Capcom's latest Dead Rising game for Xbox One and PC didn't quite win everyone over with its more laid back approach to the Dead Rising franchise. A change in voice actor, a change in Frank's look, and a scaling back of its absurd nature made it easy pickings for an Honest Game Trailer.
The video was recently posted up on Smosh Games' YouTube channel, where they took the game to task for basically being the equivalent of a Hollywood sequel cash-in. Most of the issues they had with the game were the same issues pointed out in our little piece about the 10 Biggest Game Disappointments of 2016.
They blast the game for the retread on the story, pretty much making it Dead Rising 1.5. It's also true that while the costumes are extravagant and plentiful, making use of the costumes and weapons against a boring horde of zombies gets boring... quickly. A lot of this spawns from another issue that the Honest Game Trailer points out: the timers are gone.
Mission timers in the previous games forced players to think fast and act quickly or fail the mission. It meant running from one place to the next, taking out zombies in your way in order to complete the task at hand. The short timers were one of the staple challenges of the Dead Rising franchise, whether people liked them or not. Removing the timer meant that gamers could just kind of roam around freely at all times and not really have to take anything too seriously.
They also pointed out another missing feature in Dead Rising 4 that made Dead Rising 3 so standout when it launched for the Xbox One: online co-op.
The missing cooperative feature made the game a lot more mundane because when things get truly boring in Dead Rising 4 you can't just load up Xbox Live and drag a friend along with you to lop off some zombie heads and go around smashing things with the new exo-suits.
However, the Honest Game Trailer isn't all about excoriating the game. They do praise Dead Rising 4 for the exo-suits being fun to use, as well as some of the weapons providing a good sense of thrills when crafting something truly heinous. The vehicles are also another highlight, giving Frank some over-the-top options of taking down zombies in spectacular ways. The Honest Game Trailer labeled them as putting turret guns on Tonka trucks.
Many of the commenters also noted that they really didn't like this cynical, sociopathic, surly version of Frank West, and preferred the Frank portrayed in Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. Then again, there have been a ton of people from all across the web complaining about various iterations of Frank West, so I'm pretty sure Capcom had the impossible task of trying to make the least hated version of the character possible.
I'm now curious if Dead Rising 4 will have the sales necessary to warrant a fifth game in the franchise? The community reception hasn't been the most positive, but whether the game gets trashed or not by gamers and Honest Trailers won't really matter if the sales justify another entry in Capcom's zombie series.
