The hardest achievements to unlock in Dead Rising

Highlights

• Zombie Genocider requires you to kill thousands of zombies. This should be easy, but it gets a bit repetitive.
• The transfer is the most annoying because you have to answer and trigger every Otis call.
• In 7 Day Survivor you have to survive… well, seven days (at least in-game time).

In the early days of the Xbox 360, Dead Rising was one of the most notoriously difficult games to complete. Getting the full 1,000 Gamerscore was a real breeze, and on the newer systems it’s only slightly easier. Much of the difficulty will come from the survivors, who have terrible AI, and you’ll want to pull off a perfect run and save each one for maximum optimization.

The original version only had one save slot and there have been no ports with auto-saves other than the Deluxe Remaster. The lack of a fast-forward option is also really annoying, making the classic version a bigger time-waster.

This list is for the classic Dead Rising, not the deluxe remastered version.

7 Zombie Genocide

A service you should secure immediately

If you want to get 1,000G or platinum as quickly as possible, you should get the Zombie Genocider achievement on your first playthrough. While it’s easy, it’s very time-consuming and boring. You should spend most of your 72 hours getting kills with cars in the maintenance tunnels.

Cars will eventually break down, but there are several you can replace, and you should also save occasionally to have a backup in case you die or something else happens. After you get 53,594 kills, you still have to wait for the helicopter to arrive to get your ending and unlock the Real Mega Buster. This weapon makes the remaining achievements much easier, as it rips zombies and bosses to pieces.

6 Saints

Making a perfect run is brutal, but incredibly satisfying

After getting your trusty Real Mega Buster, you’ll want to pull off a perfect run, saving all the survivors while also reaching the true ending. This is Dead Rising’s toughest pure challenge. The survivor AI is notoriously bad, but the key here is to clear the zombies’ path with the Real Mega Buster, katana, or small chainsaw, and the survivors should follow you as intended.

You’ll want to use a guide here, as you can screw up the side mission triggers and there are unmarked quests that Otis won’t call you about. As with Sierra adventure games, you’ll want to save early and often. An important note here is that the Saint achievement won’t appear after completing 72-hour mode, but if you continue on to the extension and complete it, it will unlock.

5 Perfect shooter

Tricky until you discover the secret

One of the shortest achievement descriptions in the game is Perfect Gunner, and to do this you need to use a real machine gun, not a submachine gun. These come from the special forces members you’ll see towards the end of the game or in Overtime mode. You need to hit every single one of those 150 bullets, and doing this on real enemies can be a bit annoying.

However, it’s not just the enemies that count towards the achievement. You can also fire these shots directly into a vehicle or piece of meat where the butcher is located and get the achievement that way. Pretty simple, but how would you know beforehand?

4 gourmet

Another performance where a guide is an absolute must

Gourmet is an achievement that seems simple enough at first. You simply need to eat every type of food in the game, and with a keen eye you can probably spot them all. However, there is a trick to the food system that most people don’t know about. Certain types of food can spoil over time.

Examples include frozen vegetables, which can turn into thawed vegetables, and popsicles, which can turn into melted popsicles. You’ll have to wait 15 minutes for the quality to decrease in your inventory, which is unlikely since you’ll probably use it before then. How are you supposed to find out? At least with steak and pizza, you can probably assume they can spoil, but not with popsicles and vegetables.

3 Karate Champion

By the time you achieve success, you have shattered fists

Karate Champ wouldn’t be too hard if you didn’t have to kill a total of 1,000 zombies. That’s a lot to kill with unarmed moves, and if you try it at a low level, it’s going to take a really long time.

You should unlock the Double Lariat skill at level 18 and just keep using it until you reach the feat. Even then, it will take quite a while to reach 1,000 kills total.

2 Transmission medium

The most annoying achievement

Getting called by Otis isn’t the best thing that can happen, as your movement is extremely limited while you’re on the call. Many people will probably ignore it, but the Transmissionary achievement requires you to answer and complete every possible call in the game. While you can accomplish this during your Saint playthrough, it’s much more convenient to do it on a separate playthrough.

You’ll need to use a guide here, as receiving each call is pretty strict. You’ll need to be in specific spots and save specific survivors. You don’t need to save all of the survivors, but you’ll need to save some to trigger future side missions and for survivor-specific side missions. This achievement can be a little buggy, so make sure the entire call plays and you’re not interrupted.

1 7 Day Survivor

The 14-hour grind

7 Day Survivor has long been considered one of the most difficult feats in computer gaming history. Playing in Infinity Mode, you must survive for seven days, with each day lasting about two hours in real time. That means you’ll have to play for 14 hours straight. Given the OG 360’s susceptibility to overheating and the Red Ring of Death, this feat seemed impossible.

Thankfully, it’s much easier on newer machines, especially the Xbox Series X|S with the Quick Resume feature. This feature lets you get this achievement over multiple days, and you’ll probably want to, considering the updated ports can crash. It’s best to turn off the Xbox Series X|S for a 15-20 minute break each day of play to avoid crashes.