I have spent a long time with Dead Rising 4 now, and there hasn't been a lot of talk about what it does differently from previous games other than the time limit. I also got a tired of hearing "this game is bad" with no information or depth to that criticism. So, take a stroll with me to zombie town and discuss what's going on in this game, and how bad it really is.

Inventory

The way you keep/store weapons has changed completely. Frank has a set number of slots for items you pick up divided in to 4 categories: Health, Melee, Thrown and Firearms. Each inventory has its own screen in a radial menu and capacity is upgraded separately, except health where food and health items become generic icons and can be access with a button press but no inventory to inspect. You craft from the ground as one of your first skill tree upgrades meaning that you don't have to be holding both components, though you can also craft in the radial menu allowing you to select which pieces to combine. Combo weapons are now made of one specific item and one generic category of item rather than 2 specific weapons, and while the crafting menu lets you choose which category item you use, crafting from the ground does not indicate what is being used which can cause problems if you intended to save a particular object for another weapon. There is also a slight delay when switching weapons from the radial menu which means swapping with items on the ground takes far too long and can lead to accidentally swapping the wrong items. Also, the storage lockers from 3 are gone and you can no longer summon any item at will.

Weapon Categories

Designed in the same way as the inventory, weapons are now split in to 3 distinct categories. Items have always had types represented by icons in the world to provide information on crafting but now this also limits what Frank can do with them. It is just my opinion but this is the worst change in the whole game and ruins what made dead rising's combat goofy and open. You can no longer throw melee weapons (you must drop something at your feet to discard it rather than throwing it). Similarly, you cannot strike with a throw-able weapon. Rather than controls that affect all weapons, each type has an assigned button (X for melee, LB to throw and LT to aim/RT to fire) meaning throw-ables have their own separate aim mode on a different button. Dead Rising 3 introduced skill moves that you could perform when you had built up a combo, with a lot of variation depending on what you were holding but because only melee class weapons can perform skill moves (regardless of what you have in your hands) there are significantly fewer types of skill moves available. In case you can't quite picture the effect, this severely limits your options with what you can do with your weapons. It feels like 3 types of combat rather than an all encompassing mechanic and control scheme that governed all objects in the game.

New Weapons

As with every entry there are new items and combo weapons (including vehicles introduced by 3). This game has promoted the 'exo suit' as being a big deal, and while this might seem like just an additional weapon the thing it adds is a whole new type of weaponry that can only be used while in the suit. This allows a lot of larger objects from the environment to be wielded as weapons that would normally just have been scenery and adds a lot of new possibilities for how you take out zombies. Use of the suit is based on finding one and a very short time limit, which seems to go against their design ethos of not restricting your fun with time (though the exo suit is considerably more powerful than Frank and would make the game even easier than it already is).

Photography

The photography is largely the same as DR2 Off the Record with the same photo categories for scoring (except a Capcom category for fun references). Rather than earning PP you get a point value for each photo, but the photos themselves don't earn PP, only specific photo grades for challenges. PP stickers are gone and replaced with Zombie graffiti which is functionally the same except the graffiti is much larger and easier to spot. The camera has 2 additional modes: night vision for darkness and spectrum analyser for hacking and finding hidden objects in the world (it also highlights interactive objects like bags). In story sequences you are required to find specific objects in the environment with your camera and take a photo. This results in the photography aspect appearing much more frequently in the gameplay than in previous games.

Time and Missions

The most obvious for fans. There is no longer a time limit for missions, nor is there any tracked progression of time. Your story progress determines whether it is night or day and that is the only notion of time passing. Missions do not run concurrently except in rare cases where a repeatable event will pop up or one of the very few story based side missions occur. You only have to save survivors, and each encounter is the same task of clearing out zombies in a radius around them. There are no missions relating to survivors (they don't require escorting, and only level up safe houses based on quantity saved making them basically a resource). Oh yeah, you now have safe houses to liberate in each district of the map and level up by saving survivors in the area. These act as hubs where you can safely chill out and buy items with scrap (a new currency, not worth talking about). As mentioned earlier events pop up randomly in the world based on proximity, usually relating to the military, and will endlessly reappear in the same areas if you come back. The same is true for rescuing survivors.

Multiplayer

I already posted about this here, but multiplayer has been completely overhauled. There is no campaign co-op. Players can now join 4 person missions set in the game world but confined to smaller areas. The missions are randomly pulled from a small pool of possible activities such as fetch quests and killing sprees, and must be completed within an in-game day which is between 5 and 10 minutes. Yes, they added a time limit to multiplayer. A pretty restrictive one at that. Before going on a mission you pick a distinct character from the 4 available, each with their own class that doesn't change much except their starting weapon but each have their own levels and upgrade points.

Abundance

Health is everywhere. Guns are everywhere. Combo weapons have a chance of just dropping from any bag you find and can also be found in safes inside shops. Health frequently drops from human enemies, and the inclusion of hostile survivors means that there are clusters of health and weapons scattered everywhere in a way that didn't exist previously.

Here are some smaller mechanical changes that don't require longer explanations.

• You have stamina that governs your ability to sprint and roll.
• Attack chain combo is now based on strikes, not kills.
• Food becomes generic health items and heals the same regardless of what it is (a hot dog is equal to a health pack).
• No mixing juices.
• Psychopaths are gone. Replaced with unique but story and character light scripted combat encounters. No cutscenes.
• Bags can be searched with randomised contents including combo weapons.
• There are way more collectables.
• The level cap has increased from the traditional 50 to 100.
• Fist fighting can only be done with a melee weapon such as boxing gloves and brass knuckles, or having no melee weapons at all.
• Wrestling style moves can sometimes happen as skill moves but there are no moves from button combinations or reliable ways to perform them.
• Combo vehicles have a short range attack, long range attack and a skill move rather than a singular function.

I find almost all the mechanical changes to the game to be negative. As Brad Shoemaker said on the Bombcast, they took out the time limit but then didn't replace it with anything. I've always enjoyed killing zombies in these games but even that is less enjoyable in this one because of pretty much all the changes I have listed above. I do like the new possibilities opened up by the exo suit, the inclusion of the photography and being able to level up safehouses but the core of the game feels so empty. Health items being generic bothers me, perhaps more than it should, but I enjoyed finding good health items and getting by. Scarcity of resources used to be key to the series and is part of what made combo weapons make sense in the first place because you're a survivor. Scavenging what you could find to make something better felt key but the balance has now shifted, and I am always overflowing with extremely powerful weapons.

I posted about the idea for writing a review for every game I finished this year but in the end I felt persuaded to not do that and have instead used my time to play more games that I want to, and inspired me to write about other things. People need to know. Most of you have already decided if you want to play this game or not but it doesn't help to be informed either way. I like the game but not in the same way as the others and my enjoyment is diminished by each change they make. Not because it's 'casual' or a lack of time pressure.

If you think I missed anything or got something wrong let me know. I'm far from perfect and happy to make corrections.

I want to hear from people who have finished the game if it ever adds any of the things that I say aren't in there.

Wow. Thanks.

I was bummed, but okay with, the removal of the timer, so long as the game was basically the same, but the specifics of these changes are the real problem here. No fist-fighting, no specific attacks, using weapons only for their specific purpose, no mixing drinks, generalized health items...So many of these changes remove the 'scrappiness' of what made Dead Rising so cool. DR's appeal to me has always been its cartoonification of survivalism. You make do with what you can find; of course, you are able to 'make do' to an incredible degree, welding motorcycles to steamrollers and assault rifles to shotguns, and even when you had nothing, you could mix some juice with fuckin coffee creamer to sprint faster than a car and DDT a zombie. The new restrictions seemingly remove the desperation, and how the series plays with that theme. That sucks.

@kcin: Some of this is evident from the quick look, some you can only realise playing it for yourself. For me it was also the scavenging aspect. 3 broke this a bit with the storage locker but the world and systems were still balanced a certain way in line with previous games. They didn't replace the time pressure or scavenging with anything. I don't understand why they would remove the ability to throw melee weapons or the first fighting.

There are many positive things in the game but they dont make up for what's missing.

Thanks for writing all that up. I was optimistic that the negativity around Dead Rising 4 was just an overblown reaction to the timer being gone, but it sounds like several other aspects (the combat, weapon availability, psychopaths, etc) are disappointing. I'll probably hold out for a good sale to pick it up and give it a try for myself.

Thank you for taking the time to write all of this out, it has helped me figure out how I feel about this game after finishing it earlier today. I absolutely love Dead Rising, from the beginning to it being the deciding factor of getting XB1 over PS4 at launch. It has been a low budget B horror movie in video game form with bad but lovable characters, wonky gameplay that can cause you to have flashback "NES rage" from your childhood, a world where it kinda got what the "in" thing was but also just dated as hell in other areas. It was a perfect mixture of imperfection.

Dead Rising 4 on its own is a good albeit easy game. The inventory system is so easy to manage that it threw me off in the beginning. While I was hesitant on the change of Frank West, the new voice actor did a fine job coming off as a likable, funny protagonist. The story was good enough to see through and of course plenty of zombies and ways to kill them. The collectibles are a good mix of quirky Dead Rising humor and to my surprise have become what I'm enjoying most about the game. Forget the time limit/save difficulty talk, with/without this game is way too easy. I understand taking certain aspects from previous DR out to appeal to a wider audience but there is absolutely no danger in this game.

While mainstreaming and making this a better playing experience for new players they seemed to have gutted a large part of Dead Risings charm. Timers, save spots, all-in-one inventory are all things I can see being done away with/modified but taking out the psychopaths stung the most for me. The maniacs are a soft/pretty much pointless aspect of this game, you go in and bash them a few times with a little voice dialog thrown in and its done. Psychopaths made the DR franchise in my opinion, they were so weird and off beat with insane cut scenes that ranged from just ridiculous to you having sympathy for them...they made the DR environment what it was. You never knew what you were gonna stumble upon, a slow man who's only friend was a tiger or a whacked out pop star from yesteryear who thinks zombies are fans coming to her big comeback show. You just hoped you had the right amount of food and weapons to fight them off.

I'm not going to bash Dead Rising 4 or even say I had a bad time playing it.... but the world I grew to love through all its flaws seems to be gone.