‘Dead Rising 3’: Is Capcom Taking It Too Seriously?

Is Capcom taking Dead Rising 3 too seriously?

The original Dead Rising was that zombie game for Capcom fans who didn’t want to trudge through the survival horror elements of Resident Evil. It featured a reporter who got dropped in via helicopter to get photos of a zombie outbreak at the mall. It was bright and offered a variety of ways to play, letting you use anything you picked up as a weapon.

A plush bear, a wet floor sign, a gun … anything you could pick up could be a weapon in the original Dead Rising. It let you be silly and dress up any way you wanted, too.

However, due to the recent surge of zombie-related games and movies in the past year, it seems that Capcom has lost track of what made Dead Rising such a hit. Everything these days is set in a desolate wasteland with depressing imagery to remind you at every moment that humans aren’t the top of the food chain any more. Unfortunately, Dead Rising 3 seems to be following suit.

Even the heavily story-driven The Last of Us seems to be a better lit world than the one that Dead Rising 3 is throwing at us. You would think that with the push for better graphics, the Dead Rising series would look better, but according to the demo at E3 2013, the game appears to be going the drab Call of Duty route, putting everything in shades of brown and gray, and emphasizing the guns more while taking everything too seriously.

Guns in the earlier Dead Rising games were almost useless, so that much may be an improvement, but they weren’t the focus. Much like Dead Island, Dead Rising made use of anything you could pick up and swing as a weapon. Now everything just seems to be heading the same route.

Drab environments, gun-focused gameplay, depressing zombie story … where did the classic game mechanics go?

All in all, Capcom may be ruining Dead Rising 3 by making it too much like every other zombie shooter.

What do you think? Is Capcom ruining Dead Rising 3 by taking it too seriously?