Another crowbcat video about trivialities that have zero impact on gameplay.
Gears 5 sounds better btw. 2 is too loud.
That was his worst and most cherrypicked video, he complains about not having to escort survivors in DR4 but he never mentions how terrible the survivors' AI in DR1 was. Then the rest of the video is about him grabbing useless stuff on the floor.
The first Dead Rising is the worst - torturous AI, low zombie count, few weapons/vehicles, no multiplayer - the game is a draft for the superior sequels. Dead Rising fans love to bring revisionism and pretend the escort missions were fine.
The first Dead Rising is one of the best action games I have ever played - the sequel improved almost nothing and took major steps away from what made the first game special.
I have not tried 3 or 4, because 2 and Off the Record were already offensively mediocre to me. So mediocre that I have played through both several times just to explore my anger at them. A proper video on why would have to go much further into "trivialities" than the crowbcat video did, because much of what makes DR2 so awful is in how it is slightly worse in almost all of the little details that make up the whole.
Removing all the challenge out of rescuing survivors is a more obvious problem of than most - to me the survivor AI in the original is great fun and it had a very fitting place in a game with a focus on time management. Sure it has a lot of quirks in its dumbness, but it is an obstacle can be learned and mastered. Herding the survivors in the direction that you want them to go does get hectic and hard, but in my experience it is ultimately down to your skill.
There is room for expanding the experience, but any change to make the survivors smarter would have to be compensated in the other direction somehow to add back any lost complexity. Because the fun is in how chaotic it is to have to constantly nudge them while also making good time and keeping up with the rest of the game.
As for low zombie count I wonder what area it is that you think suffers from this? The number of zombies seems very adequate for your capabilities in the game. The horde do get a bit spotty sometimes in the Maintenance Tunnels, and while that is a problem it impacts the game very little since it is not an area that you spend a lot of time in.
One related thing that the sequel did improve was that it more reliably kept track of when you had cleared out an area, the original has a tendency to spawn in new zombies behind your back. If this was improved then there would be room to add in more zombies as well as to not make the game easier.
As for picking up useless stuff from the floor I don't agree at all with them being useless in the first game, they are made useless in the sequel by lowering the damage many common items do and shifting the focus towards the awful combo weapons.
When playing the original for the first time you are often put in situations where you are forced to make do with whatever trash you find lying about. Exploring what trash you can use effectively in hectic situations is fun, as is just exploring the dry humour of killing zombies with everyday objects.
It is the case that once you learn the map much of the available arsenal does become less useful. While it is far from the problem of how much the combo weapons dominate the sequel, I find that the availability of overpowered boss weapons especially make the game less fun. Here is another case where I think the game could be improved, I believe it would be great fun if the game had no weapon respawns whatsoever other than for the most basic trash items.
This would put even more focus on having to master the toolbox that is the mall, knowing where everything is and planning for how to best use them throughout the game.
I have no idea how you can think that there being too few weapons is a problem. Adding more would be a plus as long an they fit in both in balance and in flavour - but there are loads of items as it is. I don't know where you would fit in more vehicles, the nature of the game makes enlarging the map thoughtlessly like in DR2 a dumb idea.
If I put my wild imagination to work I could dream of a Dead Rising with good multiplayer, but in reality I think it would only make it a less focused experience where you just dilly dally around in a wacky sandbox.