Note: There will be spoilers in my review.
First off, I'm a huge fan of DR1 and DR2. When DR3 came out, I literally bought an Xbox One for it, and I was very disappointed.
Let’s start off with the bad.
First, this is nothing like DR1 or DR2. It’s a GTA clone with zombies added, mixed with a vehicular combat game, and a sprinkle of DR2.
Second, they completely destroy the lore from Dead Rising 1, Dead Rising 2, and Case West. Anyone who says “play this for the lore” either never played DR1 or DR2, or at a minimum doesn’t respect them. To make it worse, they ruin the lore. They bring back Chuck just to make him a washed-up dad, and the big reveal is that Annie is Katey. Then they take it even further: right at the end of the game, by using Isabela, they turn her into someone who wants to “restore the family’s reputation” and who hatched a scheme with the U.S. military to draw out an immune person by staging an outbreak. This honestly makes no sense… because what are we saying, Nick is Deadpool or something? I really question if Capcom Vancouver even bothered to read their own script for DR2 before making this game.
Third, the map is laid out atrociously. For a game with so much emphasis on vehicles and vehicle combos, you really don’t drive them for long. It’s usually: drive to a point, the vehicle is cooked, bail out, get another. I also don’t like that they randomly block off one part of the map halfway through the game. It would have been better if they had isolated the game and unlocked the map gradually. Even though it’s probably bigger, the map somehow feels smaller than DR2’s. There’s just nothing to do except get mobbed by zombies.
Finally, the stock camera and aim assist are junk and make it feel even less like a DR game. You’ll do yourself a favor by downloading the camera mod to restore the feel of the first two. It makes the game a lot more tolerable.
Okay, now to the sole good thing.
The game is fun. The weapon combos and vehicle combos are pretty fun to mess around with. At its best, it really does feel like an improvement on the gimmick from DR2.
Most of the psychopaths are okay. They’re not super memorable, but they fit within DR.
Nick goes from a whiny crybaby to a more confident character. That’s one thing I think they did well—you’ll hear him get more confident in random dialogue as you level up. I remembered from my playthrough years ago that I really disliked Nick, but playing through again, I think he was a good character.
The neutral.
There’s not really a countdown or survivors in the traditional sense. I think you’d be hard-pressed to fail the time limit. Survivors now act more as companions. I don’t mind these changes, but it really does take away from the formula. For better or worse, part of DR is the fact they’re escort games. I do like that you get to make your own posse with the ones you rescue. If you ever did the Alpha and Omega achievement in DR2, you’ll probably enjoy being able to make survivors help you and not die in a few hits.
The other characters are fine up until the end of the game. It really feels like they had some kind of time crunch to get this out the door. The ending feels super rushed.
Overall.
It’s a fun game, but it probably needed more time in the oven or more involvement from some of the original DR staff. No game is likely to top DR1 or DR2, but at the end of the day, at least DR3 is enjoyable for the most part. I'm putting the score as "recommend" but overall DR 3 & 4 are both a race to the bottom.
