Friday, December 30, 2016

Review: DeadRising 4

http://thisgengaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/deadrising4cover.png
Released: December-06-2016
Price $59.99
Also on: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Coming to PS4 2017


1st to start off with in this review I am a semi late DeadRising super fan, so with that said even take what some of the stuff I may say with a grain of salt.  I always state what I think in these reviews trying to give you the reader the best idea on what the game I’m reviewing is like as I had played it.  Make sure to come up with your own decisions about a game by reading multiple reviews, opinions, ETC. or just go out and rent the game before you buy it.   With all that said here is MY review of DeadRising 4 played on the XboxOne.



                Ok starting off this review by stating forget basically a lot on what you thought about a DeadRising game this is definitely NOT that type of game! No More Timers, No More Psychopaths, No More Toilet Saves, or even any easy type of saves at all! All those saves are now checkpoints which are points in the game where your adventure saves.  What? Wait! Don’t stop reading Now! There is still a lot of Great left in this game if you’re that type of gamer in which I am.  Did I mention Frank West is back? But NOT the same voice actor who played him from the 1st DeadRising game, but still a very good sounding likeness for his character which is set many years later in the DeadRising series.


Now for some cleanup, 1st This is Not in my opinion a bad game not at all, 2nd if you’re the type who likes challenges in their gameplay well there is NO challenge what so ever!  This game was basically dumbed down to the barebones nitty gritty for a crazy open world hack n slash adventure for all to enjoy. Basically if you’re not a skilled gamer and just want some easy fun this game is right for you.  The main part of the game starts your character Frank back in that FN mall again! Sorry Frank ha-ha… But don’t worry the giant mall is not your only place to do damage in, later in the game which is kinda split into Cases brings you out of that forsaken mall into a large open world in the town of….. You’ve guessed it Willamette!  Rebuilt with tons and tons of zombies to take on and take out with crazy vehicles, and weapons in which you create into crazy killing elements of destruction.





The game is for the story and basically accomplishes it amazingly well at least up till its semi climatic ending in which I won’t Spoil for you.  The main characters seem very well fleshed out with enough backstory to please me enough and not to get over or underwhelmed while playing.  If you’re a DeadRising veteran like me and got to play the 1st game in the series with a much younger Frank, then you will be happy to hear that the iconic janky gameplay has returned! This is not a bad thing it was meant to be in the game for funny occurrences between Frank and his enemies.  The game simply looks and feels amazing when playing at least when horrid game bugs don’t find you. (I will get to this in a bit) Plus the time this entire story goes down is right after Black Friday / before Christmas which everything is dressed up in a holiday festiveness of fun and joy.  Leveling up Frank’s abilities is back again like in all DeadRising games, plus like I said because of the game being really easy the leveling up system in earning points is very fast, so getting to be Super Frank won’t take long at all.  This game is truly for the novice players or gamers who just want some mindless easy fun to cause havoc in an open world environment. Oh and one more quick thing! There is a lot of collecting in this game LOT’s of collecting items like, newspapers, cell phones, taking creepy burned figures pictures, ETC. If you’re not into collecting maybe think twice about this game because there is again a lot of it, to help flush out the game and its story.


                Yes as you probably were wondering why I haven’t mentioned any backstory for this game well here it is!  The story of DeadRising 4 as I previously stated starts in Willamette years later after the 1st zombie outbreak incident which had all been cleaned up.  There is a New mall in the middle of the town called the Willamette Memorial Mall larger in scale than the 1st.  It’s Black Friday and thousands and thousands of people are fighting to get those holiday shopping deals. This seemed much scarier than a zombie outbreak as occurred during the fighting. Now all the people are zombies again sigh!? Frank now journalist professor is 1st introduced with secondary character Vick journalist student (a girl. Not guy! Yes this confused me at 1st) both on a drive in which Frank thinks he’s being treated to a few rounds of mini gulf. NOT! Vick shams him into going back to the one place he doesn’t ever want to return to, you guessed it Willamette! He’s outraged over the deception then wondering why they are heading to a military base in the town.  They enter the base and find out there is a big government conspiracy going on with the zombie outbreak happening again, and that they have larger problems going on than they know.  This sums up the story in which you can chose to continue to learn by playing the game for yourself if interested.


                Now I have to talk about all the bad in this game, I don’t like doing it because of how much fun this game was for me but it has to be done.  I’m going to start off with the game breaking bugs that I had many times run into, mainly the audio disappearing which happened to me in two occasions. Once when I was in the open game world driving around killing zombies, in which the audio completely went silent. Then if that wasn’t enough the game had froze after I tried navigating the menus to get it back so I had to restart the game, but that didn’t even work! It was so bad that the game would Not restart at all just kept pushing me back to the XboxOne dashboard over and over again, then I had to just reinstall the whole game again! After the boot up it worked again but I lost all of the progress that I had done due to not getting a checkpoint save! The second audio tunnel like silence which was way less harmful was during a scene so I just turned the game off and restarted it and the sound had returned yay!?  


The second bad thing that Capcom Vancouver had majorly done was to rid the game of actual psychopaths aka bosses which made a fun and funny addition in playing the game, as they told you a piece of their backgrounds before trying to kill you. Then they had long health bars to chip away before you would dominate them in each of their battles.  This absence like most have already have stated about this game is sorely missed and makes the game very bland and empty in which the more health enemies do not fill in. So if a DeadRising 5 is in the works Capcom! Return The Psychopath Mini Bosses! This was a major messed up situation and I can’t as a reviewer understand why they had gotten rid of them, makes No sense! 


 Next if this can’t get any worse for you the reader there is 2 more bits of bad in or should I say Not in this game. 1st being the lack of cool combo weapons which the series was so big and proud about, plus the lack of combo vehicles in this game unlike DeadRising 3 which had a slew of then to build and play with.  The second pretty bad and non-existent feature missing from this DeadRising game is the save points in the forms of bathrooms, closets, or just plain pause the game and save your state of play. These are replaced with what I think a horrid save checkpoint system that ONLY happens in certain points of the towns in which it will trigger and save your progress. Very bad indeed if you’re like me and game a lot need a break, have to run some errands, or even go to bed, which you will have to wait and go around town till it shows the glowing save box on the side of my screen then end. Wow why would this pass in an open world environment of a game now? I don’t think so! Oh and yes due to NO saving means NO multiple game saves sorry!


                Yes you might now be saying well fuck this game I’m going elsewhere and I fully understand you thinking. But even with all these problems with the 4th DeadRising game in the series! Yes I’m talking to you Capcom!! It still has lots of a budget appeal to the game which I say is still very fun to play! Even this one item which Capcom added and promoted a lot, the Exo-Suit is a fun bite sized edition to the game in fun killing zombies. These upgradeable Exo-suits are located all over Willamette and are timed limited to play with, don’t worry they eventually respawn and are plentiful throughout the game. These suits can get power longevity upgrades and weapon upgrades making Frank super human for a moment to kill lots of zombies!  And another nice edition finally added to the game was the introduction to different breeds of zombies or zombie types. Now there more than your regular brain dead zombies, 1 being fresh bit zombies who seem to look like they have really bad headaches, scream to high heavens at you, and just run charge at you. They are very quick and grabby so be careful. The 2nd type of zombies are what I call the smelly ones due to they look like they are covered in nuclear waste with glowing bugs flying around them.  But don’t take them for dummies they are smart, fast, and can climb walls and jump from anywhere so again be careful! 

                In my final thoughts about Capcom and DeadRising 4 are that I think due to Capcom’s financial budget problems as of late, I think the developers in Vancouver had a very limited time frame and budget to produce this game unlike DR3.  Still it’s all in all a very polished looking and feeling game when the bugs don’t surface.  If Capcom Vancouver had a few more months on the creation of this title I think this would be a must buy for anyone!  I don’t know why they decided to take out the psychopath mini bosses out of the game, but again I think they didn’t have the budget for more characters shame!  Even though Frank is not voiced by the same voice actor from previous games, he still has a similar Frank feel to him in his later years. And bonus plays the same as you remember him playing from previous entries. Again I think for budget reasons the lack of combo weapons/vehicles can be greatly missed and should have been priority number 1 for them to keep in the game.



                In my conclusion I will give you my personal opinion first then my professional second. My personal opinion of DeadRising 4 is with all its flaws it was still very fun to play and I love hunting for collectibles crazy me right?. But I still wished they had more to it as it does feel a bit empty in a giant open world environment with mostly zombies in it.   Now for my professional opinion I think if you liked any of the previous entries of the series well this game is mostly NOT for you.  If you the type to just have an adventure, lots of collecting, love killing lots of zombies in fun ways, and don’t care about timers, psychopaths, or save points this is for you! I hope someone for Capcom reads this and takes it to heart to try to bring the DeadRising franchise back to at least the DeadRising 3 form which I thought gave everyone a bit of something special, which made this series great. Don’t cheap out, don’t cut corners makes this game feel great and Sell! Now finally for my review score on this game my very easy simple system of (Horrible, Bad, Good, Great).  This is not the best system or even a good system for most but isn’t all the game review systems out there just bad? This is my system and I’ll stick to it! I have calculated this for a bit in my mind and even though I have enjoyed this game a whole lot, I can’t ignore any of its great many flaws from bugs, lost gameplay elements, to its characters that made the franchise the way it should have been today but Not!  This game gets a review score of BAD! Sorry if you want to check it out be my guest wait to rent it or wait till it’s very cheap in store. This game is Not worth the $59.99 price tag Capcom had put on it, if they sold it for a $39.99 price at launch I would understand all of this game’s flaws a lot better. Sorry DeadRising 4 (BAD!)







Fallout4 Got a Mr. Mike Score of: BAD!

12/30/2016 Review

Played On XboxOne

No comments: