The 10 Best Ways To Kill ‘Em With Christmas In Dead Rising 4

Games Lists Dead Rising 4
The 10 Best Ways To Kill ‘Em With Christmas In Dead Rising 4

Dead Rising 4 is one of the season’s best holiday romps. With its roster of over the top Yuletide weapons, you can literally kill ‘em with Christmas, using ornaments, tree toppers, nutcrackers, wreaths and other items to scrap together an arsenal even Santa Claus himself would be proud of. OK, using any of these would get you on the naughty list, but at least you’ll have fun gettin’ there. Without further ado, our selection of the ten most festive weapons in Frank West’s sleigh.

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10. Glass Knuckles

These gloves are little more than shards of glass tied to a bare fist, and boy, are they effective. +1 for the amusing pun on the phrase brass knuckles. +2 for being a creative use of the most dangerous weapon ever known to man’s bare feet, the string of bulb Christmas lights.

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9. Deck The Halls

I feel like, as a Christmas carol, Deck The Halls has been begging us to make this joke for years. Well, we did it folks. We finally did it. We can all go home now.

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8. Holiday Junk

What do you call Frank West’s crotch in an elf costume? This weapon is especially fun because it explodes Christmas clutter with each successful strike, dropping snowmen heads, candy, wands and other items needed to put together weapons on the fly.

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7. Bazooka Cannon

Typically you can find the toy cannons needed for the Bazooka Cannon sitting underneath the game’s many Christmas trees, which is awesome, because it means not only do you get to make what is arguably the most powerful weapon in Dead Rising 4, you also get to steal from a child to do it.

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6. Nut Blaster

This one is especially fun because it turns Frank West’s giant head into an even gianter head that shoots bullets and plays The Nutcracker Suite, which is pretty…nutcracker sweet.

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5. Electric Wreath

As if shaping the limbs of maimed trees into a circle to hang on your front door as a warning to all the other trees wasn’t threatening enough, in Dead Rising 4 you can also use it to pummel zombies to death while sending bolts of electricity through their rapidly decaying system. ‘Tis the season!

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4. Gandelf

Get it? The name is like Gandalf, who is a wizard and has a staff, and this is a Christmas themed staff that changes alf to elf. Now that we’ve got that hilarious joke out of the way, I can recommend using this weapon in Dead Rising 4 every chance you get. It is fun, it explodes a little (establishing some distance between you and incoming hordes of zombies), and it is delightfully bursting with Christmas magic.

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3. Candy Cane Crossbow

The Candy Cane Crossbow was only available as a Best Buy preorder item, and as badass as it is, it cannot be left out of this list. Imagine the damage inflicted by firing shards of candy into a crowd of zombies. I lose a pint of blood every year just from cutting my tongue on a sharpened candy cane, so I figure this crossbow is lethal as hell.

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2. Magic Wand

Arguably the most whimsical of the lot, the Magic Wand turns zombies into Christmas items like gingerbread men, reindeer, and wrapped presents. Sadly you cannot eat the gingerbread, nor unwrap the presents, nor ride the reindeer. I would know because I tried.

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1. Ornament Gun

Of all the Christmas weapons in Dead Rising 4, this is my favorite because it is big, bulky, and fires tree ornaments like a grenade launcher. Even better, it’s made from a T-shirt cannon, so you know that’s packing enough punch to launch a toddler through outer space.


Holly Green is a reporter, editor, and semiprofessional photographer living in Seattle, WA. She is also the author of Fry Scores: An Unofficial Guide To Video Game Grub. You can find her work at Gamasutra, Polygon, Unwinnable, and other videogame news publications.

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