The core appeal of the Dead Rising franchise has always been about mashing zombies in absolutely wacky ways. There’s no denying the satisfaction from throwing traffic cones on a zombie's head before slicing it up into dozens of pieces. Dead Rising 3 decided to throw this characteristic away for a more serious approach. The results were disappointing; the game’s best moments were its controlled chaos of zombie slaying.
Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix does its best to tell players that it isn’t a serious game. Its retro aesthetics, comic-style visuals, and over-the-top moments showcase a game that’s meant to be played in a mindless manner. Sadly, it’s all coupled with connection issues and some of the longest loading times I’ve ever seen in my life.
Super Dead Rising 3 takes the base game’s best moments (zombie killing), removes the completely boring and uninteresting narrative, and replaces it with various arcade scenarios. It creates an interesting premise: you and three other players work together against the clock to kill zombies, reach points of interest, rescue survivors, and various other objectives. While in theory this leads to an enjoyable experience, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
That’s not to say I’m a hater of all things fun, but Super Dead Rising 3 leaves so much to be desired, and that’s without going into its technical issues. Part of the problem is the lack of tangible goals, something dungeon crawlers such as Torchlight and Diablo have in spades. Whereas those games are about exploration, challenging, and collecting loot, Super Dead Rising 3 involves following arrows, mashing buttons, and beating a clock. While there are characters and costumes to unlock, arcade cabinets to discover, and scores to beat.
Still, it doesn’t hold a candle to similar games, probably due to those issues I’ve mentioned. At its heart, this is a multiplayer game. There are several scenarios that are extraordinarily difficult to complete by yourself. While I understand the point of developing goals with a multiplayer focus, it’s downright insanity to expect you’ll be able to continuously play with others given the constant disconnects and struggles to find other players I encountered. Even after the minutes of searching and waiting completed, it only seemed like a matter of time before I’d be disconnected from the party, stuck on my own in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
For the few moments that I managed to play with other people, a quick realization came to me: some of these characters are head over heels better than others. The discrepency when it comes to damage output is absolutely nuts; considering the fact that players are competing against each other for top score, it's a shame that things aren't exactly on a level playing field.
It’s frustrating, because Super Dead Rising 3 shows moments of fun that ultimately get weighed down by its flaws. Still, I could be judging the game too harshly considering I rebought the original Dead Rising 3 just to play the expansion. It was in this state of thought that I realized something:
I enjoyed mindlessly killing zombies more in the base game than I did in the arcade style DLC. I guess that’s all I have to say about that.
