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When Capcom unleashed the first Dead Rising game in 2006, it utilized the hardware capabilities of the new console generation. It launched on the Xbox 360 and allowed for a more densely populated and immersive zombie survival experience previously not thought possible. On top of the great technical accomplishments of the game, it allowed players to sink themselves into an interactive zombie survival experience similar to one of the most famous and influential zombie films of all time, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
Although the first game in the series had its rough edges, some strange technical hiccups from time to time, and a difficulty level that was higher than many were expecting, as games were starting to shift to become more passive, cinematic experiences at the time, its charm generally shined through and it stood the test of time. As the series continued and many more Dead Rising games were released, many fans of the series still clamored for Capcom to bring the series back to the general feel and clunkiness of how it felt in the first game, but the series never went backward in this regard.
Flash forward to 2024, and Capcom announced they’d be doing a full rebuild and remaster of the original Dead Rising on modern consoles and PC, being re-created from the ground up in the powerful RE Engine and sporting a ton of new features and improvements over its original version. The early reports and previews (including our own) showed that the new remaster aimed to improve many things from the original without changing most of its core features or tone overall.
Now that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster has arrived and we’ve spent a great deal of time at the newly facelifted Willamette Mall, we can assess whether this remaster faithfully updates the original or treads too far away from its source material.
If somehow you’ve never played the original Dead Rising, it’s a third-person sandbox-style zombie survival game with tight time mechanics and objectives, hundreds of different items and things to interact with, and dozens of zombies on screen at once at most times. None of these core elements have changed with Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, even though many of them have slightly changed as a result of some of the quality-of-life improvements.
So instead of spending too much time covering how the original game plays, we’ll focus on the improvements or changes and whether they turned out to be a good thing or something that may be a detriment to the experience.
Visuals
Starting with the improvements, one of the first things to mention is the updated visuals, which have been completely rebuilt and upgraded. This includes new textures, models, user interfaces, lighting, and almost everything else you see being improved in some way. This is generally a very positive thing across the board, and it makes the world feel just a little bit more immersive, but it admittedly does lose just a tiny bit of its original charm of feeling like a late PS2-era game with slightly simplistic visuals overall. In the end, it will really come down to personal preference as to whether this will greatly impact your game experience negatively or positively.
The revamped visuals do end up making some sections of the game that take place at night feel much darker as a result of the updated lighting effects, to where some areas do feel slightly too dark, even with the brightness of the game turned up higher than the default setting. These are the only parts of the new visuals that felt like just a slight downgrade from the original, but again, how much it affects your experience will be down to preference or your monitor setup.
Gameplay
As far as the upgraded game mechanics, this is where many old fans may be split on the release since the massive amount of quality-of-life improvements in the gameplay makes your trips through Willamette much less challenging and smoother around the edges. The addition of being able to fast-forward time and skip conversations makes the game much more streamlined and less clunky overall, taking out some of the difficulty and patience required to get through Frank’s adventure.
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster also auto-creates checkpoints every time you enter a new area of the mall, making getting through difficult sections or psychopath encounters much less frustrating since you can just reload the checkpoint from usually only a few minutes back if you happen to fail. For those who enjoyed the tension and frustrating elements of the original game, this may affect your enjoyment to some degree, or you may find yourself enjoying it more because of this. I found this a refreshing and fun way to go through the game, with less meticulous planning and precision execution required to complete many of the encounters.
Improved navigation and UIs, improved control elements including being able to move while aiming, a dedicated dodge roll command, new weapons and magazines, and lots of other features round out the experience to feel more like a modern action-adventure game, but I’d still argue it doesn’t hold your hand too much. Some of these options can be turned off in the options, allowing you to tailor your experience, to a degree, but others are simply built into the new experience and cannot be disabled.
Audio
As far as the audio, thankfully all the classic sound effects and music are still exactly as they were in the original game, but the voice acting has been re-recorded entirely, and I can’t say it’s for the better. Most of the performances are very straight and maybe a little too dramatic for their own good, in a game that clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The majority of the quirky charm of the original voice acting is lost, and those who enjoyed watching the cutscenes may be disappointed. I’d argue that the voice acting is one of the least important aspects of the experience overall, even if there’s a lot of additional voice acting here, since all the radio calls and survivor conversations are fully-voiced now, but it’s still of relatively little consequence, as you’ll generally be immersed in the gameplay, anyway.
In addition to the original music, you can now change the main mall music to whatever you want, including many new downloadable options featuring songs from other Capcom games, which are paired with all of the game’s new Capcom-themed costumes. It’s a fun little option if you just want to add to the silliness of some of the new costumes, especially the ones from Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Megaman, and others.
It would have been nice if they had included an option to return to the original voice acting or visuals, but this isn’t the case, even though there is a costume that brings back Frank’s original 2006 character model. However, If you still want the original experience, you can play it on any of the many platforms where it is now available.
Performance
As far as the general performance, it’s a solid positive across the board, as we were able to test the PS5 version as well as the Series X and Series S versions, and all ran at a solid 60FPS across the board, despite the improved visuals, and this makes a game like Dead Rising much more playable and enjoyable, essentially eliminating any of the small technical hiccups that would occasionally appear in the original version.
Another major bonus factor of the performance is the speed of the modern consoles’ SSD hard drives, which makes the load times in DRDR nearly non-existent, and it makes the whole flow of the game much more enjoyable as a result. After having played through the original game within the last few months, the difference is night and day, even when running the 2016 re-release versions on PS4 and Xbox One.
Conclusion
Overall, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster makes the original game far more accessible to a much larger and more modern audience. Players who appreciate those new elements will absolutely fall in love with this remaster. The $50 price point is a bit steep for what is technically a remaster and the new elements may hold back some older fans from picking it up on a whim, but it’s a great new way to experience the game for those who are open to it.
This new version makes one of the most unique games of its generation that much more enjoyable and gives Dead Rising fans a new way to experience a classic, with not much to dislike.
(9 / 10)
Amazing
(9 / 10)Rely on Horror Review Score Guide
Review codes for PS5 and Xbox Series were provided by the publisher.
