Dead Rising 3 Operation Broken Eagle DLC Review

Capcom Vancouver recently released the first of a four-part series of downloadable content for Dead Rising 3 on the Xbox One. The four pieces of downloadable content will all focus on the Untold Stories of Los Perdidos. These tell the story of the events prior to Nick Ramos’ adventure, through the eyes of four different characters. The first, Operation Broken Eagle, has players stepping into the role of Adam Kane a spec ops bad-ass who is tasked with finding the U.S. President with his team of operatives.

When their helicopter goes down, his team gets scattered. Kane’s objectives expand from just finding the president, to tracking down his fellow squad mates as well. It lays context for the overall structure of this downloadable content. You, as Kane, can explore Los Perdidos freely. You’ll be looking for your team, some have perished, some have turned to zombies, and some will even join-up with you to complete your mission. It follows the same game plan as the original release, there are just new objectives laid out for you. These consist of collecting dog tags from your fallen squad members, searching out safe houses for illegals and contaminating them, and the main story missions which further the content towards its conclusion.

This downloadable content is more Dead Rising 3, for better or worse. Like the core game, there’s much more to it if you venture off of the main story missons. Getting there is half the fun, and Capcom is banking on you having enjoyed completing the side missions in Dead Rising 3. It makes up the majority of the content found in Operation Broken Eagle. You can hit the main story points in this downloadable content fairly quickly if you don’t take the time to explore the secondary objectives, and the payoff isn’t all that great if you don’t invest in seeing all there is to see. After all, Dead Rising 3’s story wasn’t exactly its best quality. However, if you were even semi-invested in the storyline for the main game, it will be interesting to see how these characters timelines play into the overall story arc.

Capcom Vancouver does use this clever story telling mechanic as the main selling point for this downloadable content. There really aren’t any new ways to play Dead Rising 3 found in this downloadable episode. In fact some options and features have been stripped away. One glaring omission from this release is the ability to play cooperatively, and there’s also no new Psycho bosses to be discovered. This is a solo adventure, so if you were hoping for more content to play with your Xbox Live friends, you won’t find it here. And sure, Kane is a new character, but plays nearly identically to Nick. There are a smattering of new weapons, and firearms seem to be more prevalent, but other than that it’s largely familiar experience. A new Armadillo military vehicle is another new item in the DLC, and you’ll get ample opportunity to drive this rolling monstrosity as the DLC wears on.

Dead Rising 3: Operation Broken Eagle is a pretty good piece of downloadable content if you’re ready for more of the same Dead Rising 3 experience. Completionists will get far more out of the content than those who rush from objective to objective, as those who do will likely find the content to be short and lacking. While we’d definitely like to see Capcom expand the game with new features in future releases, it’ll be interesting to see how these other stories tie into the Dead Rising 3 storyline, nonetheless.