Review: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (Xbox) -Frills Upgrade

Dead Rising is back. Yep, a solid eight years on from 2016’s Dead Rising 4, Capcom returns to its whacky zombie-slaying series with what’s now a second re-do of the Xbox 360 original. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is certainly a more comprehensive overhaul than the game’s Xbox One release, with vastly improved visuals, steadier frame rates, fresh character models and new control options in this 2024 version of the title. However, one of Capcom’s now-famous remakes this is not, which leaves us with mixed feelings on Dead Rising’s third Xbox outing.

Firstly, we’d expect most of you interested in this one to be OG DR fans, but 2006 is quite a way away nowadays, so here’s the basic premise. You’re photojournalist Frank West, and you’re investigating a huge disturbance at a US shopping mall. Over the next 10 hours-or-so (real time), you’ll be exploring the Willamette shopping centre — slaying zombies and taking out baddies along the way — in this semi-open world third-person action game. There’s machine guns, machetes, silly cutscenes and cheesy one liners; this is a zombie b-movie in video game form.

Now, let’s talk about the actual remaster-y remastering going on here. Dead Rising Deluxe is running at 60FPS on Xbox Series X, and there’s not a ‘quality’ mode in sight. You’re getting the full-fat remastered experience at 60FPS, which we like to see – even if the frame rate does waver every now and then. It’s all pretty solid in the performance department though, and that alone makes for a much bigger blast of a time as you wander the Willamette shopping mall in search of zombies to bash in. Good stuff there, then.

Visually, things aren’t quite as transformative as the bump in frame rate from Capcom’s Xbox 360 original, but still, it’s quite a big jump if you compare the two side-by-side. The game’s character models are much less jarring now, particularly in cutscenes, and the environments both within the mall itself and the surrounding grounds are much more colourful and lifelike. All in all, DRDR really does pop quite nicely, but this is certainly a ‘remaster’ and not a ‘remake’, so expect certain elements to still have a bit of a ‘360’ edge to them.

An area that has seen an improvement from the 360 days is how the game controls. For this new remaster, Capcom has added a modern control scheme (the original is still there for those who want to use it), alongside a new feature where you can now aim and shoot at the same time. The latter can be a bit of a lifesaver, especially towards the end of the game where ranged combat becomes a necessity, and overall, we were quite happy for these quality-of-life changes. They just make Dead Rising feel a bit more modern to play on Xbox Series X|S.

However, much of the rest of these raising-the-dead shenanigans remain the same as they did way back in 2006. Yep, the game’s timer is still in place. Yep, you’ve still got a load screen between every area of the Willamette mall. Yep, you have to cheese your way through pretty much every boss fight. And, generally speaking, it does all feel a bit dated in 2024.

That’s perhaps to be expected – after all, this is a video game with its design rooted in the early 360 era. And yet, with this release effectively being a second ‘remaster’ of the first Dead Rising, we were maybe hoping for a little bit more here – especially with how bloody good Capcom’s new Resident Evil remakes are. This is Dead Rising largely as you remember it, but we think the removal of the game’s restrictive timer and a seamless open-mall structure would have worked wonders for freeing players of some distinctly 2006-flavoured shackles here.

To be clear, these could have been options rather than the only way to play Deluxe Remaster; so that the Dead Rising purists out there could still get their original experience intact. Without these options, this new remaster is definitely more of a fresh coat of paint rather than anything truly revolutionary, which is fine – it’s just worth knowing that and expecting that before you fork over the cash for it.

Actually though, we do want to shout out one new feature which saved our asses in the game’s Overtime mode: autosaving. We didn’t find this a huge addition while playing the game’s main 72-hour timer mode — there are plenty of save points that we rarely struggled to reach — but when Overtime mode comes into play and combat really kicks into gear, having regular autosaves every time we hit a load screen or a major plot point was a huge help. This, combined with the tweaked controls, are the best features Capcom has packed into Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.

Conclusion
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster pretty much does what it says on the tin, but we were hoping for a little bit more from the game’s ‘Deluxe’ moniker. The new visuals and performance improvements are nice, and the game’s fresh control schemes and autosave options make this the best way to play Dead Rising in the modern era. However, the game’s ever-controversial timer feels even more restrictive in 2024, and we feel like other dated elements such as the constant load screens could have also been brushed up for this new re-release. If you’re looking for an excuse to replay the original Dead Rising, this is it, but if you were hoping for a big modernisation of this Xbox 360 era zombie-slayer, Deluxe Remaster falls short of delivering on that.