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  • Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Battle against General Hemlock is not much harder than the average Psychopath battles you find in the main game, since unlike the final bosses of the other games, you're not stripped of your weapons beforehand, so you can go into the battle with anything you want (and because of how the Overtime mission is structured, you'll probably be carrying a lot of guns anyway). Top it off with the ability to combine weapons on the spot and you get an almost laughably easy boss fight, especially compared to the hellish battle against Marion's crane.
  • Ass Pull: Isabela's reveal as the Man Behind the Man, which is a total contradiction of her previous characterization as The Atoner. Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome hit her hard, with extra emphasis on the "sudden".
  • Awesome Music:
  • Breather Boss: Teddy is probably the easiest boss in the entire game. All you have to do is deactivate his security system while avoiding his drones and a few zombies, nether of which are very difficult (though the aforementioned drones can be bit of a problem if you're not quick enough). Also, you don't even have to fight Teddy directly (he suffers a heart attack as soon as you get to him).
  • Base-Breaking Character: Nick Ramos. There are those who don't think he is on par with Frank West or Chuck Greene in terms of being a Dead Rising protag, and those who think he's a welcome change of pace due to him being a Cowardly Lion.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The weapon lockers remove a lot of the need to explore and experiment with new combos and other weapons, since you can just fill your inventory with multiple copies of your preferred weapon. The Mobile Weapon Locker only enhances this further by giving you a heavily-armored van that's highly resistant to zombie attacks, and lets you access your weapon library at anytime while piloting the vehicle.
  • Complete Monster:
    • General John Hemlock, Secretary of Defense, oversees the Martial Law over the zombie outbreak in Los Peridos, and is working alongside Marian Mallon, acting President in the absence of Sonya Paddock. In reality, Hemlock had Paddock kidnapped and forcibly infected with the zombie parasite, so that he could take over. Hemlock plans to firebomb the city it in a week if there are no signs of organic life, and he uses his psychotic henchwoman Sgt. Hilde Schmittendorf to kill civilians. His plan is to extract King Zombies from the city and use them to start and control outbreaks all over the Eastern Seaboard to continue imposing martial law and leave him as the de facto dictator. When Mallon disrespects Hemlock, he kills her by throwing her off a building.
    • Albert Contiello is a sadistic surgeon who represents the sin of Greed. Contiello sees the outbreak as a chance to harvest peoples organs freely for the sake of profit and takes to abducting survivors and performing surgery on them without anesthetic to harvest their organs for the black market. When he captures Nick Ramos, Contiello drugs him with a hallucinogenic that makes him hallucinate the other four survivors as clones of Albert, making it difficult for Nick to not injure or kill them accidentally.
  • Crazy is Cool:
    • Harry "Zhi" Wong, the Psychopath representing the sin of Wrath, is an Ax-Crazy murderer filled with Unstoppable Rage, but also styles himself as an Old Master Warrior Monk whose fight is an intense struggle against his long spear.
    • After his Freak Out, Diego runs into a museum and dons a fully-functioning astronaut suit, complete with functioning Jetpack. He becomes convinced he's an astronaut and Nick is an alien, leading to a very exciting if Player Punch-y fight.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Zhi beheading himself after being defeated is pretty disturbing...until his head hits the ground, revealing a rather Narmy look on his face.
    • Dylan's whole spiel: the guy is a psychotic fetishist with a creepy appearance. Then you get to his male genitalia-shaped flamethrower.
  • Designated Love Interest: Nick and Annie, their entire relationship appears to compose of Nick rescuing Annie and then asking her if she's alright. They don't share any scenes together or have any shared interests, it's just Nick being awkward around her and then rescuing the damsel. During the boss fight against Red, the game suddenly introduces a love triangle when the pair argue over Annie, with Red saying "I knew you were eyeing my girl!" and Nick saying "Annie is way too good for you, you bastard!"
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Dylan tends to show up in artwork. It helps that he's one of the more colorful and weird Psychopaths, which makes him memorable in a way that Dead Rising 4's maniacs are not.
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • Timer alterations. The strict time limit placed on the player was always one of the most controversial gameplay mechanics in the series, with about half the fans calling it a Scrappy Mechanic that gravely restricted the player's freedom and the other half arguing that it was a key part of the game's flow that forced the player to think about their next move. As such, when this game made the timer far more lenient, extending it to six days instead of three, the reaction was decidedly mixed, though even those who didn't like the change didn't mind too much. Plus, there was an optional difficulty to make it more like the previous games. Then the fourth game dropped the timer completely, and one of the most common complaints about the resulting game was that, without the timer, it had lost a key part of what made the series unique, turning into a cookie-cutter Wide-Open Sandbox game.
    • Also, the fourth game's removal of the Psychopaths, people who had snapped and gone postal due to the stress of the zombie outbreak and served as boss battles, was widely criticized, with their replacement, the Maniacs, being broadly unpopular for lacking the distinctive personalities and introductory cutscenes that the Psychopaths had. This game had already begun toning down the Psychopaths, with most of the fights required to progress through the story being with conventionally evil military figures or gang leaders, and only six optional Psychopaths along the side. While the conceit of having seven different Psychopaths based on the Seven Deadly Sins (the six optional Psychos, plus the story-critical Albert the sleazy surgeon, who represented Greed) was applauded by some fans for providing a theme to the boss fights, others found themselves wishing that there were more of them scattered throughout the game, especially in a setting that served as a pastiche of the ripe-for-satire Los Angeles. Dropping and replacing them altogether in the fourth game wasn't a big leap.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The Psychopaths are all named styled after the Seven Deadly Sins, right? Not many people know about what some Eastern Orthodox denominations consider to be the 8TH sin: Despair. This role is filled by the self proclaimed "realist" Red, who has long given up on the good fight and is willing to sell out everyone for a quick buck.
    • Nick being The Immune orphan makes perfect sense when you realize the symbolism of the number 12. In traditional Christianity the number 12 is the perfect number, symbolic of God's authority on Earth. The number of God (3, from the Trinity) multiplied by the number of Earth (4, from the four corners of the Earth). Jesus had 12 apostles, Jacob had 12 sons.
  • Fridge Horror: It may seem odd to you that most of the safe houses in the city are infested when you first reach them as Nick, forcing you to clear them out before you can use their facilities. If you play the Operation Broken Eagle DLC, however, one of Adam's side quests is deliberately attacking the safe houses with a customized bioweapon, each of which is locked up and clearly occupied by living survivors. You're the one who infested those safe houses.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • The Ultimate Grim Reaper. It launches a cluster of bombs with each swing, allowing you to gain PP extremely quickly. The bombs are limited by ammo, but since you can replenish it by just killing zombies, this weapon can go a long way.
    • The Electrofire Staff in Fire-Mode can also make level grinding a breeze, according to this video, and it's easier to make than the Ultimate Grim Reaper (requiring two blueprints instead of three, as well as materials for it becoming common).
    • The ZAR combo gun, made from a shotgun and assault rifle, has more ammunition than both its ingredients put together, randomly sets its targets on fire, can put down "super" zombies like the convicts with one clean head shot, and even inflicts decent damage on psychopaths. Since you can find both shotguns and assault rifles on zombie cops or soldiers, you can easily keep ZARs in your inventory throughout most of the game.
      • In addition, with only one skill point, that's spent in the in the "guns" rigging skill, any type of gun will be usable for for the combo, meaning you can pick up two of any gun type to make it. This can mean two pistols, which is surprisingly common in even the same area as each other, or pick up a random gun, such as a flare gun, run around for a minute, find the other gun type, and make it from that. In addition to power there is reliability as well with a simple level up.
      • Also, it's found in the police station. The easiest way to get it is, if you have chapter 3 of untold stories or the one as the gang leader, start that and he'll come across it in his quest to escape the station.
    • Speaking of which, the untold stories are wonderful for picking up all the collectibles. Due to time passing based on plot rather than playtime, it can be easy to run around as a character and take your time snatching up blueprints, collectibles, and some extra PP for levels. The disadvantage is there are no safe zones for any of these characters, so no lockers, but after a few hours playing the normal game even a new player should be able to get along just as well without that boon.
    • The Split Shot, made from an Assault Rifle and a Lead Pipe (with Combo Categories, any gun and blunt weapon). It fires 5 bullets in a fan spread, despite only consuming one bullet, has a large ammo pool, good accuracy on the middle shot, and a fast fire rate. Simply running around and shooting, with the game aiming for you, allows you to clear huge mobs effortlessly, racking up combos and multiplied PP on your way to your destination. Add the bullet piercing, ammo boost, and combo categories upgrades, and you can easily resupply on the go with any gun and blunt weapon, have 150 shots for a single gun, and the piercing bullets will clear even the largest mobs in seconds.
    • The Combo Categories feature counts as this, given once you've bought all of them you can pretty much make any game-breaker combo weapon you want, with nearly anything you want, and combined with the new ability to make combo weapons with no table, and a fully upgraded Mechanic stat, you won't even need to cheat.
    • The hammer toss barehanded finisher, hold right on the stick when doing a finisher grab with the appropriate skill levels, can rack up frankly absurd amounts of PP but requires more in the moment setup than the combo weapons listed above. Every zombie hit and killed by the swing, all normal take only ones hit, give you finisher bonus PP but they have to be grouped behind you when you start the grab. Done with enough zombies killed you can do it again right after you finish the previous one. Get the rhythm going in a large crowd and you'll find your level going up wildly fast as the PP bonus for the combo keeps rising.
  • Genius Bonus: The psychopaths have meanings behind their names.
    • Darlene's last name is "Fleischermacher", which roughly translates to "meat maker" or "butcher" in German. In the first game, Carlito was carrying out his revenge on the US government for their experiments on mass producing beef to meet demand. Her last name brings the whole thing full circle; she's someone that the government wanted to produce more for, and as the embodiment of the deadly sin of gluttony, she's one of the "red, white, and blue Americans" that Carlito swore revenge on.
    • Kenny's last name means "free of envy" in Celtic, which is something he is certainly not free from.
  • Good Bad Bugs: if you defeat a boss when he/she is electrocuted/set on fire, he/she will still be affected during the following cutscene. Which can be morbidly hilarious.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Although the story was pretty clearly intended as an allegory critical of the U.S. government's response to illegal immigration, it unintentionally posits a situation in which the U.S. government uses mandatory mass vaccinations as a tool of societal control and those who object are used as scapegoats for the zombie outbreak, which plays into far-right conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic.
  • I Knew It!: Nick Ramos being one of Carlito's orphans and Annie's true identity being Katey Greene were speculated on the internet long before the game came out.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Hilde, who is supposed to be ensuring survivors' protection, has a pleading man's wife murdered and then snaps his neck pretty much For the Evulz.
    • General Hemlock crosses this when he orders President Haddock to be forcefully infected with a parasite and then turned on a civilian to ensure he'll assume martial law, and thus total control.
    • Marian Mallon murdering Diego just so she could see if he was the cure...gruesomely.
    • The Secret Ending reveals that the outbreak of the game was caused by Isabela Keyes so she could find a cure and become a hero for all time, not giving a damn about any "inconsequential" lives lost in the process.
  • Narm:
    • Once again, letting the main character wear anything during cutscenes. Moments that are suppose to be dramatic or scary can be ruined by Nick in a mankini.
    • Similarly, the blood splatter mechanic. The worst is probably near the end where you can can watch Nick make out with Annie while his face is covered in the blood of her dead ex-boyfriend and some zombies.
    • During a cutscene in the prison camp, a soldier can be heard making the Wilhelm Scream, without a hint of irony.
  • Nausea Fuel: Everything about Darlene, from her appearance to her vomiting attack to her death, is just plain gross. Even worse in HD.
  • Porting Disaster: The PC version is crappily optimized, and is initially locked to 30 FPS (and the optimization is even worse if you unlock the framerate). On top of that, Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX plus Alpha isn't on PC.
  • The Scrappy: Hemlock gets a lot of hate because of how one dimensional and ultimately dull he is as a villain, being a generic and evil corrupt official that wants to conquer the world just because he can. Fans also dislike how he stole the focus from Marian Mallon and was one of the main reasons her potential was squandered.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: Psychopaths are a lot less overbearing in comparison with previous games, it's much easier to level up, not to mention you get buffs for leveling up enough, survivors are more durable and capable at fighting and not all of them need to be escorted to be rescued, the time limit is more generous, and weapons can easily be obtained from the weapons locker.
  • Spiritual Licensee: An Affectionate Parody of an existing work? Wide open, objective-based stages with powerups? A relatively simple combat system with light attacks, strong attacks, and supers? The ability to mow down armies of enemies easily? Multiple playable characters? Multiplayer support? Are you sure Super Ultra Dead Rising 3' Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX + α wasn't originally a Dynasty Warriors clone?
  • Vindicated by History: A mild example. When the game came out, it was criticized for a new creative team, and abandoning most of the satire and humor the franchise featured. After Dead Rising 4 released, which removed a number of features of the series, severely downplayed the freedom of what the player was allowed to do with items, recasting Frank West's voice actor, T.J. Rotolo, and once again changing creative teams (this time with none of them having worked on a Dead Rising game before), response to 3 has become somewhat better due to it trying to keep most of the franchise's core while still trying to do something new.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The situation with the "Illegals" is analogous to the illegal immigrant debate in the U.S. If the name isn't an obvious tip-off, Illegals are incorrectly blamed by the more Jerkass characters for the zombie problem plaguing the Los Angeles stand-in, and are used as a scapegoat by higher ups in the government. Furthermore, Nick Ramos, who is on the Illegals' side is a Central American immigrant.

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