Hands-on: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster aims to definitively reanimate the 360 classic

The original Dead Rising was a proper, old-school magazine game.

What we mean by that is that prior to release, every gaming publication in the land was plastered with screenshots showing untold numbers of zombies clumped together, talk of a fully explorable mall, and endless weapons.

It’s a game that journalists rubbed their thighs over in column inches and led the charge as one of the first big titles in the nascent HD era (see also: Assassin’s Creed).

While it would eventually receive a fantastic sequel, followed by two further games of progressively poorer quality, the original Dead Rising holds a strong place in a lot of people’s hearts. It’s also the perfect candidate for what Capcom is calling a Deluxe Remaster, but what does that mean, exactly?

Well, if we take the scale of ‘remaster’ to ‘remake’, with something like the PS4 ports of Dead Rising 1 and 2 at the lowest level of change and Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 remakes at the high end, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is right in the middle.

The remaster is also content-indelible to the original. Changes that could have easily been made with current technology, such as a fully open-world mall devoid of loading screens, have been ignored.

While we still think there would have been a lot of potential for a full-scale remake of the first game, this feels more like the kind of work one does before reintroducing the franchise with a new, modern entry.

Dead Rising fans will be happy, but so far there are very few surprises to be found in the eerie halls of the mall, especially if this is your fourth or fifth visit over the years.

If you played the game as feverishly as so many did back in the day, it’s very easy to fall right back into familiar behavior. We managed to fly through the opening of the game, rescuing all survivors, and massively out-leveling where a normal player would be, a day and a half into the game. While it is very similar to the original game, however, there’s a larger number of tweaks and changes than we initially expected.

As has been reported, the game’s photography mini-game has changed. Frank no longer scores points for “erotica” photos, meaning one of the original game’s side missions has had to change. We’re in two minds about this.

On the one hand, it was always needlessly leery, and a bit lads mag, but it’s also key to one of the game’s satirical targets. Frank is this goofy pap who’s not too bothered if people are getting their heads chopped off, as long as it makes for a good shot. Of course he’d be looking for a titillating angle in all this chaos.

We can understand why Capcom took it out because there are few people who will actually sit down and acknowledge to the satirical angle as opposed to the comical one of ‘boobs = points’, but it still feels like a needlessly safe change when we don’t imagine too many people would have been offended if it stayed put.

There’s also a variety of new weapons, but they’re not entirely new to the hardest of hardcore devotees. Some weapons that were never completed for the first game but included on the disc (according to VG247’s Alex Donaldson, who joins VGC on a preview podcast you can watch above) have finally been finished and added, making for the definitive experience with every bell and whistle. Similarly, zombie cops can now shoot you with handguns instead of shuffling towards you suggestively, something that was intended for the first game before being scrapped.

Dead Rising remains an incredibly fun game. There’s something about mowing down zombies in the jeep, as the kill count absolutely flies up, that has never quite been replicated.

So far, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster feels like that oft-talked about ‘definitive’ version of a game. This isn’t inspired by the 2006 game, or a remake in the style of it – it’s largely the exact same game under the hood.

While we could take or leave some of the removals, 99% of what we’ve seen so far is what we wanted – a nicer looking, smoother way to play one of the Xbox 360‘s best.

We get the feeling if you know the original game as well as we do that you’ll fly through it at warp speed, but that’s more a testament to how well the game’s core loop has held up almost 20 years (Jesus) later.