City streets also contain roadblocks and challenging vehicle navigability, and late-game chapters close off previously open pathways, often in the middle of a long connecting highway. You cannot warp about the map, and some hordes are too dense to ignore.
#DEAD RISING APOCALYPSE EDITION REVIEW TRIAL#
With a constant countdown clock ticking away, alleviated significantly in Story Mode, trying to get to an objective feels like a trial of patience. In areas with larger concentrations of them, though, slashing through the crowds quickly wears down your weapons, of which inventory is limited until you level up enough to gain more slots. Although they will grab and swipe at you, they exist merely to be cut down by your weapons and vehicles. The zombies themselves are basically shambling masses of meat. Navigation plays heavily into why I didn’t enjoy Dead Rising 3 as much as others may have. Vehicles are necessary to traversing the city of Los Perdidos, but every zombie you hit wears them down considerably until they eventually explode, so it’s also best to rely on combination vehicles, such as a motorbike crossed with a steamroller, to navigate the terrain. Nick can also find blueprints to put two vehicles together into some new death machine.
#DEAD RISING APOCALYPSE EDITION REVIEW SERIES#
And I’m compelled to ask what strange benefactor specifically left these blueprints all over town for him: another mechanic? Nick himself under a trance? His real father? Regardless of the fact that these answers are never revealed, I found myself wishing for a system that fans of the series are obviously not accustomed to, one that utilizes the hero’s actual skills over shunting him into typical sandbox tropes laid bare.Īnd this is assuredly a sandbox game with discoveries abound, including the aforementioned blueprints, Frank West trophies, ZDC speakers to shoot out, and tragic deaths to witness. For a mechanic with enough tinkering ingenuity to strap together a sledgehammer and a car battery in the middle of the street, you’d think he’d have the ability to experiment. However, Nick Ramos, the protagonist in this entry, cannot put together obvious combinations unless he first finds a blueprint, sometimes leaving you at a loss unless he does. One becomes so reliant on combination weapons that the regular ones strewn about (and boy, are they strewn) feel useless and underwhelming. In some ways, this is the folly of the game. Weapons such as gloves that emit arcade machine announcements and a gun that launches dildos drive the experience towards entertainment. This new construction is often either more badass than the sum of its parts or it’s somewhat funny. For the uninitiated, Dead Rising’s offering to the undulating masses of zombie games is weapon variety -the main protagonist in each game is able to mesh together two objects to form a new weapon.