Capcom's slapstick zombie series Dead Rising is getting a revival, with a Deluxe Remaster of the 2006 original launching for unspecified platforms on an unspecified release date.
Created by Keiji Inafune of Mega Man fame, the first Dead Rising took the basic premise of George A. Romero's horror classic Dawn of the Dead – that is, zombies in a mall – and gave it a new spin with a ridiculous anything-goes approach to weapons and hordes of undead appearing in absolute multitudes.
Players – like photojournalist Frank West – were given three in-game days to investigate Colorado's sprawling, zombie-infested Willamette Parkview mall, with the idea being to solve a series of cases before a helicopter picks them up on last day. There's more to it than that, but it's probably best remembered because almost anything found in the mall can be used as a weapon – and if you've never seen a man fight his way through a horde of zombies with a mailbox, wearing nothing but his underwear and a Lego head, can you really say you lived?
As of now, there's not much to say about Capcom's recently announced remaster – which looks more like a full remake judging by the trailer, but let's not get hung up on semantics just yet. The trailer states that the game will be released on the “next generation of platforms” – so PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC seem like a reasonable assumption – but for anything beyond that, Capcom says to “stay tuned for more information soon.”
Eurogamer was very fond of Dead Rising when it released in 2006 (and again when it received an HD upgrade for PC and consoles ten years later), giving it a classic eight out of ten score. “It may not be licensed by George A. Romero,” Tom Bramwell wrote at the time, “but it was certainly inspired by him, and it reproduces many of the sentiments he inspired the viewer And as I plunge yet another sickle into someone's neck and rip their head off with my foot, drenching myself in blood, I can't help but think that he would rather approve of this. .
