Why Dead Rising 4's Campaign Ditches the Series' Most Divisive Mechanic

Ah, anuzzer day in Bikini Bottom...

The 72 hr deadline is WHY I didn't enjoy the first game and never bothered with the others. I want to walk around and explore, not be under some deadline.

There are some fans of the series that love that aspect, but I'm not one of those people, and I'm pretty happy they're taking it out. The people he's talking about when it comes to just wanting to explore and see everything, is me. Though I understand the appeal of the strict timer, it's not the thing I get out of Dead Rising. I'm not opposed to challenge at all, but when it's designed in such a way that it is in Dead Rising, taking away from what I personally consider the better parts of the game, it's not good. To me, Capcom has created really interesting settings, and really interesting characters, where what I want to do is explore at my own leisure, taking in the sights and sounds along the way, and do everything I possibly can on the map on my one time through, without the possible hindrance that I'd have to do it all over again if I failed. That sucks the fun out of it, and takes focus away from what I consider to be high strengths. I enjoyed one, and I enjoyed two from what I played, but three making the time much less strict so you can explore and do everything, it made it my favorite Dead Rising, and it made it one of my favorite games of 2013. I'm glad they're trying to make it harder in other areas, by strategically placing items and what have you. That said, there are those that do like it, so it probably would have been better to give an option.

So you've got people moaning about having it removed, claiming it's been done to appeal to people who are crybabies wanting an easier experience.

I'm sorry, but the timer didn't make the game hard. The timer doesn't kill you, the hordes of zombies do. The timer just limits the experience of a fun, detailed comedy horror game. I remember loving the first and second, but hating that I only had 72 in game hours to really get up to some stupid fun stuff without the game resetting.

It's still there, just implemented in a way that can satisfy all customers. Basically in a nutshell.

Oh the article title got my hopes up so much, what a let down. Forget the time limit, get rid of the damn escort missions.

PC version coming out first or are they still trying to use it to sell consoles?

When I first played DR, I hated the timer. I hated it so much that when the next big game came along, I dropped DR for at least a few months. Got bored and started playing again in order to clear my backlog of unfinished games. After getting further into the game and restarting a few more times, I realized that the timed parts weren't that bad if you planned ahead. Then I found out that giving a gun to other people allowed them to have unlimited ammo..... Long story short, when I played DR like a DR game, it was fun. when I tried to play it like other games in the same genre, it was irritating.

They'll probably just sell it back to us as DLC when people complain about not having it. Honestly they could've just had 2 modes; one with a timer another without.

I do not see why they would give reasons for getting rid of the option and then say, "We put a timer in the online mode".

"You're going to piss someone off no matter what you do, right?"

...You can probably avoid making most people angry, namely the fans and new players/people who do not like certain things, with optional features. I mean, did anyone complain about Nightmare Mode's timer in Dead Rising 3?

I really wonder how these people get into positions everywhere where they can make such horrible decisions...

Yay, let's remove challenge and make the game(s) more casual. I'm in the minority, but I'm so tired of games holding everyone's hand. In today's age, games are typically very linear, has 600 checkpoints, unlimited resources such as health and ammo, or Is a cliche Call of Duty clone. Games are too easy and wants to hold your hand and kiss your scratches if you mess up.

I feel like it might make sense to remove the overall timer as long as certain missions have time limits. Trying to cut through zombies as fast as possible is always exciting and fun.

Eh, take it or leave it thing for me. I think the timer added a hell of a challenge to the first, 2 I felt relatively managed in somehow. Conquering it was quite the triumphant feeling though.

That said, if I want to return to that rush, I'll just return to the prior entries. Let'em see how it works without the timer in this entry. It's not like the challenge of the prior entries don't exist once 4's out. Hell, we don't exactly know what the difficulty of 4 will be like anyway.

I only played DR1 and had a lot of fun with it. The timer gave a sense of urgency and increased replay value. Of course, by the 5th time you play day 1, it's already gotten way too annoying, but at those times I was already wondering what I had to do in order to save those goddamned survivors that managed to get killed in the previous rounds at the same time I was planning an optimal route for the latter days. DR1 played very differently from any other game I've played in 7th gen and that's why I truly enjoyed it. It felt more like an old-school game and less like a... sandbox.

Open-world, sandbox games are fine, but developers are going crazy with it. At this rate, in a decade there will be only one game genre, which is "sandbox". Where's challenge? Where's inventive game design? You roam around, you collect stuff and you kill stuff. Sometimes a cutscene comes up to move the plot forward. And that's that. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.

I only played the first 2 games many years ago, but I enjoyed the timer mechanic. It made the world feel more alive. Things were happening whether i was there or not, and it encouraged multiple playthroughs and difficult personal challenges to try to figure out how to do everything in a single playthrough once i was accustomed to all the stuff going on.

DR2: Off the Record's no time limit "Sandbox" mode is all I ever play.

In huge open world rpg type games, timers take away from the game. You end up only focusing on one, maybe two things, and end up missing a lot more. For me this takes away much of the fun of games. In games where it's open world, with easter eggs, items, weapons, etc... are strewn all over, you want to be able to explore and hunt them down without having to rush. Some people don't care for those extra things and prefer to challenge themselves with the main story, rather than the side missions. And that's fine, but there are just as many, if not more, that want to get the most of out the game. After all, we are paying $80+ for these games. And really, in a real zombie apocalypse, I don't think people will ALWAYS be rushing to do certain things. Most times, they're just wandering, sleeping, eating, having sex, meeting other survivors, scavanging. The only time anyone would ever rush, is if zombies were after them, or they needed to rescue someone before zombies overwhelms them. Which I doubt, if you keep composed and not draw attention to yourselves, would be often. Rushing to beat the timer, would be intense, and challenging for sure, but hardly realistic.

That said, I don't mind timers, but on certain parts of the game. Where you get to a point in the main story, or even a side mission, where you are required to complete an objective within a certain period of time. But not in the whole game. Or perhaps Capcom should have included the timer on the harder difficulty settings, for those that do enjoy the challenge. Don't think it would've been that hard to do.

People curl up in fetal position and suck their thumbs at the slightest hint of any challenge these days. 'Gamers' don't even know what they want anymore, they just turned one of the remaining decent zombie games out there into a mindless, open world slog. The less communication a dev has with this generation of cry babies when making a game, the better.

i call bs. they said the 3rd wouldent have a timer then it did. expect absolutely nothing to change people.

Don't remember about the first one (did not finish on 360), but DR2 game plenty of time between objectives, so much in fact, that I had to wait around doing nothing in some cases.

I hate timers. I don't mind putting in effort, but rushing through things never gets fun.

The Timer is what made saving survivors (and the entire game) a challenge. Without it, I fear it will be a mindless zombie beatdown (which can be fun sometimes, but...The whole game?). There is no sense of urgency to the story now...and no alternate endings...

Having different modes for different player preferences would have been nice.

Thank god the worst part of all the games was that timer.

Took them 3 games to realize ppl don't like to be put on a timer?

Finally, I disliked dr1 and 2 because of that timer. It was so forced to do the story instead of having a laugh.

Dr3 had a much better slack on what to do, but still felt like the timer came up close once or twice.

Can't wait for this new installment.

Best move they could have made for this game in order to compete with the other zombie games. Funny how the complaining about crybabies, sure sounds like crybabies to me.

I despise a time limit on any game. Its common for me to turn a 10 hr game into a 20 game simply because I look at everything and read everything thats in the game. It was incredibly frustrating for DR2 for the time limit it imposed. I didn't finish it for that very reason even though I loved playing it. I also despised looking for zombrex. Which they removed with DR3, thankfully.

One of the most hated features in gaming for me is a Time Limit.

I never like that I need to feel hurried up for some arbitrary reason and I can't properly explore the level.

And no, I don't like that you can just start the game anew and explore some more in Dead Rising 1&2. I'd like to do it at my own pace.

Dead Rising 3's time limit was so forgiving you could literally do everything and still have time left. So I'm glad they ditched this mechanic. Make it optional in the remasters. And ffs Luigi ? 100 seconds ? Are you kidding me ?

That's good that they got rid of it, it's literally the one thing that stopped me from getting the games in the first place and now I can happily play them with no issue, well this one at least. I'll get this on sale at some point unlike the others, the timelimit is shit in this kind of game.