Dead Rising 3 Revisited

Dead Rising 3 was the third entry in the main series of this zombie slaughtering game that stepped it up and sent players into a large open world. This was a change-up from the traditionally more confined spaces of the other games allowing vehicle focused movement across multiple large zones. The goal of this change was to showcase the power of the fresh console generation and that they could literally just pile zombies onto the screen. It stayed true to the series while improving the visuals, moving the story forward and giving players ever so many combo weapons to make. This system was pushed even further with combo vehicles and the wildest set of created weapons one could ever put together. There were almost too many zombies on the screen at once and playing with someone online in this large world was thrilling.

Dead Rising 3 released in late 2013 as a launch title and exclusive for Xbox One that later received a release on PC as well. The game was developed by Capcom Vancouver and published by Microsoft Studios. Aside from the core game there were four mini stories released as DLC and these helped build the universe of the game. Each tale helped fill in portions of the story by giving a new perspective and characters to play as. A final piece of DLC followed these packs and it was wild with the name, Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha. This brought in some random Capcom characters and costumes for a super arcade focused battle type mode with up to four players competing.


I found Dead Rising 3 to be an excellent example of what I expected from the new console. The mechanics of swaying the controller were interesting to evade zombies and I liked the evolution of core mechanics for the franchise. The open design of the game worked well and the story was surprisingly well connected to the earlier games. Setting wise the game takes place in Los Perdidos, California during 2021 which is ten years after the events of Dead Rising 2 and follows the protagonist Nick Ramos. He's a local mechanic and is thrown into the middle of the largest zombie outbreak yet. There are obviously some mysterious elements involved and a wide range of wacky characters to meet along the way.

As with the other games the psychopaths return with some straight up crazy people to take on and some unique survivors to save. There were also more minor activities to take part in though these portions felt a tad shallow. I did enjoy the core story and was very surprised by how it ended in a positive way as I didn't anticipate the reveals. It would have been nice to have a proper sandbox mode and something more multiplayer wise since it was just cooperative. I really do love this franchise as the Dead Rising games have always just been fun to play and Dead Rising 3 was a natural next step for the series with a zombie filled world that showed endless potential.

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