Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition Ex Plus Alpha Review

The new DLC for Dead Rising 3 was released at Microsoft's E3 Press Conference this past Monday. Originally introduced as Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition Ex Plus Alpha it has been shortened to Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix. The name alone shows that this DLC will be filled with the same kind of tongue-in-cheek comedy that we expect from a franchise such as Dead Rising.

Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix - No Story, All Game

Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix is the spiritual successor to Dead Rising 2's 'Terror is Reality' mode. This is purely a co-op/competitive DLC, so sadly, there is no story added, but what this lacks in story it makes up in Capcom references and laughs. In the Arcade Remix, you work with up to 3 other players over Xbox Live or by yourself to complete 5 events. These events take place in one of the four territories of the game. Your playable characters are Nick Ramos, Anne Greene, Chuck Greene, and Frank West, he's covered wars you know? There are four different difficulty modes, one for each territory; Ingleton, Central City, Sunset Hills, and South Almuda. The difficulty of the area scales depending on how many players you have in your session.

Each mission has an objective to complete and a time limit you have to complete it within, the only penalty of time running out is you lose out on points you could have gotten otherwise. The types of missions are destroying military caches that are spread around the map, getting vehicles and returning them to garages, destroying bombs in the area, killing special zombies with raised attack or defense, and killing zombies in general. These objectives are always easy to locate on the map as there are arrows directing you to all of them.

Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix - Kill Those Zombies

Killing zombies while you complete these objectives will add to your total score as well as add to your Super bar in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. Once each of these segments is filled you can initiate your character's special super attack. This super attack isn't stackable so waiting till three bars are charged won't give you any more damage than one bar would. In each zone there are collectibles for you to pick up such as Zenny, used to purchase characters, shields, which give you an extra bar of health, PowUp which increases your attack for a while, weapons to pick up and use for a limited amount of time and the best of the pickups is the yashichi, a pinwheel looking item, this will give you full health as well as full supercharge.

It wouldn't be Dead Rising if there wasn't crazy customers, though. Each character has four unlockable costumes, one that is relevant to their character specifically, such as Chuck wearing his Terror is Reality suit. The other 12 costumes are all outfits from other Capcom franchises allowing you to dress Nick up as Ryu from Street Fighter or Chuck dressed as Sigma from Megaman X. The first costumes for each character are purchased using Zenny alone, but for all of the cosplay costumes, you need to fill in certain requirements like killing a number of zombies or finding arcade cabinets.

Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix - Score-based Shenanigans 

At the end of each event, the participants are scored based on things like killing zombies and completing objectives. Extra points are awarded for the player who used the most super moves or killed the most zombies. These final scores and rankings were then exchanged with Zenny.

Visually Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix is eye-popping; taking the already great visuals of Dead Rising 3, this DLC adds many bright objects to change the atmosphere. Neon signs, 8 Bit floating graphics, and a redone HUD all help to show how this DLC is meant to not be taken seriously. The cosplay redesigns of characters have also had a lot of work put into them, and they are a nostalgia-filled bonus.

Soundtracks and audio clips from Capcom's past games had a couple of appearances throughout this DLC too. Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix loads up with an arcade boot-up and this familiar jingle, and you're also treated to some remixed soundtracks like MegaMan X music as you play a side-scrolling mission.

The Verdict

Overall, Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix is a Capcom fan's dream come true, allowing you to play as classic characters in this undead nightmare. This can be made even better by adding friends into the mix and competing for the highest score. A large problem with this game is a lack of many levels ultimately leading to repetitive gameplay and a lack of replay value. If you want to go for a nostalgic trip into Capcom history while also fighting countless zombies, then the $9.99 is well spent, but for the purpose of getting more gameplay out of Dead Rising 3, then there isn't too much here for you.

TechRaptor reviewed Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix on Xbox One. It is also available on PC. This review was originally published on 06-13-2014. While care has been taken to update the piece to reflect our modern style guidelines, some of the information may be out of date. We've left pieces like this as they were to reflect the original authors' opinions, and for historical context.