Dead Rising 3 - Nightmare Over

Another game completed and this time its an Xbox One title (gasp) with the name of Dead Rising 3. I have played and finished all of the previous titles so I should be ready for this one? Right?

Note: By all titles I mean Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, Dead Rising 2, Dead Rising 2: Case West and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. Yep. I even bought the rubbishy 'Should have been DLC' one.

Okay, first off will be a complaint right off the bat. The game is FAR too easy. Okay this is coming from somebody who managed to clear each previous game (apart from the first) on the first run (rather than getting partway, running out of time, resetting with previous stats and rushing it). I also mean first time runthrough AND saving the large majority of survivors. Even not taking how I have played the games before into account, the game is too simple in many ways, the time limit has now been extended to a large amount now with me managing to clear the game, all sidequests complete with still around a little under three days still on the clock. (and still a nice amount left when playing through on the harder 'Nightmare' mode)

Bosses also have been weakened significantly. Attacks that are telegraphed too easily or attacks that never even seem to appear at all both make things far too easy, doubled with most of the bosses being unable to deal with most gun-based weaponry just means that each boss fight can be handled in mostly the same way 'Point and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and move about a little and shoot some more'.

Thankfully the core gameplay is still fun, chopping up zombies and creating rather crazy combination weapons being the main sticking point. In addition, despite the main core game being a lot easier, Zombies themselves are a lot tougher simply because there happens to be a hell of a lot more of them roaming around at any time. What's my favourite weapon? Gotta be the flaming death-scythe weapon that chucks out exploding bombs when you hit the 'Heavy Weapon' button.

The game is also a lot more accessible content-wise. Any weapon you find in-game goes right to the storage locker in any safehouse so you can grab it again and again. This may be a little 'cheap' for some but for the boss only weapons, its brilliant. The same goes for any clothing items, once found, they go straight to the safehouse closet system.

Storyline-wise the game is a bit of a mess where the lead character Nick, often is chasing around things for other people, despite having no reason to in some cases. Theres also a lot of twists around, the shock of some of these twists will be totally lost if you have not played the other titles though and some don't even make a lick of sense, being placed in seemingly just for a shock twist, screw previous character interaction!

Then we get to Nick himself. I would LOVE there to be a button to make him just shut up as every so often he will make 'AGH ZOMBIES' lines just to show that he's supposedly scared. This whole aspect of Nick annoyingly translates to the cutscenes which seem to ignore gameplay 'Yep, Nick just killed loads of zombies, several tough-nut armed men but is scared and stopped by one man wielding a baseball bat. Yeah...

That said, the game is very fun and the main core gameplay of exploration, making cool weapons and using them is all very good. I still wish they had brought over the 'Endless Mode' from Dead Rising 2: Off the Record though... Oh well :/

As for the upcoming DLC. Im not sure yet. Personally I am going to wait and see what others think of the DLC pieces before I pick them up. As it stands the game is good... But definitely not great and at the current Xbox One high retail prices? Sadly not worth it.