E3: Hands-on Dead Rising 4

The E3 showroom floor, particulary West Hall, can be quite overwhelming. So many different games are desperate for your attention, and you must choose carefully what lines you want to wait in. On Day 2, I had decided that the game I was going to brave the lines for was Dead Rising 4. I have always loved the Dead Rising franchise, and was very excited to play again as Frank West.

Comedy has always been a pillar on which Dead Rising is built upon, and in Dead Rising 3, they seemed to make the tone of the main character too serious. Getting Frank Back was a major bonus, but the only thing that didn’t really make sense was the fact that the game supposedly takes place 16 years in the future, yet Frank looks a bit younger from the last time we saw him.

The biggest change to the game play was the dedicated shooting, melee, and grenade buttons. It allows for much more seamless gameplay. Right trigger is your guns, X is always your melee and left bumper is always your grenades. Other games have adapted a similar control scheme and in the case of DR4, it was very beneficial.

The demo was timed and, unfortunately, I got a little carried away slaughtering the undead with Ice Swords and a crossbow that shoots out fireworks, rather than following the objectives. While we cant get too crazy in trying to predict or review the success of Dead Rising 4 based off of less than 10 minutes worth of game play, I can say I had more fun in my short time with DR4 at E3 than I did my entire play through of Dead Rising 3.