The decreased time pressure and seeming tweaks to your health and enemy damage make Dead Rising 3 feel like an easier game than its predecessors-though thankfully the Nightmare mode that's unlocked from the beginning increases the restrictions on saving, health, and time limits more in line with the older games, if you're looking for that classic challenge. And even if you somehow don't make it to the end of the story in the ample time provided, you can restart at the beginning of any chapter right up to the final one, meaning you don't have to replay the entire game like you did in the past if you've squandered too much of your time. Rather than putting a ticking clock on each individual plot point, you now begin the game under the threat of an air strike to occur six days hence, and then go about your business at your own pace. Nick and Dick: co-op buddies with an axe to grind.īy contrast, you could go through Dead Rising 3 and easily complete every side quest (which have very generous timers) and story mission (which have no timers at all) on your first try. Starting and restarting over and over to build up your character level and streamline your path through the various missions became a hallmark of Dead Rising. In the past, it was nigh-impossible to do all of the side missions your first time through the game, and each step of the storyline had its own short timer that demanded you get on with the plot sooner than later, or else risk having to start the entire game over. You still get access to the retail mayhem of the previous games via the many toy shops, gun stores, restaurants, clothing outlets, and other shopping spots scattered around town-meaning there are still hundreds of everyday objects available for use as weapons-but the new game does away with the pervasive loading screens of the old ones, allowing you to move around the entire city and a surprising number of building interiors freely as you complete missions, combine weird weapons into weirder weapons, and look for the scads of collectible weapon blueprints and other trinkets that have been added here.Īt the same time, Dead Rising 3 softens the overriding time pressure of the previous games to the point that you hardly have to worry about the fact that there's even a timer in the first place.
The first two games confined you and your zombie outbreak to a shopping mall and a casino complex, respectively, while Dead Rising 3 moves the action within the entirety of the fictional city of Los Perdidos. Luckily, the game gets close to finding a happy medium between Dead Rising's signature weirdness and a slightly more traditional open-world format that makes this by far the most approachable game yet in the series. Dead Rising 3 walks a fine line between thoughtfully streamlining the flow of its predecessors' weird mission structure, and stripping out too much of the quirkiness that has defined Capcom's other zombie-slashing franchise since the early days of the Xbox 360.