Quote:
"When people have too many choices, they make bad choices."
- Thom Browne
There's a problem with Dead Rising 3 and it starts on the select screen. It asks what kind of person are you: a completionist, hardcore or something in between? The choice is even rephrased in a separate box in case you wondered what those choices actually meant. Completionist says (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "For those who want to see all of the content in Dead Rising 3". I don't want part of the game hidden behind some barrier that wouldn't allow me to experience everything there was to offer so of course I went for this option.
Fast forward over 15, maybe 20, hours and Dead Rising 3 is no more. I have seen all that there was to see and I was, I must confess, bored. Of course that initial choice of "game modes" actually just boiled down to the most divisive aspect of the earlier games: the ticking clock. Here you have 6 days to complete the game before the town is exploded by the government. The clock keeps ticking no matter what you are doing and quests and side quests are set up such that you can, in theory, run out of time before you have completed the main quest line and, as a consequence, be vaporised leaving you with no choice but to go back to the start of the game.
But my initial choice meant that once I had completed
every single side quest (bar one I bodged up due to impatience) and
every main quest mission there was a lot of time left on the clock. An awful lot of time. 2 days and 5 hours worth of time to be exact. The clock was rendered entirely pointless.
With the timer all but turned off I never once had a moment where I thought I might just let Lucy get eaten by zombies so I can save Ben who is a big guy and is great at beating back zombos. I never once thought I'd go grab someone else to help me bust through these crowds of zombies. I never once had to rescue someone and take them somewhere safe before I started the next boss fight. In fact, I never had to take anyone anywhere safe. All tension, excitement, thrill, or frustration is evaporated because the timer is off.
So with the timer disabled the makers were free to shove a load of collectibles into the game world: shoot these speakers, collect these Frank idols, collect 240-odd blueprints, blah blah blah. More tat to collect instead of creating a tight focussed experience.
Yay?So who is to blame here: the people who made the game or me? I could have turned on the difficulty to the max and had an (presumably) experience similar to Dead Rising 1 & 2. I could have resisted the urge and put a load of barriers in place and created my own experience. I could make a rule that says I can only play the game using cattle prods. I could have only played the game between the hours of 8PM-10PM. I could have created a rule that says that every 30 minutes I have to run my character back to a certain house because if I don't then a bomb will explode and if I don't make it then I have to restart the game. Yes, it's probably my fault for allowing myself to choose an option that was open from the start of the game without researching it thoroughly enough before I pressed A not knowing that it would instantly create a worse experience than I had in either of the other two games.
When you have the time however the cracks really start to show. You start a day and are instantly thrown all of the side quests one after another - literally one after another. WIthin seconds of one call you get the other. Then you have all the quests to do for that day. So you do a load of fetch quests and driving people from one side of the map to another and get very, very, very bored. The side quests aren't dished out slowly such that, say, as you're travelling with some guy from the first side quest that you get the call about the second. And you're all like "Christ, I better finish taking her over here" and just as you are about finished with that first quest and think "Oh, I can
just about make it over to the next place to start the next side quest" you are then given a third choice but it is halfway across the map and the time to get their is really short and you're all like "WILL I MAKE IT TO BOTH!?".
That sounds like an ace game doesn't it. THAT'S DEAD RISING 1.
So Dead Rising 3 is a game all about choices. I suggest you choose never to play it since you wouldn't be missing much.
Register
Calendar
FAQ
Search
The whole idea is what's kept me from having any interest in these games up to this point so as it stands DR3 is the only one I might actually consider playing. I mean I won't actually play it obviously because I don't have an Xbone, but I'll