deadrising 4 is considered the worst deadrising game and to an extent i think this is pretty true, it's the least polished and least charming of them, i'd even say it plays the worst and has the worst design of any of them, certainly the worst written and even sounding, but that doesn't mean it's bad, it just has some stacked competition considering 1&2 are two of the best games of their ilk and 3 is pretty up there too, even with 4's faults its still a very charming game that's a ton of fun to play as long as you go into it with the right mindset and try and have a good time, sure its broken and nowhere near as good as the first game, but it was never going to be as good as that and i think on its own right its a damn fun game, i mean how can lighting zombies on fire with a flamethrower while xmas music plays not be fun.

the gameplay is mostly pretty similar here to the rest, closer to 3 than any others but with one big change, while 3 gave you a lot more time to work with, some argued too much, 4 just abandons the time mechanic altogether for its main game, there's no limit and you can take things at your own pace, i like this actually, sure its a mechanic gone but it is also a new take and it gives this one its own feel that sets it apart, you have much more time to have fun and explore the much larger map, hell if you want the timer one of the dlcs does bring it back so you do have a version with that at least, just not the basegame, they also brought back the camera in a big way, it works similarly but now you can take selfies and there's an added detective mode for crime scene investigations throughout the story which is fun to use, though it can be a little finnicky mostly because the game is fairly unpolished and buggy, it's the worst the series has been in both ways and it can be very frustrating i have to admit, but not enough to ruin the experiance i think. leveling was also expanded with 3's skill tree being made into even more of a thing with 4 big catagories with little mini-trees in it for you to experiment with, i stuck with health and extra inventory personally and you have a lot more skills to choose here because you get a ton more levels, up to 100 from the 50 cap the series has been used to, which fits the larger game well, i made it to about 76 when i beat the game with every store explored and weapon blueprint found. the weapons this time are more mixed i'm sad to say, you have much less small items than you did before which sucks and even your combo weapon list is a little smaller, but the ones you do get are really fun especially if you have all the dlcs, they're a lot more silly and supernatural this time around, a lot even feel right out of saints row which may help sell it, it's so silly and fun to murder zombies with a gnome launcher or a big canon that shoots presants, its hard not to have fun with it, though the new inventory system i'm not super into, instead of being able to throw every weapon like you did before, you now have 4 catagories, thrown, melee, gun and food and they're all on a seperate button and in seperate inventories, i get the point but it feels limiting and awkward to me, though they did at least add special moves with each item that you can use after you get your combo meter up, those are cool. you can also play around with exosuits which have their own huge weapons to play around with like flyswatters, miniguns,parking meters and even powerups that give them things like carpet bombs and ice tornados!. the last real major additions was stealth, i think, i used it like twice and forgot it was there, it's never necessary or even useful, but it has skills and i guess might be good for human enemies, i don't know, i didn't see a need when i had a scythe that was on fire. there were also a bunch of things added post launch to adress missing features, the game lacked a lot at launch in general as a consequence of going with scale over detail, something that i like as it makes the game feel more fresh, it's a different direction and i don't think its inherently bad as much as it is just different, anyway it was contravercial and led to a lot of anger which was fuelled mostly by gamer ragebait vids by bad faith actors like crowbcat but we did get some good improvements here like the returning psychopath bosses, which admittedly aren't as good and don't have cutscenes, but you do get some nice new weapons like an acid maul and a fire scythe and you have survivor missions too, though a lot more basic and randomly repeating ones ala skyrim radiant quests, but a few one-offs are unique.

the open world is kind of interesting though in that it has a traditional deadrising style map full of hidden things and a ton of verticality and then they built a whole town around it, the mall is a normal deadrising location with different themed zones (amazon, pirate, medivil, japan, miami etc etc) with hidden things like capcom eastereggs (including a sengoku basara book that had me super excited) and areas to climb and explore and it's great but that's only a small part of it, once you leave this area in the games opening you find a whole town to explore, this town isn't built with the same mentality though, it feels closer to a normal open world you'd see in a saints row or any other modern game, cars needed to get around and not a lot of hidden stuff outside of things like bunkers and lockers with blueprints or weapons inside (plus many of the same collectables from the mall but not as well hidden) and this area doesn't feel as good to explore, but considering we did get a deadrising-esque zone with the mall its hard to complain and the two styles do make for a lot of variety in the world, the mall feels distinct from the outside and even outside you do have a lot of differences in zones, from the farmland with a big vinyard, residential areas, shopping districts and an industrial zone and there's still cool places to find and stores to loot out here with safe houses scattered around with vendors that have things like cars and maps and you have little panic room puzzles where you can resupply and take a rest, it's a good map and the biggest one yet, though i think its also the worst just because i do think the outside zones are worse designed, i think 3 did these open outside town zones better even if i do *love* how snowy it is in 4, especially at night the atmosphere is nearly unmatched, despite the chaos it feels oddly cozy and the mall looks fantastic at night too, especially the japan section during a lategame boss fight, the game doesn't have many bosses though, just three or four and they're all humanoid beyond the end boss who has an annoying healing system, you do get lots of minibosses though with fresh zombies and these smart zombies that can dash and jump.

the music is a big splattering of mostly two genres, country and christmas music, for a certain kind of person this is probably their idea of hell but it's not so bad, if you play it during december it really gets you in the spirit and i like that a lot, makes me happy and its just funny to run zombies over in a taco truck while jingle bells plays, you'd have to be one hell of a grinch to hate that. there's some spooky horror movie too and it works along with some nostalgiabaity songs from 1&2, but i think the xmas music is the best part here, i won't defend the country though, not my scene (though i love a lot of taylor swifts country music). the writing is something i almost wanted to avoid though, usually i don't talk about aspects of games or even full on games i dislike, it's just not my style and i didn't want to hate this games story that much, but it was just insufferable, i won't lie and say it's good when it's really not, this is one of the worst written games i've ever played and it did harm the experiance at time, it's the one thing i wouldnt blame anyone for quitting this game because of, it really is that bad, i tend to find certain styles of writing can be unfairly maligned, take forspokens quips or overly cheesy and sincere writing in games like resi, but this is one of the few cases where the hate is deserved, every character is just mean spirited and cruel, everyone is a jerk for the sake of it and it all feels very cynical, its attempts at humour always boil down to frank being an asshole and acting weirdly out of character (he was always a jerk but even in OTR he was never like this) and while i think the new VA is fine, he just isn't given anything good to work with, i was told its written a lot like a show called "always sunny" and that may sell some of you but that show always just looked kind of gross and cruel to me as an outsider, just like this game, so maybe there's something to that, a silver lining, the story on the whole outside of that isnt bad though, it's not amazing but it works (plus some of the optional mystery collectables have neat lore and funny bits like snippets of a DR yaoi fic) and it has some good moments near the end and callbacks to the first i liked a lot, it does lean on nostalgia a lot and that does work on me in this case, i love the original a lot, the ending though and ofc spoilers ahead. it's bad, it's a glorified commercial for the dlc and it needed something extra than that, it's just so abrupt and weird, not a fan of it.

the game will run you about 12-14 hours or so your first run, maybe a little less, for me it was around 19 hours with nearly 100% completion of the collectables and the map, which is a good length i think, with the dlc you're bound to easily double that no problem if you want something a bit longer. with the ports it's a little weird, originally the game was an xbox one exclusive just like deadrising 3, which is sadly still an exclusive as far as consoles go, but it would eventually be ported to ps4 alongside its season pass and a brand new dlc with crossover capcom characters like dante and sissel in the form of deadrising 4: franks big package and this is the version i played, generally its the version you should go for since it's just the best ver, all patched and improved and it has all the dlc free, and its good dlc, a whole epilogue, which is really the true ending but you know how this goes, a full new mode with new mechanics in the form of minigolf and a whole new campaign with radically different combat in the form of capcom heroes which i'll all cover seperately alongside the games multiplayer mode, there's just too much for me to talk about in one article, it's a *big package* overall and sadly the last we'd really see of the series, there was a cancelled game set in south america with some soulslike mechanics? for some reason, it looked like a wreck but in an interesting way, i hope we get to see it some day. thats been it really outside of frank appearing in some things like project x zone 2, MVC infinite and teppen and there was a movie in 2016, a sequel to the earlier deadrising movie which seems like a fun time, i hope we get more in the future because the series did still have a distinct feel from anything else on the market, sure 4 did feel a little too saintsrowy and it had its issues, but i think there's potential there and it'd be a shame to let a cool series die because of one underperforming game.