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| It's three days after a terrible zombie outbreak in Los Perdidos and Nick Ramos is about to have a very bad day. Or possibly, series of days. As the third game in the Dead Rising franchise (in development at Capcom Vancouver) there needed to be a shift from the confining mall and Vegas-like settings of the previous games and the developers have done so by making the game open world. |
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| "Open world" means that scoring a ride is essential unless one is interested in running across a world packed with zombies. Being in a vehicle doesn't mean Nick's safe though. Zombies can grab onto vehicles and lunge at Nick from the outside. Since it looks like Nick is into cars -- pretty sure it says "auto body" on the back of his jacket -- and with the series penchant of combining weapons, it would be a missed opportunity not to include customizable cars. Not just paint and rims, but death-dealing accessories like machine guns and cattle guards. |
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| Dispatching zombies quickly and creatively has been a hallmark of the series and Dead Rising 3 looks like it's making strides in streamlining the process of combing items and weapons. No more running to work benches! Nick also has some new items at his disposal, like a flare gun to distract large herds of zombies. And thanks to the extra horsepower of Xbox One (over its predecessors) those herds are pretty damn big. |
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| The open world environment streams without loading, according to the Microsoft press briefing so the natural "stops" of loading screens to give the player a bit of breather are missing. It'll be interesting to see how the developers handle the "Psycho" encounters of the first two (okay, two and a half) games. Will Nick just stumble on them as he scavenges for supplies? Or will they be "instanced" during specific missions? |
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| "Hundreds" of weapons are available, but it's good to see that my favourite, the sledgehammer, makes a return. Besides melee weapons and guns, the developers also showed off SmartGlass integration with the ability to call in airstrikes. Basically, it looks like you could pull out your SmartGlass doo-dad connected to your Xbox One by some kind of magic and press a button to make large herds of zombies disappear with powerful explosions. Does that option exist if you don't have SmartGlass? It had better. |
Dead Rising 3 is scheduled for a November 2013 launch on Xbox One.
- Aaron Simmer
