Hands-on Preview: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster

I was in college in 2006 when Dead Rising came out. HDTVs were already not in the majority of homes, but they were definitely a rarity in dorms. It was years before I learned what Otis was trying to tell me.

There was a common issue with Dead Rising: the font on subtitles was too small to read on SDTVs. You could often make out what was written on screen, but it would take effort. More effort than you could fit into the timeframe it remained visible.

Otis was the worst. He contacts you regularly to tell you the location of survivors and would talk to you as you try to safely navigate past hordes of zombies. Trying to discern the microscopic text while watching your movements was next to impossible. Then, he’d get offended if he was interrupted for any reason. We all hated Otis.

But not anymore, because Otis’ dialogue is voice acted in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. Too bad my days of playing it on a standard definition display are long past.

Dead Rising was an impressive, influential, and ambitious game for 2006, but it was also a flawed one. I loved it when it was first released, but I can clearly remember a lot of frustration. Beyond Otis calling my a jerk for getting interrupted, the controls weren’t great and escorting survivors was also a quick shortcut to going mad.

If you weren’t around, Dead Rising is the story of boastful and somewhat sleazy photojournalist Frank West, as he drops into a zombie-infested mall to try and uncover a scoop that will make him famous. Unfortunately, he has to wait three days for his ride back to safety to arrive, and when it comes to finding a story, he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

You’re left to run around a sandbox-ish mall full of zombies. There’s a persistent clock running, counting down 72 in-game hours until you’re saved. There’s a central plot that requires you to be in specific places at specific times, but you’re otherwise free to explore, save people in need of help, or take down “psychopaths” who have snapped beneath the weight of zombie-induced stress.

Deluxe Remaster doesn’t really change that. Well, aside from reducing the frustration.

Many of Deluxe Remasters’ changes aren’t even immediately noticeable. In fact, if your memory is flawed, or you just didn’t play as much of the 2006 version as I did, you might only notice that it looks nicer. But that’s only because Capcom has been sly about what got upgraded in terms of gameplay.

You might think that weapons always had a durability gauge, but the truth was that you just had to guess. Your katana would doubtlessly let you down by snapping when you needed it most. Now you can tell when it grows brittle. You can also move while looking down the sights of your gun. As I mentioned earlier, Otis can actually talk, so you don’t need to watch the subtitles while you hear about who isn’t looking too good in the cosmetic store in the entrance plaza.

Most importantly, the survivors that you rescue are better at defending themselves and staying out of harm’s way. They aren’t super-capable, so you still need to lead them through safe routes and trim the zombies so they can get through. But they won’t immediately get swarmed the moment you take your eyes off of them, as they often would back in ‘06. I remember growing so frustrated in the original version that I stopped rescuing people, but it doesn’t look like it will be an issue with the Deluxe Remaster.

I played through the Deluxe Remaster from the beginning to 11 am on the second day; the length that Capcom would let me play through. Much of it felt familiar. The graphics have been glossed up with the RE Engine, but you can tell they’re applied over an older game. Dead Rising was impressive when it was released. The characters had more detailed movement and expressions than what you’d often see in cutscenes at the time, but there’s still some of the telltale stiffness of the earlier days.

Impressively, the new assets and effects work extremely well overtop the dustier parts of the game. The graphical effects and character models still have slightly exaggerated qualities to them that make them feel familiar. The mall is also a nicely sterile consumer environment that incorporates the upgraded lighting and reflection effects well. It avoids looking too much like a fan-made HD mod, and instead seems to understand Dead Rising’s aesthetics.

I’ve heard that some don’t really dig Frank West looking so much older in Deluxe Remaster, but I think it fits the character. He’s covered wars, you know.

On the other hand, I did notice a number of graphical weirdities in the PC version I played. I had a lot of issues with the framerate stuttering, though it typically ran fine. More noticeably, the depth-of-field blur wouldn’t mind its own business. Focusing in the camera mode was unreliable. More distractingly, the blur would sometimes cover characters in cutscenes. We’re still over a month out from release, which is usually the period of heavy bug squashing, so, with all likelihood, this will be fixed by launch.

With only a day of gameplay under my belt, it’s hard to say if this quality holds up throughout Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’s runtime. While I’m happy to see better survivability among the, er, survivors, I’m not certain how they will do in later sprints back to the security room. Likewise, I’ve always kind of hated the “Overtime Mode” of the original and want to see how it feels this time around.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait long to find out since Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster releases on September 18, 2024. If you’re savvy, you’ll notice that this is the day before the events in the game took place (September 19, 2006).

I’m optimistic, to say the least. I’ve been putting off a replay of Dead Rising for quite some time now, and this glossed-up version of the original seems like it will be the ticket. It was never a perfect game, and it’s unlikely that Deluxe Remaster will be, either. However, it does nudge the classic title a notch closer to perfection.