First Impressions: Dead Rising 3

First Impressions is a close look at the crucial first hour spent with a game and its’ ability to draw you in or turn you away. Somewhere between a review and a preview.

Dead Rising 3 offers more of the same that you’ve come to expect from the Dead Rising series.  Zombies, lots of them, plentiful ways to kill them, pain in the ass survivors and less than clear missions.  Also, ridiculously one-sided psycho boss battles too.

That is to say everything you love, and hate, about the franchise is still going strong.  There is no denying the sheer number of zombies this time around (at roughly the first hour mark and without much effort I’m already tallying about 1,500 zombies killed). When it comes to pure zombie killing mayhem Dead Rising is still king.

Dead Rising is also still king of painfully annoying escort missions (and thanks to a less than clear description of what to do with them my first tag-along stayed with me for a long time).  The psycho boss battles are still also bordering on annoying as well. I got my ass whooped at the first one I encountered, because one, I had no idea I was walking into it, and two, the boss is apparently shotgun proof and controlling your character feels cumbersome and dodging his attacks very difficult. So there’s that.

It is yet to be seen if the larger world will be a blessing or a curse though, as traveling anywhere without a car can take quite some time and I’m still in the first little area.  Overall the map and everything else looks, sounds and plays fairly well but it is still early on.

Oh, and never select the restart chapter option if you die. It makes it sound like you’ll simply pop back to the beginning of where you were in the chapter (worthwhile choice if you aren’t happy with the choices you made and it is still early on) but it actually resets the game as if you haven’t been playing. Learned that the hard way when it actually reset me to the very beginning of the game. I could write another first impression in an hour or so now…

It is painfully clear already though that if Dead Rising wasn’t your cup of tea before it won’t be now. There are improvements to the game to be sure, including a very well done integration of the Smartglass app (seriously, getting an in-game phone call on your actual phone is pretty damn cool). Ultimately though, there is little to nothing significantly changed enough to really win the hearts and minds of people who weren’t fans before..

Full review to follow soon.