26 Grand Theft Auto III -v - Dead Rising 103

People need to go to the doctor and get their shit checked. The novelty of GTA 3 wore off as soon as you got done regaining health from fucking your 444th ho. Sure, it pioneered a genre, but it's been surpassed in every way imaginable by its franchise successors and also by Saints Row (which is an overall much better franchise than GTA, by the way).

Dead Rising is arguably the most innovative game released on this generation of consoles. Its mixture of structured and open-world play is perfect and guiding people to safety while slashing through hundreds of zombies with a psychotic clown's chainsaw is easily the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

 

A 2001 game has been suceeded moreso than a 2006 game, that's not a surprise. Grand Theft Auto pioneered the sandbox style of gameplay that led to games like Dead Rising. Great story, great voice acting, and a very complete game overall. Dead Rising, while a good game, suffered from numerous problems, such as tedious missions (escorting), awful save system, and shoddy controls. The fun of slaying zombies saved some mediocre production values, and poor design choice. GTA III hands down.

 

GTA III pioneered the driving/shooting hybrid sub-genre of sandbox gaming, not open-world gaming itself. Furthermore, Dead Rising's creator, Keiji Inafune, played a significant role in the design and production of the Mega Man and Onimusha franchises. That he has been involved in the creation of three significantly different franchises speaks volumes about his ability to innovate. I have no doubt in my mind that GTA III played no part whatsoever in Dead Rising's creation (except maybe when being pitched to CAPCOM executives).

These points are extremely vague. Firstly, what makes GTA III's story great? What criteria are you using? Is originality one of the criterion? If so, Dead Rising takes this one automatically. GTA III is obviously inspired from American crime dramas of the 1970s and 1980s in both its environment and its plot. There's nothing original there. Dead Rising, on the other hand, while its setting is heavily inspired by George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, has a completely original and compelling storyline. Who would have thought that a zombie outbreak in the Mountain States could have ultimately been caused by America's excessive consumption of beef?

I don't remember Dead Rising having shoddy controls; the controls and physics were both very good. If you mean shoddy AI, then I agree with you (this is probably the only major criticism that could be raised against Dead Rising). Besides this point, your other two criticisms could just as well be raised against not just GTA III but the whole Grand Theft Auto franchise. While the save system would be a valid criticism of Dead Rising if the GTA franchise hadn't extended into the seventh-generation of consoles, it did, and GTA IV's save system is just as poor as Dead Rising's. Yes, we aren't comparing Dead Rising and GTA IV, but you're criticizing Dead Rising's save system on the grounds that it should have evolved; the Grand Theft Auto franchise's save system didn't evolve, though, and GTA IV had the benefit of coming out two years after Dead Rising.

Save for Red Dead Redemption, the production values and design choices for all of Rockstar's games are no better (a majority are even worse) than those of Dead Rising. Furthermore, I don't see how a comparison between the production value and design choices of GTA III and Dead Rising would ever come out in GTA III's favor, even when accounting for the fact that GTA III came out five years earlier.

 

This doesn't make any sense. GTA III is inspired is by past crime dramas, and even though it has it's own unique characters and storyline in how they interact, it's therefore unoriginal. However Dead Rising, which heavily is inspired by George Romero is original because of it's unique characters and storyline. I don't see the difference between the two. I enjoyed GTA III's story far more than DR's because I didn't find DR's characters to be very compelling. Frank is obviously a better main lead than Claude, but I feel that GTA III's focus was clearly on the story and missions, whereas DR's focus was on the whacky way to kill zombies, and it shows.

We're comparing GTA III and Dead Rising, so whether or not GTA IV didn't have a vastly improved save system isn't really up for debate. Even so, in Dead Rising, you're always trying to manage the clock, so when save spots are so out of the way, it's very inconvenient. You can be right outside an area you know has a boss, but if the case expires in two minutes, and the closest save is five minutes away, you just have to hope you beat that boss or you're going to have to re-do a lot of what you did previously. The fact that you're not able to save anytime and anywhere is one thing, but the game purposely is designed in a way that encourages dying and not being able to load your previous progress in a convenient way - it wants you to die and choose the 'Save & Restart' option.

GTA III isn't built upon time management, so if save points are out of the way and inconvenient to get to, there is no pressure and you can do whatever you'd like at your own leisure, thus if you didn't save after each mission, it's simply your fault for not wanting to spend the time. In Dead Rising, the game is purposely built to not allow you to do that. You can argue that the game was designed that way, but purposeful designing and good game design are not the same thing.

Rockstar is known for having top notch production values. They always have great voice acting, engaging story, great graphics, and most importantly - great game design. Everything in GTA III feels polished, whereas DR feels lacking mainly in the design.

 

GTA III has its own unique characters (as does virtually every video game that's made, hence why it's not a point that I contested in the post you just responded to) but how is its storyline/plot unique? A man is double-crossed, he wants revenge, he works his way up through the criminal underworld. How would you be able to differentiate something like this from Scarface, The Godfather Part II, Thief, or Serpico?

Dead Rising's setting is a mall filled with zombies. That's the only valid comparison between it and Dawn of the Dead.

How does it show exactly? How do you plan to back this claim up while ignoring the characters of Isabela and Carlito Keyes, Brad Garrison, Jessica McCarney, and even Otis Washington? All of these characters play an important role in Dead Rising and make the game that much more riveting. Furthermore, the way Dead Rising's story unravels is much better than that of GTA III. You're compelled to complete all of the cases to find out exactly what caused the zombie epidemic you're now witnessing. Finally, if one takes the time to save people throughout the mall and defeat the so-called "psychopaths," they'll find even more interesting and very sympathetic characters. For example, there's no character in GTA III like Dead Rising's Cliff, a Vietnam vet who turns into a maniac after his family is butchered by zombies. You genuinely feel bad for having to kill him after he starts attacking you.

So you're essentially blaming a game for having a purposeful restriction that's not convenient for the way you play games? This is a totally subjective way to view the game and shouldn't be held against Dead Rising when you're comparing it to something else. Dead Rising's beatable and there are plenty of people who, unlike you, actually enjoy this restriction. Your point would be valid if this restriction completely hindered your ability to play the game, but, as you readily admit, it only makes your gameplay inconvenient since time management isn't something that you (or any other gamer for that matter) must use in a vast majority of games.

This is another extremely vague comment. What do you mean by design? Do you mean the physics, the save system, the controls, the AI, something else, or all of the aforementioned? I can't offer a response to a point if I don't know what you're referring to.

 

The characters and the way they interact with eachother to produce the final narrative. Godfather, Casino, Goodfellas - these are all mobster flicks, but you wouldn't say that they are all the same, yet they all have the same basic premise.

Otis Washington plays an important role in making Dead Rising riveting? The character doesn't even have a voice actor, that's how important his character was deemed to be. The psychopaths have as much depth to them as Otis does - they're crazy characters and that's it.

Let's compare Cliff to a character from GTA - Salvatore Leone. Here's the DR wiki for Cliff: http://deadrising.wikia.com/wiki/Cliff . Not much there other than what you said, he's a lunatic with a brief backstory. Here is GTA wiki's page on Salvatore Leone: http://gta.wikia.com/Salvatore_Leone . Every character you meet in GTA has a fleshed out backstory, whereas in DR, there is only a few characters for which this is so (and Otis isn't one of them).

I am blaming the game for being designed in a way that makes playing it inconvenient, yes. If you like the save system, good on you, you probably enjoyed the game much more than I did, but I view game design that inconveniences the player and forces them to replay portions of the game due to the fact that they couldn't save their progress to be a hindrance. You couldn't even save to multiple slots - it was an artificial way of making the game longer, just like those games that have you complete a level, and then you must do it again - but backwards. I view that as lazy designing.

 

I wouldn't say that they are all the same since they aren't, you're right on this. But I fail to see how these films are at all comparable to GTA III. GTA III is nothing more than an amalgam/combination of the type of films that I mentioned in my second post. Its plot line is paper thin compared to the films you refer to here.

I'd say so. You never fail to mention in any of your posts how much time management affects the way you look at Dead Rising. Otis Washington plays an integral role in updating Frank West on the locations of survivors and also when he's due back to the security room so that you may continue the game. It's not necessary for an interesting NPC to be involved in a cutscene or to have a voice actor.

Why would you base a character's depth on how detailed their wiki is? Why should a character's detailed backstory matter more than what kind of impression they're supposed to leave on the gamer? Let's take a look at Cliff in Dead Rising:

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Cliff is involved in only two cutscenes yet he's easily one of the most sympathetic video game characters ever. Based off of his initial interaction with Frank West, we expect him to be nothing more than an extremist war vet who sees the zombie outbreak as a chance to up his body count. However, as he's dying, we find out that he snapped because he could hear his granddaughter scream as zombies ate her alive and it brought him right back to the horrors of the Vietnam War. His last words address the fact that the war never ended for him. Ultimately, he was a deeply damaged man waiting to snap.

Dead Rising needed less than four minutes to create a character with an amount of depth that you'll rarely find in other video games. What exactly does Salvatore Leone do to make him such a compelling character? Why could I not just go and watch Robert Loggia's Frank Lopez in Scarface to see a character that's the same except in race, location, and criminal affiliation?

All right, so I see one valid point of criticism here: that Dead Rising didn't afford the gamer more than one save slot. That's a fair point. Why didn't you just initially say this instead of criticizing the save system as a whole, which, save for one save slot, it no worse than that featured in the GTA franchise as a whole?

I'm not going to debate you on this particular point since I agree with you, but I will say that Dead Rising partially overcomes this flaw by allowing you to restart the game with the skill tree/level up options that you've already earned. Yes, it is time-consuming but I don't see how this should significantly impact one's enjoyment of the game.

 

How does Cliff have depth? It's an interesting story that is never fleshed out. We know nothing about his grand-daughter or his time in Vietnam, other than that he had a granddaughter and she died, and that he was in Vietnam. To me, that's a perfect example of a character with no depth.

Honestly it's because I believe the save system overall was poorly designed. I would venture to guess that replaying the same portions of a game over, and over are not on most gamers list of desirable traits for a game to possess. The save system is similar to GTA in that you have to go to a specific spot to save, but when you're penalized for saving when you want to because of the clock, that's poor design.

You agree with me that having only one save slot is stupid, but that was done purposely, because they wanted to artificially lengthen the game. It's very difficult to go through the game and not fuck something up, by either missing a case, or dying when you haven't had a chance to save in awhile, and the game counts on that because it wants you to have to restart from the beginning. I have nothing against saving your stats and restarting, I played DR 2 and I enjoyed it a lot more than the original DR for multiple reasons, but a game should encourage you to replay it because you want to, not because it forces you to.

 

Are you serious? I already told you exactly why this was the case. You initially said that Cliff was crazy and that's it, implying that there was no rationale for his imprisoning, attacking, and killing people. His last cutscene shows that this is the farthest thing from the truth. You're conflating details with depth; I don't need to know where Cliff was stationed, what branch of the armed forces he served for, whether or not he was honorably discharged, etc., to know that the war took a psychological toll on him. Furthermore, I don't need to know anymore about his granddaughter. That he shows Frank West a picture of his granddaughter before he dies conveys to me that she was the apple of his eye and that her death destroyed any semblance of sanity he had left.

If this was done intentionally then why was it changed for Dead Rising 2? It was a significant error, but I'm not buying that it was done on purpose to lengthen the game. CAPCOM isn't like Rockstar; they don't pad the estimated lengths of their games with cutscenes that you can't skip (case in point: LA Noire).

 

I said he had a brief backstory. How would you differentiate between a brief backstory, and a fleshed out character?

I can only guess that since the first Dead Rising was so successful, they allocated a larger budget to the game and they could improve the areas in which the game was weak.

 

A character doesn't need a detailed backstory to have depth. I think your perception of depth is a character whom you could read up on and learn more about, not one whose motives are ambiguous and whose outward appearance and actions belie who they truly are.

All right, well, I have nothing more to say on the matter. Feel free to respond to this post. I've said what I needed to say. I'll leave it to the voters to decide which game advances.