Capcom Vancouver presented Dead Rising 3 behind closed doors, walking us through the demonstration that debuted during the Microsoft press conference while answering questions about the direction that they’ve taken. The changes that you can see in images were not a fluke. Capcom is pointedly trying to appeal to a wider audience in this latest iteration, saying it’s going after the Call of Duty player. Gone is the cartoonish visual design, replaced by a more “realistic” interpretation of a viral apocalypse. That change is part of the maturation. By shifting the art style, the combat can be “more visceral” than in previous versions, with “real gore.”
Hmm… we’ll see. I think the thing most people disliked about the Dead Rising games were the constant time limits that detract from the awesome environment you have to explore. I won’t say I especially liked the art style, but I don’t think I would point to it as the major problem with the game.
Better gunplay and controls would help a lot in general though.
Call me part of the Call of Duty crowd, then. I absolutely hated the time limits in the Dead Rising games. Changing that to more of a general open-world structure is fine by me.
On the flipside, I liked the cartoony over the top Technicolor look of the previous Dead Rising games. I’m not sure that “more visceral” and grim-dark is going to appeal to me as much.
I make hard choices all day at work. When I play an open-world zombie apocalypse game in which my character kills zombies with a teddy bear taped to a machinegun while wearing a Megaman costume and a giant Lego head, I don’t want to be bothered with time limits. I always thought that the super-serious missions coupled with the goofball antics of Frank West was at best an odd fit anyway. The time limits were the shitty icing on a shitty cake. YMMV
Indeed, I’m realizing with all this E3 threads about new games that my tastes are really off the beaten path. I can’t stand pseudo narrative open-world games (I like Batman AC, but the story and pacing felt very directed, and I didn’t do many non-story mission nor felt the game expected me to do so. It was tangencially open world), I just find them lazy design. If you want to do Minecraft, do Minecraft -I loved that-, but all I used GTA4 for was to install NYC mods and drive through some of the neighborhoods I used to live in. Couldn’t play the “game”.
I also find I like way more the Japanese approach to design than the Western one, and I loved Dead Rising for being that, a very focused, very gamey, very directed product that triumphed over the trappings of open world games due to its reliance on strict, tight mechanics (the hard controls being part of this). Which basically means I basically ignore 90% of the stuff coming out. I just hope they keep localizing Eastern games this generation… And that they keep being Eastern and not something like this weird cop-out (which feels similar to Lost Planet 3 in that regard).
Dont remember, but wasn’t the time limit possible to mod out? All we did when we completed it coop (that worked great at least) was to increase durability on weapons.
EDIT: Sorry, was thinking DEAD ISLAND. All these DEAD * - Zombie Games are confusing me.
Yes: It was really annoying with the time limit, I think I have it on my 360 but never really played it because of that.
I’m glad they’re removing the time limit too. I loved the game aside from that, but the limit really made it frustrating because you had to repeat big chunks of the game. That got old fast, especially missions where you had to run to the other end of the mall. (at least in the first one, I never played the sequel)
However, I don’t consider changing the visual style as a good thing because now it’ll more likely fade in with everything else. Borderlands started out that way - for much of its development it looked like every other FPS out there. When they changed the style to a more distinctive look it was the best decision they ever made. The game immediately stood out. And they credit the success of Borderlands in large part to that.
I’d just wanted to point out that the whole game sharing concept for both new consoles is an ingenious marketing tool for a game like this. It’s not really a game where you’re scared of running into spoilers, so when a clip shows up from fellow Qt3 members on my game feed, I watch it, and then all the concerns about the game not being 1080p or any other bullshit just sort of falls away because games like this make for the best kind of viral marketing where you see a clip and you say “wow, I want to play that.”
With that said, I’ve got a full plate already with Forza and Powerstar Golf and Killer Instinct and Resogun and COD:Ghosts. So keep those clips coming Qt3 folks. I’ll just enjoy the game vicariously through you for now.
“We also looked at various performance improvements,” he said. “In this type of big open-world game with tons of zombies and the ability to do whatever you want to do, like stacking a bunch of things and blowing them up, we knew we had to improve on those high points and tighten the gameplay experience. Finally, there were some stability issues that we dealt with to make everything that much smoother.”
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At 13GB it’s a huge title update. “With all of the fixes and everything, it’s a large update of about 13 gigs, but we really recommend getting it to ensure compatibility with the online players and all of the upcoming add-on content that’s coming out shortly as well,” Bridge said.
The patch notes in full are below:
[ul]
[li][] Content for DLC episodes 3 and 4 added as part of this CU.
[/li]> [li][] Various Stability Fixes.
[/li]> [li][] Various Performance Improvements.
[/li]> [li][] Online Stability improvements.
[/li]> [li][] Added a progress bar to main menu while installer is running.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed an issue which could allow the user to overwrite their save file during streaming install while the game is booted.
[/li]> [li][] Fix for missing English VUI command in Multiplayer menu.
[/li]> [li][] Some improvements to item pickups.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed a reproducible issue where the player could get out of the world.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed an issue where music wasn’t present during the streaming install.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed some mission scripting issues.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed an issue which could cause some co-op players to not progress blueprint collection achievements correctly.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed an issue where the UI was not updating properly.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed an issue which caused glass textures to appear low-res.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed an issue which could cause shadows to render incorrectly.
[/li]> [li][] Fixed a texture issue with the Golden SledgeSaw weapon.
[/li]> [li][*] SmartGlass stability fix.
[/li]> [/ul]
