Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster has to fix a big problem of the original

Dead Rising is the reason I bought an Xbox 360, and it’s particularly dear to my heart as a result. But as fondly as I think back to the time I played the game, I find it virtually unplayable today. There are several reasons for this: the prisoners in the courtyard are incredibly annoying, the mission timer is far too strict, and in general I don’t like replaying older games after a certain amount of time.

But more than anything, Dead Rising as a game in 2024 suffers from one flaw: its NPC allies are stupid. Dead Rising – as a wacky zombie game that offers a different flavor than Capcom’s other zombie series, Resident Evil – is largely a success. But it’s also the ultimate escort mission, and a great example of why gamers so often hate this kind of thing.

If you’ve never played it, Dead Rising borrows heavily from Dawn of the Dead. Players are dropped into a mall full of zombies and must survive for several in-game days until rescue arrives. There are 50 NPCs to discover along the way, some fighting for their lives, others hiding in fast food restaurants or otherwise keeping their heartbeat alive. I love the concept of finding other survivors in a world full of the undead and getting them on your side while you lead them to safety, but due to the poor AI, Dead Rising’s NPCs are far too likely to get their throats slit.

As Frank, players can order survivors to go to a specific location, hold their position, or actively follow in his footsteps. Players can also equip NPC allies with weapons, but even the armed allies regularly fail to do their part. This leads to a frustrating gameplay loop, made worse by the aforementioned mission timer that requires players to constantly be doing something productive. I have concerns about this timer that go beyond the way it interacts with NPCs—if you give me an undead playground, give me time to play on it—but I’ll accept just as strict a timer as before, as long as the NPCs don’t slow me down with their constant danger.

This feature is repeated in Dead Rising 2 and 3 and thankfully much improved, meaning my nostalgic returns to the series have been mostly limited to those two (and maybe a bit of dabbling in Dead Rising 4 every December). Actually, only the first installment suffers so much from unreliable AI friends. In later games in the series, allies can effectively evade and fight back against zombies, something the first game’s survivors simply couldn’t. While Frank would swim through hordes, his new friends would drown in them in the original. Perhaps that’s why Frank was always considered the main character of the series, even though there were several other playable characters – players had to suffer the most in his shoes.

The recently revealed Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (which seems more like a remake in the style of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy) offers not only the chance but also the responsibility to fix this aspect of the original game. The teaser trailer doesn’t tell us much about the project, but we can glean a few things, like a new voice actor for Frank. This suggests that this project is more than just another remaster for Dead Rising – a game that already received a remaster nearly a decade ago.

So right now I’m holding out cautious hope that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster can be the overhaul that Frank has so desperately needed for nearly 20 years. I’d like to think that Capcom, who have done a great job with remakes and remasters recently, understands this and has highlighted it in production as an area for improvement. A fresh coat of paint won’t be enough to make you want to play the game again if the allies are still regularly running into zombie teeth like that’s their job.