One example of things I was glad I didn’t have to miss are the spontaneous events that spring up from time to time, giving you the opportunity to destroy some communication equipment belonging to the paramilitary bad guys, or rescue a survivor that will go toward upgrading the nearest shelter. Now you’re free to meander, explore, and get lost in this larger, denser version of Willamette. There’s an exhausting number of collectibles and weapon blueprints to find, side mysteries to uncover and solve through investigations, and hidden graffiti art to photograph. But I found I didn’t miss it much because there’s too much to see, and do, and squish to be satisfied by just 72 in-game hours, as we had in the original. Play Time to KillThe biggest change Dead Rising 4 makes to the traditional Dead Rising formula is the removal of the countdown timer that forced you to rush through objectives and make tough calls to bypass potentially interesting side objectives, negating that sense of urgency earlier games did well. Every area is spread out just enough that it takes a short, deliberate effort to get there, but I prefer the zombie-smearing drive between neighborhoods over the mildly useful fast travel system between shelters and the mall. The open-world map is made up of the central Willamette Memorial Megaplex (the hulking Mecca of commerce that replaced the original Willamette Mall after the events of Dead Rising), but it’s also surrounded by the fully explorable neighborhoods and rural incorporations, and you can visit those as well. Willamette, too, is more than it first appears to be. Some of the ostensibly important relationships between characters end up failing to launch, which I found disappointing until several good secondary characters picked up the slack and turned out to be more than what they appeared. There’s much more than a cut-and-dry “Oh no, the zombies are back,” plot at work here, with both callbacks to the original Dead Rising and characters that have more than one layer to them. Play And the quiet mystery at the heart of Dead Rising 4 is much more involved and compelling than it needs to be for a game that lets you tape a Segway to a golf cart to build a “Bogey Monster” death machine. And for every trying-too-hard line of dialogue like, “Well, set my balls on fire,” that Frank blurts out, there’s a moment of wit or compassion or genuinely loveable buffoonery that becomes the antidote to the obnoxiousness. But Capcom has balanced the absurdity with equal parts of intelligence and feeling. It would’ve been easy to go full slapstick with this ridiculous premise of yet another zombie outbreak, running down the same road that Saints Row took in later games in the series. I'm impressed with the detailed presentation and careful consideration that went into both the world and the story. Holiday decorations adorn the mall and city, and that holiday vibe even extends into the game menus, which pipes out that good department-store Christmas jazz and the kind of rousing orchestral scores that swell when the kid and his family are reunited at the end of a feelgood holiday classic. Capcom also absolutely nails the personality, the bizarre charm, and the Christmastime consumerism setting of the Willamette Memorial Megaplex. He might be the same self-important, sarcastic asshole with a heart of gold, but if Capcom set out to make Frank seem a little weathered with age, then it’s a job well done. He’s still a wiseass, though he’s 16 years older and a little wiser a wiserass, if you will. The cocky photographer’s return to the series after sitting out Dead Rising 2 and 3 is like being reunited with an old friend, despite his being voiced by a new actor. Play Frank West is the perfect delivery system for all of that.
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