Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster review: all the mall things

I hate shuffling through a crowded shopping center on the weekend. Walking from one shop to another to pick up a few essentials feels laborious, flanked by people on every side, eyes forward, angling your shoulders to slip through and around the hordes so you can get to your destination, being careful not to touch anyone. Feeling totally isolated in a crowded place – it’s not something you need a zombie apocalypse to experience, but it does help.

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is an incredibly faithful remake of a survival horror classic. As investigative photo journalist Frank West, your job is to get to the bottom of what’s happening in the rural Colorado town of Willamette. A helicopter drops Frank onto the roof of the town’s mall and will return in exactly three days, which should be plenty of time for Frank to uncover a scoop, especially when zombies are involved.

Like the seemingly obvious inspiration, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising is a heavy satire of consumerism and US culture, and such an overt one that I’m surprised it went over my head when I was a teenager. I must’ve been truly dense, as everything from the way Frank helps himself to and abuses the products around the mall, to the abstract and exaggerated personalities of the characters you find within screams this message. 

Even Frank feels like a statement. He’s selfish, and while you can have him help survivors, the only thing Frank’s actually interested in is taking pictures that tell a story. The game’s opening helicopter ride has Frank witness people die, and he simply takes pictures and heartlessly comments on it as if it’s entertaining. It feels as if Frank’s altruistic traits exist solely because he benefits with better photo opportunities – and as the player, you’re probably only doing those things for extra PP (basically experience points) anyway.

As Frank tries to get to the bottom of the matter, he explores the mall and inevitably comes across survivors in need of assistance. Most survivors will be reassured by talking to Frank, who tells them about the zombie-free Security Room and his incoming helicopter ride, but others will need convincing. A few punches will force some survivors to calm down and focus on the matter at hand, while others are injured and require you to carry them, or at least lend a shoulder. Regularly returning to the Security Room with survivors can get old, but the rescue of each feels like a unique challenge.

In the game’s 72-hour mode, you can’t waste time. You must visit select locations – usually the Security Room – before a timer elapses and Frank misses out on the chance to get a scoop. Failing to get a necessary scoop will essentially break the entire main quest, and even though you can continue to play, you won’t see how the story resolves. Luckily the game autosaves every time you go through a loading screen between areas, but that might not leave you enough time to make your scoop, so be sure to make regular saves often, too.

This is a remake, but other than a few tweaks to how Frank West controls, it feels incredibly faithful to the original. Maybe even too faithful. Dead Rising is a survival horror cult classic, without a doubt, but it also has a few of the issues that other games did in the transition between the Xbox and Xbox 360 generations. This becomes most obvious during the boss fights, in which you chip away at the health bar of the enemy with whatever tools you have to hand. 

Bosses don’t get stunned by your hits predictably, forcing you to weave in and out of their attacks while poking with your katana or chainsaw. Some bosses struggle to turn, allowing you to hug their backs and swing away, but others can trap you in a combo that wrecks you. It feels jank, and that comes to a head in a late bomb defusal mission where you evade a truck that chases you while throwing grenades.

If you don’t want to get stuck in an awful situation, you’ll need to ensure you’re well-prepared before heading into a big mission. Food items will restore your health, and a good weapon will provide you with good odds of survival, but overloading your inventory with either one will have you struggling through. It might be tempting to loot the antiques store for battle axes and katanas to stuff your pockets with, but if you don’t have a bottle of wine to top up your health mid-fight, you might regret it.

That’s also where the process of exploration aids you in battle, though. Frank is a photojournalist, and therefore taking pictures is surprisingly important. PP stickers are littered around the world, and photographing them will reward you with these experience points. You can also get PP from photographing survivors, bosses, unique animations, and crowds of zombies. The faster you level up, the faster Frank moves, the more health he has, the more items he can carry, and he even gets a few unique attacks, like a Ryu-style Judo Throw break and Zangief’s Double Lariat. An early jump kick upgrade even transforms into a flying wall kick that rewards extra PP with every hit.

Along with all of that experience, you will also naturally start to memorize where the best tools are. I know exactly where to find those aforementioned battle axes and katanas, but I know not to ignore the chainsaws at the hardware store, and there are unique boss weapons that respawn wherever you kill them, too. It’s almost ahead of its time, like Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in the way that weapons with low durability feed perfectly into the aspect of improvising combat with anything you find, and you end up planning routes around the mall so you can stop by at shops to pick up the best tools before moving ahead. It’s very satisfying until you come up against more jank.

Despite how awkward Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster can be, from its name to its boss battles, it’s intensely charming. It’s not scary in the slightest, those crowds can be pushed through relatively safely, and time is a far bigger threat than the undead ever are. Willamette Mall feels like a character itself, one you get to know intensely as you explore each underground tunnel and shortcut, and the experience of visiting the mall and fighting through the crowds is surprisingly cozy.

Dead Rising is a silly game that’s secretly very smart. The boss battles might’ve aged, but the decisions you’re forced to make under a 72-hour time limit feel as impactful as a well-timed flying wall kick. You’ll be alerted that survivors have died when you were never even aware of them, and new ones pop up all the time. It’s just as tense and sometimes overwhelming as making that crossing through the packed shopping center on Saturday, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Score: 8/10

Platform: PS5