POSTED 20/12/16


DEAD RISING 4

Capcom/Microsoft

Ash Williams recently returned to our scream- erm, screens, and now it’s Frank West’s turn.

Yes, the original Dead Rising survivor is back, a bit wrinklier, a bit grumpier and quite a bit, well, Ashley Williamsy. He’s now working as a college teacher, and one of his students gets him to help her check out a suspicious military compound. This place just happens to be on the outskirts of Willamette in Colorado – the site of the shopping mall that experienced the first zombie outbreak many years ago. They discover that there’s a whole lotta zombie research going on and manage to escape, but Frank is now a fugitive, accused of terrorism.

Fast forward a few months and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. A ZDC (Zombie Disease Control, we think) agent enlists Frank’s help, for just when Willamette got a shiny new mall for Black Friday, guess who – or more precisely what - decided to go shopping?

It’s good to have Frank back, even if his voice has changed somewhat... The introductory nightmare sequence that sees him return to the mall of the first game hints at an eye to history for this fourth gorefest, but nope. That eye is poked out in that this is the first DR game to forego a 72 hour timer. We may have sworn at it many a time in previous iterations as we tried to beat the clock, but it turns out that race against time was part of what made the games so engaging. Still, if you’re the forensically exploratory type then you’ll dig the freedom.

If you’re looking forward to buddying up for the story mode then, well, don’t, as that’s gone too. GRRR-ARGH!

But there’s plenty of gloriously grisly mindless mayhem, snappy humour, crazy on the fly weapon and vehicle crafting and – considering Frank’s photojournalistic tendencies - many an opportunity for a snappy selfie.

It’s still fun, but those two big omissions make us feel more Franky Cranky than Ashy Slashy.

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