Dead Rising HD Collection Review

I find the marketing slogan of “HD Remasters” a fairly ironic one, in most cases they are often remasters of games that were already HD in the first place - Dead Rising rings more true of this than any other game for me. Released as one of the earliest titles available for the Xbox 360, it was likely one of the first games that many people saw in HD, I know it was for me.

10 years later and Capcom have decided to re-release Dead Rising 1, Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record. All three have been upscaled, with a few added bits of DLC added in. It’s clearly an effort to build hype for the forthcoming Dead Rising 4 release, but is it worth the plunge? While most remasters tend to add glossy extra content in order to attract those on the fence, the Dead Rising Remasters are literally just an upscaled faster running version of the original releases - blemishes and all.

Largely speaking, this is a fairly lacklustre remaster. Capcom have minimised the amount of work put into these games as much as they can. Dead Rising 1 is simply upscaled, no new textures have been created. This means the original 720p pixel count on assets is noticeably stretched for those players running at the title at 1080p. At a reasonable distance, assets look perfectly fine, but get too close and they become incredibly blurry. The character models haven’t done too well in the upscale either, they end up looking really out of place against the back-set.

Minor graphical issues aside, all three games run at a (mostly) solid 60 fps. I say mostly because in Dead Rising 1 there are a few weapons linked to slightly odd framerate issues, the sledgehammer is a perfect example of it. Using the sledgehammer on a group of enemies will lead to frame drops between each consecutive hit. It’s something that was an issue on the original versions, but the improved frame rate makes it much more jarring. It’s also worth noting that the bump up to 60fps seems to have messed with the internal clock on Dead Rising 1. The days are noticeably shorter than before, making it somewhat harder to micromanage between time based objectives. There are only only an issue in the first title, as Dead Rising 2 and Off The Record are both based on the original PC releases; both of which were optimized with higher performance in mind.

I was surprised at just how well the series holds up, I instantly found myself remembering where certain weapons were (especially the lovely Katana placed on the awning near the entrance to the safehouse). It’s a lot of fun just exploring the world Capcom created, meeting and saving all the quirky and interesting characters within it. Even the boss bottles are far more fun than I remembered, with a lot of the aptly named “Psychos” having a nice amount of gravitas to them.

While there are a lot of positive aspects to all three titles, it’s not hard to notice how outdated some of the design choices are. In the first title Frank can only hand weapons to other male characters, whilst he must hold the hand of female ones. Across all three games female zombies attack the crotch of either Frank or Chuck. It’s at these moments I remember, I’m playing a game developed by Capcom, a developer not known for it’s balanced representation of women. I would have hoped the crotch biting was something they might have removed, even as a teenager I could see how it might be deemed offensive.

All three games have all the original optional DLC included, which basically just means there are additional costumes for players to choose from. I don’t really understand why Capcom didn’t include Dead Rising 2: Case Zero and Dead Rising 2: Case West. Something that would have likely made the HD Collection a sweeter deal.

Dead Rising 1, Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record are hard to recommend for those who have already played, the remasters really do struggle to add anything new. I really feel like Capcom have missed out on something special here. When you consider the effort Naughty Dog put into the Uncharted Collection, and the amount of content it offered; Capcom could have gone down a similar route, building an excellent amount of hype in the run up to Dead Rising 4.

For those that have never played any of the Dead Rising games, but want a chance to acclimate themselves with the series before the next entry releases, this is for you. You essentially get the full original experience with an improved framerate and resolution, just be prepared to put up with some very “Capcom” design choices. I honestly wish Capcom had made a little bit more effort with this, Dead Rising is a great series that feels bogged down by how far the industry has progressed.