Dead Rising Triple Pack Review (Xbox One)

Dead Rising is the first video game series that successfully managed to capture the feeling of a zombie apocalypse. The original Dead Rising made its debut on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 back in 2006 and managed to surprise everyone with the amount of zombies that it could render on screen. It also gave the player an ample amount of opportunities to kill these zombies including vehicles, customized weapons and more.

Dead Rising is always known for its wacky humor and characters that can utilize a huge selection of various home-made weapons to slice and dice the horde of zombies. This concept was pioneered for the first time in Dead Rising 1 and has continued throughout the series. It has evolved to some extent in the sequels e.g customized vehicles in Dead Rising 3 and mech suit in Dead Rising 4, but the basic concept has remained the same.

Dead Rising 1 featured a unique time limited system that required the players to complete certain missions in a select amount of time. Each of the mission is restricted by time and some of them were only triggered when certain conditions were met. This trend continued in Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising Off The Record but compared to the sequels, it was much more restrictive in the first game. This often resulted in some frustrated scenarios  because a simple mistake could mess up the whole game.

Dead Rising not only features hundreds of zombies, it also offers the player a chance to save the survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The series is full of memorable boss battles, majority of which are psychos that have lost all their sense of humanity. These boss encounters are all well designed, and in some cases, extremely hard and provide a good amount of challenge to the players.

Since the game offers the player full freedom of choice in how they tackle the story and side missions, it was possible to get stuck in a boss fight. This was particularly an issue in the original Dead Rising as it was considered much more difficult compared to its sequels. The game still utilized manual save and since the boss battles could be triggered when certain conditions were met, the player could get stuck in a situation where the last manual save was a few hours away. Think of it like Resident Evil with its save rooms.

Rescuing the survivors is never an easy task as it requires the player to locate them on the world map and then escort them back to the hideout. Details about their location as well as the side missions that trigger them are usually discovered through the radio in the game. The hideout also acts as the main hub in addition to a safe house during the zombie outbreak where the survivors can be gathered.

Each of the survivor can behave differently depending on their nature. Some of them will be too afraid to fight the zombies back while others will help the player during their way back to the hideout. It is a fun distraction from the main story missions. The survivors all have their own health that can deplete over time if the player can’t locate them. The best way to usually escort these survivors is to give them a weapon to fight the zombies.

Dead Rising 1 featured a young Frank West who has ‘covered wars’. He is a photographer which means he could capture the aftermath of the outbreak. Since Frank has a fully functional camera in the game, he can utilize it to capture pictures. This results in an experience points system where each of the photograph can award points that can increase the level of Frank. These experience points can also be gathered by killing zombies or building new weapons.

In Dead Rising 2, there is the additional twist of the Zomberex which is a cure that is needed for an infected person. In the original Dead Rising 2, the infected person is the daughter of Chuck Greene, while in Dead Rising Off The Record, it is Frank West himself who needs the Zomberex. If the player fails the locate Zomberex, the game simply ends.

The biggest jump in visual fidelity comes from Dead Rising 1, which now runs at native 1080p on the PS4 and Xbox One. It is also the first time the original game has been released on a different hardware, after previously being exclusive to the Xbox 360. PC users can choose a resolution over 1080p while console users can enjoy the game at 1080p with a solid 60 frames per second. This results in improved controller feedback and makes slaying the zombies an easier job.

Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising Off The Record have both received some notable changes compared to their release on the PS3 and Xbox 360. They now render at native 1080p resolution but also feature the improvements from the PC version including dynamic light sources. The frame rate for Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising Off The Record targets 60 FPS and mostly manages to hit it but there are some cases when it can fluctuate, especially in the huge area full of zombies outside the Casino.

This is rather unfortunate here but considering the sheer amount of zombies on screen and the weaker CPUs of PS4 and Xbox One, it is understandable. Still, it would have been great if Capcom could have optimized the game to run at locked 60 frames per second.

Dead Rising Triple Pack is a great entry point to the series. If you have already played the previous games but don’t own a decent PC, you can still enjoy these games again with the jump to full HD resolution and 60 FPS.

Dead Rising Triple Pack is available now for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One. It was developed and published by Capcom. This review covers the Xbox One version of the game.