Dead Rising 4 Wiki

Dead Rising 4 is the eighth installment in the Dead Rising series, released on December 6, 2016. The game features the return of Frank West, the protagonist of Dead Rising, Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. This was the last game to be developed by Capcom Vancouver as the studio itself was shut down on September 18, 2018.

Bad Qualities

1. Frank West's personality has been heavily changed. From a man who is kind of selfish in his aims to earn fame, but sports a sense of justice and the will to help people, he got turned into a really selfish, cynical, unfunny and irritating buffoon. What makes it even worse is that for some reason, besides Frank's appearance and personality, Capcom Vancouver decided to replace his original voice actor T(erence) J. Rotolo with Ty Olsson, who on top of that is doing a pretty poor job at voice acting.
2. Besides Frank himself, majority of the other characters in the game are really bland, uninteresting and unlikable.
3. The game lacks co-op mode, instead featuring a four-player multiplayer mode divided into 'episodes'. But just like everything else in this game, it is really bland, repetitive and unimaginative.
   • Also, the servers for the coop game are terrible.
4. The game is really easy, with the most notable change being absence of the timer, one of the key elements in the gameplay of the series. However, after the backlash Capcom Vancouver released more difficulty settings, but they manage to make the game even more cheap and annoying.
   • In fact, its so easy that you can beat it without leveling up once
5. With exception of a really few bosses who can count as ones in a way, the game has no psychopaths. Instead of them there are maniacs - hostile NPCs with minions, who have unique appearances and dialogues, but lack any personalities, fighting styles (they literally use the same moves that Frank would use with the weapon they are armed with), music and introductions. As a result, the impact they have is zero.
6. Bosses are really uninteresting too (and also cliched), gameplay- and design-wise. The only one who seems to be more or less unique and interesting is Calder, but even his boss fight is poorly done, since it takes forever and it's not that difficult. Besides that, the bosses are also easy to deal with.
7. The AI of the bosses is dreadful and easily exploitable, to the point that they can get killed with vehicles, or worse, tricked into going towards an horde of zombies who can easily dispatch them for you. They also can be stun locked with a kick attack in the same fashion as enemies in Ride to Hell Retribution.
8. Unlike the previous games, which had stories that mixed dark themes, drama and black humor, but did it right, the story in this game fails at that, also trying way too hard to be funny and serious.
9. Even zombie variety is abysmal comparing to previous games. They have from little to no unique models, for the most part consisting of the same civilian zombies who mostly wear the same, but recolored winter clothing.
10. The sidequests are insanely uninspired and all feel the same.
11. The fact that the game takes place in the same city as the first game means nothing as it feels nothing like that location.
12. The game can feel clunky as it has an annoying lock on to items that are on the ground, making it hard to pick up the item you really want.
13. Gameplay has very little additions and changes from the previous installments of the series. In fact, this game offers even less.
14. The inventory system ruins a big chunk of the game, now items are locked to specific categories and cannot do anything else, unlike in previous games, where, for example, a cash register could be used as a melee weapon and a throwable object, now it can only be used as a throwable object.
    • If you want to use hand to hand combat you must throw everything you have because the game automatically forces you to use a melee weapon if you have one.
    • It also throws away the strategy of which items to hold.
15. There is no multiple endings, unlike the previous games, and the only ending shows Frank supposedly dying, only to return in an epilogue DLC (yes, an epilogue to this game is being sold as DLC).
16. A lot of cool and interesting abilities got removed.
17. Game's mechanics are heavily downgraded, really, just look at this . Anoriginal game from 2006 for Xbox 360 has more in it than a 4th (main) one from 2016 for PC and Xbox One and 2017 for PS4.
18. Speaking of DLCs, they don't offer much either and are overpriced. Holiday Stocking Stuffer Pack is just a pack of textures. Multiplayer DLC Super Ultra Dead Rising 4 Mini Golf can be fun for a couple of hours, but then gets pretty tedious. An epilogue DLC mentioned above named Frank Rising has some interesting gameplay mechanics with Frank being infected and needing to find a cure before he would turn into a zombie completely, also needing to feed on human flesh in order to regain health (though oddly enough, he can also feed on the zombies), however, it is really short and kinda unbalanced due to some human enemies who can kill Frank pretty quickly due to overpowered attacks, also, the story is bad and despite the interesting concept behind it, it's actually boring.
19. Its possible that this game might have killed the franchise as it's sales were terrible.
20. It's another example of developers lying and giving false promises, like that this game was going back to basics of the series, while in fact it's not even a tiny bit close to the original Dead Rising.

Dead Rising 4 is set to get a free update next month that introduces a new mode called Capcom Heroes. This is an alternative approach to the. Frank West returns to Willamette during the Holiday season in the fourth installment of the Dead Rising series.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The game can still be fun and has some funny moments.
2. The weapon combo system is still pretty good.
3. The graphics are pretty decent, despite the downgrade for the gore.
4. The lack of a timer does give players the chance to take their time and explore the map.
5. Despite that what Capcom Vancouver did to Frank, it's still nice to see him again as protagonist.

Reception

While critics shared many negative opinions with fans, they still gave the game positive reviews.

Jim 'The Jimquisition' Sterling, a notorious game journalist and critic, gave the game 8/10, comparing it's tone to Saints Row series and while agreeing with fans on various problems in the game, stating that 'he couldn't help but find it a damn fine, damn fun, damn funny game though.'

Reception from the fans of the series is mixed to negative, with most people having negative opinions due to the problems stated above and the fact that the game is so downgraded and lacking overall, resulting in being the most disappointing Dead Rising game (besides original Dead Rising's mobile port) so far.

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