Zombie Sandbox – Dead Rising 4
For ages, my zombie game of choice was always Left 4 Dead. I never really tried any others. But when the siblings and I spotted two copies of Dead Rising 4 in a local store, we decided to pick it up. Brother already owned it but me and sister didn’t. So we bought the game and decided to give it a go.
Once we’d downloaded the game, of course.
Initial thoughts: Lots of zombies, lots of stuff.
I was actually somewhat surprised by how much stuff each map contained. The map we played on was pretty damn large and actually looked apocalyptic, and there was a LOT of stuff to explore. Each mission is randomized with zombies and item pick ups, and you really can just grab stuff and kill zombies. And you kinda have to, since weapon durability is, well, pretty shitty. Most weapons, both melee and ranged, break pretty quickly. It honestly feels like a zombie sandbox. Kill some baddies, make some cool weapons, do some side objectives. We are given quite a big area to explore and it’s satisfying murdering enemies with different tools.
Interrupting that though are, well, timers. You need to do a bunch of tasks before the day ends (at 9pm) and doing these are how you progress and unlock different episodes. But these missions kinda take away from the zombie slaying.
However, I wasn’t that impressed with the loading times. Took us a while to actually get into a game. Thankfully you can skip the end-of-level stat screens. But getting into a map took longer than I expected.
The HUD is kinda weird and off-putting.
I don’t like Dead Rising 4’s HUD. It somehow shows both too much information and too little. And because the maps are pretty big, it’s easy to get lost or separated. There are objective markers but they don’t point to you where you need to go, so if you need to go up or down a level, it’s cumbersome.
Dead Rising 4 however is lacking something crucial – the ability to place markers to mark out loot and items. As the game is really dark (or insanely bright with shadows turned off), it is very, very easy to get lost or separated.
Actually, if I’m honest, the entire user interface is very… in your face. Everything is bright red, black or a shaky white. It’s the sort of interface that screams “THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY”. But it’s not that scary, it’s too flashy. We don’t need shaking events and blood everywhere.
A tad unstable.
While we enjoyed playing, things were a bit iffy. Both my brother and I had the game crash to desktop, and sister’s game wasn’t running great. I’m not sure what caused these problems though. Brother’s game crashed during the loading screen. But my game froze in the middle of combat, then crashed straight to desktop after five seconds.
The missions aren’t particularly fun or interesting.
As you enter a new area, there are tasks to complete. The main gameplay loop isn’t so much to kill zombies as it is to do various tasks. But these tasks just aren’t as fun. While decorating a Christmas tree is an interesting idea, it does seem kinda pointless when everything else is in ruins. That being said, we didn’t get very far into the co-op multiplayer, so it might just be that we sucked.
On the plus side, the bosses are pretty cool. Sure, Santa Claws is a pun name, but it was more fun than carrying a toxic bucket around. There were supposed to be other elite zombies as well, but the only ones we saw were zombies with coloured bags on their backs, and dropped loot when killed.
Overall, I did enjoy what I played. But I honestly would really like a free-roam or sandbox area. You know, just to tinker and find new ways to kill zombies. Killing zombies is the best part of the game by a mile. And they really do nail the zombie genocide side of things. For €8, I can’t really complain.