2016 - Brad: Part 03

Second!

@themanwithnoplan: no this is part 3

@ett: Heh, I was trying to make a joke. You know, the whole "First!" thing.

I never realized how little DR4 Brad had actually played. That game is such a bummer.

With Dead Rising 1 & 2 you were guaranteed to start over at least a few times because you inevitably ran into a psychopath you needed a few attempts to figure out, you found yourself out of food/weapons at the wrong time and things went bad, or the timer screwed you and you couldn't get a "good" ending. So, yeah, leveling felt great because the bigger life bar, the larger inventory, the increased attack damage and movement speed - along with learning the world from replaying the first half of the game half a dozen times - made you steadily feel more and more like a badass. When you're at max level, rolling with an arsenal of ideal weapons, and you know how to handle yourself better the psychopaths become laughable, not unlike in Dead Rising 4. But it's earned. Like when I first fought Carlito, I found it frustrating and hectic trying to chase him down and shoot him while trying not to die. By the third or fourth time through, I'd found the katana, realized I could climb up there where he was and I had enough life to safely take a few shots in the face as I ran up on him and just hacked him down with five or six swipes.

In Dead Rising 4 leveling feels largely meaningless because it doesn't really make the difference between life and death. There is no timer, it's never hard to have good weapons on hand and the sorta-psychopaths go down easily from the very beginning. It's damn near a Dynasty Warriors game. Still kinda fun in that same mindless fashion, but really unsatisfying for a Dead Rising game.

I stayed up way too late to watch Dead Rising. Those first 2 games are just so much more interesting to watch than 3 and 4.