Dead Rising 3 isn’t designed to be the laugh riot of the older Dead Risings. The Xbox One exclusive from Capcom Vancouver is a grittier kind of zombie game.
It’s set 10 years after Dead Rising 2, the game’s executive producer Josh Bridges told me during a demo of the game on Monday evening. New hero Nick Ramos is going to be having a rougher time.
Zombies had been treated as toys, Bridge said, but in this one they’re more deadly. They can make sounds to communicate with each other.
“It’s about the horde, horde AI,” the game’s producer Josh Bridges said.
Dead Rising 1 had less than a thousand zombies on screen at once. Dead Rising 2 upped that. Dead Rising 3 should have three times as many of zombies as Dead Rising 2.
“It’s not about how many but how much fun,” Bridge said. He said the zombies now have weight and mass, so that if you drive through them in a car, it will affect the handling of the car.
The game is set in the city of Los Perdidos. That city is going to be vaporized or firebombed, so you only have a set amount of time to get through the game. You’ve got six days in game-time. Or, if you prefer old Dead Rising, you can dial it down to three days.
You can now combine weapons on the fly and use lockers that have shared inventory to make player’s lives easier. Saving is now automatic in regular mode, but in the game’s classic three-day nightmare mode, you can only save in bathrooms.
While the E3 demo took place in dark gritty streets and not in a bright shopping mall or casino town, Bridge said the game will be full of colorful Capcom references. He vowed that the Servbot mask will be back.
The game will use Smart Glass to not just show a map but offer couch co-op. The Smart Glass app actually makes your phone look like… a phone. The co-op player has found a military phone and can call in military strikes.
While playing, you can flick the controller to shove zombies away. The Kinect picks up on that. You can also yell out to alert the zombies. Which… sounds like a great recipe for griefing.
The third installment of the premiere zombie slaughter simulator is coming exclusively to the Xbox One this November.