shoulders like a crazed fan at a Taylor Swift concert. At the core of the gameplay, though, is picking up as many random items as you can to complete your task. Every weapon from the original game returns here, and they are all placed in the exact same location, meaning if you remember where secret powerful weapons are from 2006, you’ll be racking up that kill count in no time. 

Every second counts

What stops Dead Rising from feeling like any other zombie game is its most controversial feature, which, in my humble opinion, is its best: the timer. Dead Rising and its sequel both work by using a timed system, something that was scrapped in later entries.

Frank has 72 hours to survive in the mall, and missions will only occur at certain times in the game. This means you are constantly against the clock in everything you do, whether it be a main story objective or just rescuing a survivor.

For example, one survivor may appear in the North Plaza of the mall at 2:00 p.m. on the second day, and if you don’t rescue them by 4:30 p.m., they’ll be eaten up by the horde. It’s not just about the timed pressure but the split-second choices you have to make in the game. A vital story moment could be on the verge of happening, but two survivors have just appeared on the other side of the mall. You can miss huge chunks of the main story depending on your choice, and that level of stress never eases up. 

Zombies won’t be the only thing stopping you from completing your missions, but consistent, clever boss battles too. The game refers to these bosses as “Psychopaths”.

These are people left in the mall who aren’t taking things too well. They range from a chainsaw-wielding clown to an overbearing Mall Cop. Each one has its own unique location, story, and weapons associated with them. It’s here where Dead Rising really hones in on its quirky nature.

While the gimmick of the franchise is being able to pick up anything and fight with it, the story is always somewhat grounded, but these psychopaths allow things to go a bit more off the wall, and the game is better for it. Fighting an evil Butcher using a wooden bench dressed as Megaman is the experience you are looking for here and one that you won’t forget anytime soon. 

Shopaholic

The star of this new iteration of Dead Rising is undoubtedly the Willamette Mall. It’s been completely rebuilt in the ever-impressive RE Engine, which still blows me away even to this day. Every inch of the mall is beautiful, and that’s noticeable from the trailers alone.

New realistic lighting effects mean the mall looks completely different at certain times of day. The food court now glows orange at sunset from the windows at the back, and the Wonderland Plaza is lit up by fairy lights hung around the play area. It really brings the mall to life in a way I wasn’t expecting and makes it all the more special to explore. 

Every character model has been given that same treatment, too, and cutscenes look even better for it. Frank can pick up tonnes of different clothing items around the mall, and he’ll be wearing them in all the cutscenes.

It’s still funny to this day to pan across from one of your close friends being eaten by a zombie to see Frank in a full baseball outfit. The RE Engine does a brilliant job with facial animations, too, and it’s great to see that in full force here; a lot of care has gone into bringing these cutscenes into the modern day, and I’m grateful for the treatment they’ve been given.   

One of the original game's biggest complaints was that NPC AI was just horrific, even more so than the zombies you were fighting. All too often, survivors you were trying to rescue would run into a horde of zombies when there was a clear open path next to you. Well, thankfully, that is a fear of the past, and for once, your survivors will actually listen to you.

A new system allows you to set a marker down wherever you want, and survivors will listen to that command. The deluxe remaster does an excellent job of making it feel possible to escort multiple survivors at once, but that’s only elevated by the new survivor affinity system. 

This new feature added to the Deluxe Remaster allows you to give certain items to survivors to make them more useful. Giving a drunken survivor the bottle of wine they requested will boost their health and attack power, making them way more useful to you. It gives some survivors a fighting chance if they get separated from the pack and adds an extra layer of fun stress as you scramble to find their requested items. 

That’s just one of a few excellent new quality-of-life features that have been added. In fact, if you look at all the things that were wrong with the original Dead Rising, you’ll really notice how improved this new version is. To get those aforementioned survivor requests in the original, you would have to listen to Otis's radio call in the security room. He’d let you know what he’d seen on the mall’s cameras, but this would stop you in your tracks, not letting you move until the conversation was over. Now, though, you can be killing zombies while he chats away and even skips through unnecessary dialogue at the press of a button. 

While guns in the original were powerful, you could never move while using them; that’s been overhauled. You can now precisely aim every weapon, meaning you can get that perfect golf shot now, too. Instead of waiting around aimlessly for the next case, you head to any save point and fast advance time, drastically speeding up playthroughs. Then, the cherry on top: instead of being forced to rely on public toilets to save your game, there are now new autosaves before boss battles and leaving areas. 

The perfect shot

Frank’s camera also has improvements. Throughout the game, you’ll be asked to take photos around the mall to gain experience and progress the story. While a somewhat annoying feature in the original, I found this new camera a lot more enjoyable. Experience points are given out more frequently, PP stickers (collectables you need to photograph) are worth more points, and rather questionable erotica rewards have been removed. Camera batteries also now last longer before you need a replacement; you can tilt the camera for better-angled shots and even pick up a flash around the mall. 

The changes made here are essential and necessary to bring the game into the modern era, and that extends to modern conveniences like autosaving, additional control options, and even changing the new Frank for the 2006 one (although that last one is a pre-order bonus).

Sometimes, however, the game's desire not to change the original can be its downfall. For example, each area of the Willamette Mall is instanced and leaving that area will completely reset it. This means you can’t leave a weapon or a vehicle in one part of the mall and return to that area to find it again. It will always work like you’ve just entered the location for the first time.

It’s amazing if you want to farm the mini chainsaw (which is still the most overpowered weapon in the game, 18 years later), but it’s a nuisance if you accidentally leave something behind when moving sections. It’s the sort of feature I imagined would have been removed in this remaster to create a sense of immersion, but by Capcom's own wording, this is still a remaster, not a remake. 

Other elements of the game are still janky and all over the place, too, just like they were back in the day, and I found myself using that to my advantage a lot through my playthrough. Psychopaths will get stuck on a wall and won’t move or reset an animation if you leave the room. Exploiting that jank definitely takes away some of the fun to be had, but then I remember that at its core, this is still a game made originally in 2006

The Verdict

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is far and away the best possible way you can experience Dead Rising.

As a huge fan of the series, I'm thrilled to have a remaster/remake hybrid that's so true to the original.

4.5/5

Reviewed on PS5. Review code provided by the publisher.