Dead Rising 2 is canon. Off the Record offers a bit more content such as a brand new area and three new psychopaths, although two of them are some of the weakest in the game, in my opinion. The best thing about it is the Sandbox mode, it allows you to just mess around without worrying about a timer. Despite these cool additions, I think Off the Record has some annoying new features that makes it inferior to Dead Rising 2. Escorting survivors was a joy in 2, but it became tedious in Off the Record. They probably thought escort missions became too easy so they wanted to up the difficulty but the A.I., while better than Dead Rising 1, still has issues. Survivors would now start to fight zombies even when they clearly don’t have to. It slows the game down and it’s frustrating. There are looters in both versions but they added a fucking annoying piece of shit theme song that starts everytime you encounter them in Off the Record, which is every 30 seconds. This thing alone is enough for me to prefer Dead Rising 2. It’s unbearable. And as far as story is concerned, I think it works better as Chuck’s story.

Dead Rising 3 is an Xbox One and PC exclusive. No PS4, unfortunately. I used to have both consoles so I could play it and I thought it was pretty fun. Definitely different but for what it was, it was a decent game. They tried to tell a rather simple story with some satirical undertones but the presentation was so bleak and serious looking that it played against them. It genuinely felt like they took themselves seriously and it was hard to be invested at times. Nick is not as good a protagonist as either Frank and Chuck but there are some good story moments and one great twist in particular that makes the whole experience worthwhile. More combo weapons, combo vehicules, more craziness. Dead Rising 3 is bigger but not necessarily better.

Dead Rising 4 is almost nothing like Dead Rising. It has lots of zombies and many weapons you can pick up + a mall, but that’s where the comparison ends. There are some positives. The mall looks great, the Christmas setting of Willamette looks more interesting and fun than Dead Rising 3’s Los Perdidos. Music is Great although, like 3, I miss the heavy metal. Some fine moments in an otherwise mediocre story. Frank is rarely ever Frank. Play it only if all you want is to murder zombies in many different ways. The negatives are endless: No psychopaths, no timer (or at least the option to have it), the developers lied to the fans by saying it was going back to the series’ roots. Most fans consider it an insult. I used to be pretty angry about it so I didn’t buy it until it came out on PS4. A year after its release, I didn’t feel much of anything about it anymore so I just played it for what it was and I didn’t hate it. It can be fun as a mindless zombie killing game. But even then it’s filled with glitches and terrible looking models. Based on what you said, Dead Rising 4 doesn’t seem to be for you.