Hm, how to start. Overall, I am not sure how I feel about Dead Rising 3. There are elements that I like and are fun - slaying zombies, the multitude of challenges, side quests, simple and melodramatic story lines, and character leveling - and then there is a whole lot that I do not like, and frankly, makes it incredibly painful to play.
Let's start with what I do not like. These are completely personal preference, and touch mostly on design and aesthetic. Speaking of which, what is with all of the muted colours? I love Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 for their vibrant beautiful non-gritty look and feel. Those titles managed to straddle a fine line between horrific gore and child like fantasy. That is completely gone now in lieu of a darker uglier feel more reflective of the ever-popular The Walking Dead (cable and game) series.
Also gone is the rush and tension of getting survivors to safety. Half the time, there are stranded survivors just running off screen, the other time survivors just tag along and safely return to safe houses on their own. I can understand the change in the mechanic, but in its predecessors saving people was a big deal. That stress and tension, acting as shepherd and a leader to keep them alive, was very rewarding. Now, I find these survivors more of a nuisance than not.
The same may be said of weapon and clothing lockers. Not a deal breaker, but it really knocks down any sense of challenge or accomplishment.
Then there is the painful. I am not certain how widespread the problem is, but 5 minutes into playing DR3 the game froze. Ok, start it back up and then another 5 minutes later, froze again. This happened ad nauseum for at least an hour as I tried to make incremental progress through the introductory chapter. Convinced the game was broken I switch to Ryse to play some multiplayer, and noticed I had been placed into a "party" of 1. Some experimentation later, and I discover the source of these game freezes in DR3 strongly correlates to its multiplayer components.
This last point has really soured my experience with the title. It makes it extremely difficult to recommend a title that is broken in such an obscure way (I consider myself fairly computer literate, and could work around this, I have no hope for the average gamer to fare better).
A real shame, since as I have said, there are some things to like. If they manage to fix this continuous freezing, then DR3 would be a good GTA meets The Walking Dead mash-up.
