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Dead Rising is a celebration of schlock. When it was originally released in 2006, that meant mashing together every Romero-shaped '80s horror trope imaginable – from everyone flocking to the mall in an apocalypse, to survivors making inherently stupid decisions – and serving it all up with some deliciously hammy dialogue. Time has only made this snapshot of a bygone zeitgeist feel richer – in the last 18 years, garish shopping malls like the one Dead Rising is set in have largely died out, and revisiting Willamette Mall in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster has left me feeling sweetly nostalgic for mankind's sticky plastic kingdoms of commerce.
Time has been very kind to Dead Rising's cultural identity, but Deluxe Remaster offers a coat of paint and some much-needed maintenance for areas that hadn't aged as well. I've been playing the first 23 hours of the remaster and I'm having at least as much fun as I did in the original – if not, dare I say it, a bit more thanks to some excellent mechanical improvements.
The final countdown
I've played Dead Rising so much that, even though it's been eight years since I last dropped in, I could have played through the opening minutes of Deluxe Remaster blindfolded. I didn't test that, because the remaster's visual overhaul is gorgeous – Willamette looks thoroughly devastated as you fly in via helicopter, and once you land at the mall you'll be spending the next three days living in, there's plenty of shiny vinyl decor and icky zombies to ogle at.
You're actively rewarded for doing so – as journalist Frank West, your job is to chronicle what's happening with your camera while saving survivors and investigating what's caused the outbreak. Though my preview was limited to playing until 10:59 AM of Day 2, I kept catching myself stopping to take the perfect picture, from trolley-pushing zombies to people fighting for their lives. The point-scoring system for photography is still immensely satisfying, and improved controls – you can now move while aiming, thank the stars – make it easier to get up close to the undead without becoming their dinner.
Yet my favorite thing about Dead Rising has always been the fact that everything is time-limited. Miss the window to save a survivor, and you'll get a notification confirming their death. Don't turn up to an important lead for your investigation, and the main quest fails. It's as chaotic as it sounds, and when helpful janitor Otis calls with two missions to save survivors in open-air high street Al Fresca Plaza, I'm treated to the system at its best and worst.
Just as I'm about to turn around and tackle both missions – five minutes after I was told of them, if that – one of them fails because the survivor in need of saving has been killed off-screen. I arrive at the second in time, but when I enter the women's clothing store they've fortified, one of the pair attacks me with a baseball bat, forcing me to beat him to death with the only thing I've got on hand – a mannequin's leg. It's the only leg I've got in this fight – after a post-murder check, it turns out that I was meant to run away from the brawl until he relents, but that's as unintuitive as it was in the first game, so I'm left escorting a single traumatized survivor back to the security room.
However, even that goes wrong when I make the mistake of leading him through the Leisure Park after dark. One of my favorite fights in Dead Rising – the bat-swinging, gun-toting jeep full of escaped convicts – has returned, which would be brilliant news if I wasn't trying to escort a very fragile survivor to safety. I'm killed before the first words of 'Gone Guru' (yes, the dread-inspiring track is back) can blast from their radio, but the silver lining is that it leads to a handy demonstration of Deluxe Remaster's newly-added auto-saves. In the original game, this death would've sent me back to my last manual save, costing me over an hour of progress. Now, an autosave is created every time you enter a new area, which means I'm given a second chance to dash across the park. It's a fantastic change, and besides creating a general safety net, it makes it easier to reload whenever a survivor's wobbly-as-ever AI decides to inexplicably serve them up as a zombie buffet.
Speaking of neat tweaks, Frank can now pass time at save points. I used to hate finding myself with an hour or two left until the next case started – it was never enough time to go out and explore Willamette, but just long enough to make twiddling my thumbs in the security room feel like purgatory. As someone who bounced off Dead Rising's 2016 PC port because it felt too clunky, these individual tweaks really do add up. I do wish more had been done to improve character AI, but from the 23 hours I've spent painting Willamette Mall red, I would go out on a severed limb to suggest Deluxe Remaster is going to be the definitive way to play Frank West's three-day bender.
In moments of downtime between daring rescues and plucky scoops, I've found myself aimlessly wandering Willamette Mall, admiring its tacky storefronts and gauche themes (you cannot top a shootout in a Wild West-themed food court), deeply nostalgic for shopping centers that are either gone or bleached of whimsy and beige-ified by Very Serious brands. With Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster set to launch on September 19, I'm already planning my next trip back in time. The crowds will be a nightmare, but what can you do?
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