Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster Review: Another 72 Hours

Capcom seems to be going through their “retro era” with a lot of games either getting a remaster, a reboot, or a collection to get people to check out their old franchises. However, for every Resident Evil 2, or Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection, you will find that there is something that is so bare bones and soulless that it would rival anything Konami puts out onto the market. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is that game that comes off as something that should have stayed dead.

Name: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster
Platform(s): Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Game Type: Action-adventure
Mode(s): Single-player
Release Date: September 19, 2024 (Digital) / November 8, 2024 (Physical)

Meet Frank West, Photographer Extraordinaire

In 2006, photojournalist Frank West is alerted by a source that something is happening in the town of Willamette, Colorado. On 19th September, flying into the town with helicopter pilot Ed DeLuca, Frank learns that the town is subject to a military quarantine and observes several violent incidents throughout the town. He is dropped onto the Willamette Parkview Mall’s helipad, after asking Ed to return in three days.

Arriving at the mall, he learns that the quarantine is due to a zombie outbreak. The mall is breached, forcing Frank to take refuge in the mall’s security room. With the help of janitor Otis Washington, he travels into the mall. After helping DHS agent Brad Garrison in a firefight against an unknown assailant, the two strike an alliance. A person of interest to Brad, Russell Barnaby is located by the two, hidden in a bookstore. Barnaby refuses to be escorted to safety, forcing the two to return to the security room where they are unable to call for assistance due to a communications jammer. Frank meets and saves several survivors who are either trapped, injured, or held captive by psychotic survivors (the main bosses of the game dubbed psychopaths) who attack Frank. The two later rescue Barnaby from the unknown assailant. Brad is injured, forcing Frank to search for medicine.

In his search, he finds the medicine required to save Brad in the supermarket but is held by an angry and mad manager named Steve who is holding captive a woman he met during the mall’s breach. After killing Steve and saving her the woman rebukes him, mentioning Santa Cabeza. Frank learns from Barnaby that Santa Cabeza was ostensibly a Central American town linked to the drug trade, which distributed drugs that had a zombifying effect. Locating the woman again on security monitors, he questions her. Revealing herself to be Isabela Keyes, sister of the unknown assailant, Carlito, she promises to set up an interview between the two.

Isabela comes to the meeting alone, after being shot in a rage by Carlito. Frank escorts Isabela to the security room, where she reveals that Santa Cabeza was home to an American research facility experimenting on cattle and that Barnaby was its head. Isabela, as a research assistant, was privy to the fact that a species of native wasp was used in an attempt to boost the performance of cattle, but instead had a zombifying effect. The wasps escaped and infected humans, forcing a U.S. military cleanup of all life in the town, with few escapees. Barnaby begins to zombify and attacks Brad’s partner, Jessie McCarney, and is killed.

Isabela reveals that Carlito is planning to use the mall as a staging point to spread the parasites across the country, using bombs located in trucks. Brad and Frank disable the bombs. Brad and Carlito engage in a firefight, and Carlito is mortally wounded. Carlito manages to kick Brad out of the room, where he is injured by zombies off-screen. Frank can find him in the tunnels, where he tells Frank not to tell Jessie, and slides his handgun to Frank, implying that he wants Frank to shoot him. He will then fully turn.

Frank locates Carlito being held hostage by an insane butcher named Larry, and after killing Larry he receives Carlito’s locket before Carlito dies. The photo inside the locket provides Isabela with a clue that lets her guess the password to Carlito’s computer, and she shuts down the jammer. However, U.S. Special Forces arrive at the mall regardless and have cleanup orders. Jessie is allowed to live, but she zombifies. Otis escapes with a helicopter and possible survivors that Frank rescued. Frank returns to the helipad alone, and DeLuca’s helicopter arrives but crashes into the mall’s clock tower when a stowaway zombie attacks him.

Is This The Same Old Story

The story of Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things. It’s a basic plot that gets you into the situation and allows the world to tell you more as you get deeper into it. Also, since this game came out in 2006, it’s not worth spoiling at all. That being said, when playing this version of Dead Rising, I felt like it could have used the Resident Evil 2 treatment, either expanding the story or changing it to give people buying it something more to attract them into buying the game for a third time. Maybe adding some new psychopaths into the mall would bring something more to the game… Who knows.

Zombies, Zombies everywhere, and a Lot of Things to Swing

This is the main thing that has been upgraded in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. Capcom used the RE Engine to upscale and upgrade the graphics to more modern levels of graphic fidelity. However, while I love the RE Engine, I think this is not needed in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, the graphics are way better than they were on the PlayStation 3, but that doesn’t really justify the cost of buying the game. Since I was playing this on PC, I expected a lot more than what the game wanted to do. Upon loading the game up on my PC, I was greeted with a horrible sight: 1920 x 1080 WINDOWED resolution. Sure, I was able to resize the game to run at 3440 x 1440 resolution with HDR enabled, which is what I usually play with these days, but to be forced to a lower grade of resolution reaks of cheap conversion. Even putting the resolution into the correct settings didn’t seem right, it felt like the picture was stretched or zoomed in to compensate instead of adding more to the overall scale of the monitor I was playing on.

With the scaling happening with a game that hasn’t changed in almost 20 years, the rendering of undead on the screen runs a lot smoother than it did on PlayStation 3, or even the PlayStation 4/Xbox One release of the game. Instead of upping the number of models on the screen, the game still renders the same amount it did in 2006, meaning you have a better experience with the game with a lot fewer frame drops like you had back in the day.

Dead Rising: Become Chaos All Over Again

There was a new control mode added to Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, but the only thing it did was make it better to aim and shoot while moving, so it’s a small improvement at best.

Outside of that, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster has not changed much. You still have the same 72-hour time limit, you still fight zombies and psychopaths, do tasks for people you have saved, and take photos of the situation at hand. As I’ve said a few times already, if you played either version of the game throughout the years, then you have played this version. There is nothing new here.

More Endings than there are Starbucks Stores

You do get an additional “Overtime” campaign once you have completed the first 72-hours campaign, allowing the story to move along slightly before you get to see the ending of Dead Rising. There are also 7 endings to Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster that you can get depending on if you make specific conditions in the game.

Dead Rising is Still No Resident Evil 2… or Even Resident Evil 3

It’s hard to recommend Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster to anyone unless you haven’t played it before at all. Sure, the RE Engine makes the game look great, putting it up there with other games that use the Engine, but that is not enough to say that this game is worth even a discount price.

I know this might be Capcom’s way of testing the waters to see if other franchises that they have are worth reviving and reselling with updated graphics, but players deserve more when it comes to these great games. If they want people to buy games like Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, then Capcom needs to do more… And by more, I mean the Resident Evil remasters are the bare minimum requirement. Give people something new alongside those pretty graphics to make the purchase worth it or people won’t bother buying it.

Review Disclosure Statement: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster was provided to us by Capcom for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.