'Dead Rising 3' is an open-world zombie apocalypse simulation coming exclusively to the Xbox One at launch.
The Pitch:
"Featuring a massive and dynamic world, Dead Rising 3 represents a new benchmark for open-world gameplay. Powered by Xbox One, Dead Rising 3 lets you Explore the city of Los Perdidos while staying immersed in the action and stunning new-generation visuals."
The Key Features:
- Massive open-world city to explore
- Hundreds of zombies on-screen at once
- Massive range of customisation options, weapons and strategies
- Kinect 2 integration
Impressions:
Visually and mechanically, Dead Rising 3 is arguably the most impressive Xbox One title on show at Gamescom. While its E3 showing got a mixed reaction - largely down to performance issues and stuttering graphics - its Gamescom demo has largely allayed our fears.
Which is a relief, because the potential here is huge. The sheer size of the seamless apocalypse available to explore is ridiculous. The variety of ways to hack and tear the city's resident evil to pieces is also pretty insane. And that the game can run with just about no slowdown while hundreds of individual zombies rush into the path of your flame thrower death cycle is seriously impressive. If you want evidence of something this generation can do that the older one can't, look at Dead Rising 3.
As remarkable as it is graphically and in its technical scaffolding, however, our demo didn't totally convince us that there's quite as much depth to the actual gameplay. Not yet.
The experience of running about a city (re)slaughtering thousands of the undead at will, swapping costumes, building weapons and rarely coming to much harm is hugely entertaining. But after about 15 minutes it also feels a little aimless. We're sure the complete game will direct the mechanics into a more focused experience. And we can't wait to play it either way. It's just a question of how long that excitement will last once you've butchered your 500th corpse with a pair of each-finger-a-revolver 'Jazz Hands' dressed in a Bull costume. Wait, what are we saying? Clearly it will last forever.