Dead Rising 3: Fallen Angel
Developer: Capcom Vancouver
Publisher: Microsoft
Platform: Xbox One
Install Size: 20.9MB
Release Date: February 11, 2014
Price: $9.99
Overview
Now that Dead Rising 3’s first piece of DLC dropped a few weeks ago in the form of Operation Broken Eagle, our review of which can be found here, fans of the game have been able to step into the zombie filled streets of Los Perdidos as a soldier but now that Dead Rising 3: Fallen Angel has been released, gamers will instead be playing as an illegal survivor. While the first piece of DLC was found lacking, is Fallen Angel any better?
Story
The introduction for Fallen Angel is similar to that of Operation Broken Eagle, where an unknown man tells players that there are four people who were moving through the city while the player was following the exploits of Nick Ramos. As such, these are “The Untold Stories of Los Perdidos” and Fallen Angel is the second of four total episodes.
This time around we focus on a group of Illegals, people who have avoided government surveillance and chipping despite the fact that they are infected. Things are rough on the group and food, medical supplies, and most importantly Zombrex are in short supply. As such, the leader of the group, Doug, wakes up his go to girl to try and find some more supplies.
The only problem is, this girl, Angel Quijano, is passed out drunk after seeing the loss of many allies at a safe house earlier. After waking her up, Doug tells Angel to head to the yacht that has crashed in order to try and gather medical supplies for the group. From here players follow Angel as she tries to find additional supplies for the survivors by gathering food and supplies , defending areas from zombies and the military, and freeing captured Illegals.
Unlike Kane, Angel actually has a bit of life to her as a character as we see that she is already having a hard time with things when players take control of her. Angel is a fiery girl with an alcohol problem, something that Doug likes to comment on very often, and she clearly feels like she could be doing more for the other survivors, but sadly there is pretty much no development or even reveals made before the story comes to an end. There barely is a cross-over with the main story even, outside of a passing comment over the radio and the final cutscene.
Gameplay
As with the previous piece of DLC, Fallen Angel provides players with the same type of gameplay that was provided in the basic version of Dead Rising 3 as Angel controls the exact same way as Nick. There is a Normal and Nightmare mode to play through the story and anything that the player picks up in Los Perdidos carries over to the main game, including the various main collectibles and any DLC weapons and vehicles contained in Fallen Angel. Levels and PP also carry over from and back to the main game, though most players will probably be max leveled at this point.
Anyways, while Los Perdidos is very much the same as when Nick explored it, there are a large number of barriers placed in Angel’s way as the military has erected new obstructions not found in the main game to force her to take different paths. Weapon lockers are accessible and players can access safe houses to gain new pieces of equipment, even items they haven’t found yet and weapons from the Operation Broken Eagle DLC, and garages can also be used to spawn vehicles.
As far as the new content added into this game, let’s first cover the Feastmaster vehicle. The vehicle is a type of food truck which is extremely basic and while it does have a nice look to it and heals the player while they drive around, is generally useless. Now as for the weaponry, Fallen Angel features a range of different weapon types, with a Spiked Mace, a freezing baton, and defibrillators serving as melee weapons, the spiked mace is an enjoyable weapon but too similar to other weapon types, the baton is unimaginative and weak, and the defibrillators only serve a purpose to create this DLC’s combo weapon, the Shockblaster which is a powerful electronic weapon that really packs a bunch. Also available in the DLC are new gas grenades which do literally nothing, and dual machine pistols which are fun to use and can really clear out an area.
Other than that, Fallen Angel offers little else other than some new collectibles to gather or destroy. There are now medkits to gather, cameras to destroy, posters to burn, and random people you come across to rescue. There are a lot more of each collectible this time around, working to pad the amount of time players may want to spend hunting for things, but it is worth noting that not only do the icons for already collected/destroyed items sometimes reappear, but the posters which can be burned with flaming weaponry, mostly molotov cocktails, often do not burn despite a direct hit with a flaming bottle. It is also worth noting that like the past piece of DLC, Fallen Angel is single player only.
Visuals & Audio
With a few new barricades up here and there, players may need to take a few different routes as they navigate Los Perdidos but the city is routinely the same as before. Thankfully the title continues to present players with smooth gameplay despite the number of zombies they will be facing off against and Angel’s tattoos and outfit are actually quite impressive looking, although it would have been nice if there was an option to take off the hoodie at some point before the game just removes it on its own.
As far as the voice work goes, Angel and Doug do have a bit of back and forth between them, and Angel’s voice actress does a nice job showing how much of a spitfire she can be, but again the dialogue is limited and Doug spends way too much time pestering Angel about drinking when she is on a mission.
Overall
Dead Rising 3: Fallen Angel suffers from almost all of the same problems that the first pack of DLC did. Players are given little incentive or change-up from the normal game outside of a batch of new weapons, new collectibles, and a basic story to follow. The only difference is that Angel is actually a fairly interesting character compared to Kane and the weapons add some extra spice to the game, even if many of them feel rather pointless.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
