Summary
It’s impossible unless you’re Joel Barish, but everyone has thatonevideo game they want to erase from their memory and experience for the first time all over again. Up until now, I thought that simply meant picking one of your favourite games, so I always choseKingdom Hearts 2orPsychonauts.
Those two seemed like fine picks considering how much they mean to me and how they both made me fall in love with the medium, but I’ve realised now that I hadn’t understood the assignment. There’s really only one choice for which game I wish I could play for the first time again, and that’s the originalDead Rising.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playingDead Rising Deluxe Remasterfor my review, which acts as a startingly faithful remake of the 2006 classic that gives it a brand-new look and makes countless tweaks to its creaky and infamously brutal game design.
Deluxe Remaster Made Me Nostalgic For Tougher Times
All of the changes that Deluxe Remaster makes to Dead Rising,such as reconfiguring skill moves, giving survivors an honest-to-god brain, and adding an auto-save feature, are largely positive ones that go towards making it the smoothest in the series, but they also have a noticeable effect on the difficulty.
Frank West’s remade three-day trip to hell is far easier than the original game in every way, from Psychopath battles toInfinity Mode. Some of this is simply because you can access the original game’s tools more reliably, but a lot of it is more purposeful than that. PP is far easier to gain, meaning Frank levels up faster and weapons last a lot longer than they did before, for example.
None of these changes bothered me all that much consideringDeluxe Remaster is attempting to bring the series back for a whole new audience, but for a Dead Rising veteran who knows the game inside and out, it feels much more like a walk through Leisure Park than a constant battle to escape the living dead.
Which brings me to wanting to re-experience Dead Rising for the first time. After 18 years of playing the original game, Deluxe Remaster was a total cakewalk for me thanks to all of the knowledge, tricks, and secrets I couldn’t erase from my brain.I know that the Mannequin Torso kills zombies in one hit. I know the Small Chainsaw is busted and can be upgraded to a game-breaking degree. I know that Colombian Roastmasters has unlimited Orange Juice and trivialises needing to find food. The list goes on and on — my brain is like a permanent strategy guide for everything Dead Rising.
I’m proud of being able to retain so much knowledge that is completely useless outside of one game (technically two now), but it started to feel like a curse in Deluxe Remaster. An already toned-down version of the game that’s meant to welcome players back or bring newcomers in turns into a much chiller time when you know what you’re doing and then some every step of the way.
Deluxe Remaster isn’t aneasyexperience by any means, but all of the changes are noticeable for returning players.
That wasn’t the case nearly two decades ago. When I first played Dead Rising, its hardcore difficulty and unwillingness to give the player an inch almost seemed cruel, but it also forced me to learn everything I’ve mentioned to have a chance of survival. They weren’t cool tricks thatcouldbe utilised in 2006, they were nearly essential to make it through a game that gives you no quarter.
Growing Up In Willamette
I still remember my first time coming face-to-jeep with the Prisoners, having no idea what I was supposed to do, and hightailing it to hide in Paradise Park until they went away (which they never do until you defeat them). My run-in with Adam the Clown was very similar, with seven-year-old George being terrified of such a powerful enemy that couldn’t easily be taken down with the single baseball bat and apple I was carrying at the time.
Those encounters were rough and likely caused many a tantrum, but they also led to triumphs the likes of which I’d never seen from my time with Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, and Sly Cooper. Defeating Cletus, one of the game’s toughest Psychopaths, for the first time is a formative memory for me, as was getting through Overtime Mode and finally seeing the game’s true ending after months of struggle and experimenting with every book, Mixed Juice, and machete I could get my hands on.
Learning the in’s and out’s of Willamette Mall and becoming its zombie-slaying king is to this day one of my fondest memories of a video game and something that elevated Dead Rising to being one of my all-time favourites. It’s the same sort of relationship that many had with games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and taught me that games could be hard, but so, so rewarding.
You Never Forget Your First
I’m sure that in the magical alternate world where I could play Dead Rising for the first time again as a somewhat smarter 25-year-old, things would be nowhere near as difficult. Even so, that same sense of discovery, learning, and growth would remain, and that’s incredibly rare in the age of modern gaming.
The only other game that has given me that feeling is Spelunky, another notoriously challenging game that requires mastery like no other.
It’s impossible for me to ever experience Dead Rising like I did when it first released, but Deluxe Remaster does at least come close to capturing some of those feelings. When I booted up 72 Hour Mode, I spent most of my time wandering around Willamette and gawking at how it’s been changed as if it wasn’t overrun by flesh-hungry zombies following my every movement.
And for everything that the remake does tweak, it keeps all of the little details that made me fall in love with Dead Rising in the first place, from heating up frying pans to running on the treadmills for PP in Al Fresca Plaza. Deluxe Remaster can never give me that first playthrough of Dead Rising again, but it can at least remind me why it was so important in the first place.
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster
WHERE TO PLAY
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster builds on the 2016 remaster of the 2006 original, following photojournalist Frank West as he looks to uncover the shocking source of a zombie outbreak - and make it out alive.
