Our captures show the game upscaled to 1080p by the Xbox One - with results that are expectedly unkind to thin objects and flickering alpha elements like trees or fence-work. It's a bit of a disappointment in this sense, and continues to dangle a question mark over the capabilities of the console's hotly contested specs when it comes to titles striving for full HD
Accepting that some compromises go with the territory of developing a launch title, the question remains: has this technical trade-off been well-judged? Certainly, the zombie horde looks impressive in its increased numbers, and the boost here means the game's core appeal - the flourishes of fantastical violence - are ratcheted up another notch. The pop-in has also thankfully been reduced since the game's E3 appearance, though textures still visibly stream in after covering ground too quickly in vehicles. Object pop-in is mitigated through the use of a somewhat curious non-alpha fade-in technique, a visual quirk that has the polygonal structure of items like cones and fences fill out as our protagonist Nick Ramos walks forward. This gives a fizzling effect to weapons and vehicles too as they're summoned into the game world via the crafting system.
With all its rough edges, Dead Rising 3's intended impact as a next-gen title is clearly dulled, but there's enough here to show early Xbox One adopters a side of the zombie-slaying experience that couldn't be achieved on current-gen hardware. The zombie count and overall world size are impressive - amplified to a previously unheard volume where interplay with vehicles ties in appropriately with this shift in scale. However, the fact remains that the game's original brief as an Xbox 360 title is still very much felt in other areas; the pared-back alpha, texture streaming issues and jagged 720p presentation giving the impression that the series' potential is still somehow being bounded.
It's also unfortunate that the game runs at far from the promised locked 30fps - rather a chugging 20fps during the zombie action while out in the big city. Compared to the shaky E3 build seen just months ago this is still a respectable step forward, and of course many of the game's technical shortcomings come with the unique circumstances of meeting a hardware launch. All this amounts to an intriguing first attempt, then, but needless to say we're eager to see how Capcom Vancouver follows up on its sandbox survival-horror formula when it's given more breathing room with the deadline, more experience with the hardware, and factoring in the next-gen platform's strengths from the very start.
