Playing Differently | Dead Rising 4 - no combo, no exo and no skill playthrough

Rules:

• No Exo suit (if obtained one, get out straight away)
• No use of combo weapons (if obtained one through story, get out/drop it straight away)
• No Exo combo weapons
• No upgrading of any skills

Exceptions:

• Exo suit was used on the last boss as it was too difficult without it
• Going to be some anomalies in there due to how the game forces you at some point to use combo item/vehicles.

Capcom Vancouver have continuously advertised during release that Dead Rising 4 is "going back to it's roots" with the return of the main protagonist Frank West and the Willamette Mall. Though despite what the developers claim, this is most certainly not a call back to the original Dead Rising. Everything from Frank, to the combat mechanics as well as the location have had major overhauls to the point where Dead Rising 4 resembles very little of the original game. Despite the reception of changes, it's become unanimous that this game is easy, in fact - very easy. The addition of the ludicrously overpowered combo weapons became apparent with the third game, where combo weapons can be created on the fly with many having little to no balancing whatsoever. 

So I decided what better way to play the game than to play with no upgrades and avoiding combo weapons entirely. After all, the developers emphasised it's homages to the original series so I thought I'd play in a way that pays homage too. I want to play the game the developers didn't really intend and hopefully provide some much needed difficulty. I like a good challenge! 

So the first thing I immediately noticed was that many of the weapons that populate the environments have only one soul purpose, to contribute to the making of combo weapons. Many pickable objects that were obtainable in the older games have since been removed, leaving only the items that are combinable. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of the items around Willamette are of exotic nature, with bladed weapons and firearms in strong abundance. Restoration items also very prevalent with health never being too far away making the 2 item limit never really a big problem. A lot of the upgrades in the upgrade tree are also made up of artificial improvements that never mix up the gameplay mechanics; which is something of a plagued trend in modern gaming. It was easy to avoid increased inventory slots simply because you have 4 ranged, thrown and melee slots in addition to 2 health slots, resulting in inventory slots reminiscent of fully leveled characters in the previous games. 

Speaking of difficulty, I never felt as if I was at a major disadvantage. In your first major combat encounter one of the lead characters throws you a power weapon to use on 150 or so zombies with no other weaponry lying around. Initially I found this quite daunting until you realise that you're a one man army where the zombies offer little to no threat. Ultimately this is the games major problem. Later on there are some tense moments where your limited health and 2 health inventory slots provide you to play more cautiously than you would with an upgraded arsenal. During my time I never felt too much at a disadvantage because even the basic bladed weapons and firearms can shred through zombies in no time. The comparison of Dead Rising 3 being a zombie Musou game is ever so more apparent in this installment where zombies just stand around you and nudge you from time to time. 

Overall the sense of danger and planning which made the original Dead Rising games so appealing has disappeared entirely. Despite my attempts to make things more difficult and faithful, it came across as artificial and it's instantly apparent that the game wasn't meant to be played this way. Regardless, I think I had more fun this way with some genuine tense moments that just do not exist in the final game. However no matter how hard you try make this DR4 play like the older games, it's apparent the Capcom Vancouver expect you to play their way instead

Note: I completed this run before the updated difficulty patch. No, I didn't enjoy the game that much to go back and try it but from various reports, the newly increased difficulty is cheaply implemented much like the nightmare mode from DR3. Oh well...