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Game Title: Dead 'N' Furious
Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: Dream On Studio
Publisher: Virgin Play/Secret Stash Games
Genre: On-Rails Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+, ESRB: M for Mature
Release Date: May 15th 2007(US), May 30th 2007 (UK)
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Game Score: 3.5/10
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Summery:
It has some ideas but Dead 'N' Furious comes out as a rotting zombie shooter that is badly executed on both story and gameplay.
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Light Gun games have had their times in the arcade towards consoles with the uses of the gun controller which were always great for break time hours. Developer Dream On Studio attempted to translate the shooting mechanics from a plastic TV gun controller to a stylus pen. Its result is Dead 'N' Furious (Also called Touch the Dead in America) to try and jump in on the zombie shooter fan-wagon much like Capcom and Sega, but so many problems hold the zombie shooter experience back.
Dead 'N' Furious has a list of different ideas but they were just executed poorly. It's first offender is the storyline, you play as Rob Steiner who has been jailed for a murder that he didn't commit and suddenly the prison becomes invested by a massive horde of zombies. The biggest compliant with the story is how climatic it is and you never learn who was the real murderer and why the prison was attacked by zombies in the first place. It basically doesn't give you any backstory or any clues which leaves players with questions and chances are that no one is going to even care.
On top of the poor story you get gameplay mechanics of an old school Light Gun game that didn't spend enough time being thought out compared to the House of the Dead series. The game is an on-rails shoot em up where character movement is automatic and you use the stylus pen to shoot down incoming zombies, slugs, bats and other monsters you might encounter, you can shoot down zombies in either the stomach, arms, legs or the head. To reload the gun you need to drag the clip icon on the right side of the screen towards the gun magazine instead of just pressing a button. Rather then make reloading the gun instantaneous like in other Light Gun games Dead 'N' Furious plays out a reloading animation which is slow and it leaves you open against enemies that are trying to kill you. The zombies are the biggest threat because they can actually take plenty of bullets before they decide to die even if you shoot one in the head. Basically Headshots do just as much damage as supposed to shooting one in the stomach and another problem is that you can be surrounded by possibly 3 towards 7 zombies on the screen at once, combine that with the slow reloading mechanic then its a guarantee that you are going to get hit, especially when you are trying to reload and you are in a panic to drag another clip quickly only to make a slip up. This is bound to get you killed because when the zombies get close to you, you don't get much of a chance to kill one zombie while another zombie takes a hit at you while you are reloading. What's also bad is that there is no recovery time after damage so you can get hit again right away and that is a serious problem when one mistake from the multiple bats for instance can drain nearly parts of your Life. You get 5 hits per Life and when you lose all your Lifes the game is over and you have to restart the stage all over again.
Thankfully you can shoot boxes around every stage which contains health and ammo boxes and you will eventually grab a shotgun, a crowbar and a Machine Gun on top of the Handgun that you start with. The Handgun has unlimited ammo but the Shotgun and the Machine Gun has limited bullets and you have to use them wisely. The Crowbar on the other hand is a melee weapon which is used by swiping on the touch screen, the way you swipe on the touch screen is accurate, you swipe to the left swings the crowbar to the left and swiping right swings to the right. The Crowbar remains as one of the best weapons in the game but it isn't helpful during time based segments like when you are inside a gas filled room or one where you have to fight off waves of zombies to reach the helicopter. Still with all the weapons the zombies can still take too many bullets before they die, sure you can find upgrades for the weapons allowing them to be reloaded faster and deal more damage but these differences are hardly noticeable.
The game does have a few points where you can shoot switches to open doors or use a crowbar to break down a door or turn the lever to move left or right at the final boss encounter. There are also choices where you can select either the Left or Right path which allows you to explore some different areas that you didn't see on your first run of each map. These barely manage to break up repetitive gameplay found in Dead 'N' Furious but offers a good amount of scenery.
The best moments of Dead 'N' Furious are the boss battles that you get at the end of each chapter. Like in The House of the Dead games bosses need to shot at their weak points to deal damage which requires reloading and pumping up rounds at the right time to win. The bosses have an attack pattern that needs to be observed carefully before shooting them which is very clever. These are only saving graces of Dead 'N' Furious and you will enjoy fighting them then having to deal with the same enemies you fight over and over on top of the awful reloading mechanics.
Dead 'N' Furious looks like a 3D game made for the early PlayStation and Nintendo 64 with outdated pixelation on the character models, especially the zombies that look dated then they close. The character animations are worse being lowered in framerate compared to the overall framerate of the game. The strange thing in the game is that areas can look empty when the game moves you to a different part of the stage only to have enemies appear from out of nowhere when the camera turns. This is also worsened by one part where you are facing a wall when Bats suddenly appear from it which is a sign of faulty game design. The models look almost as bad as King Kong on the DS but at least the environments aren't that bad but they are not great either. The Music in the game fits in with the atmosphere but the sound effects and the zombie groans are impressive to hear from the DS speakers.
The only replay value you will ever get from this game is finding some of the unlockable concept art hidden somewhere in the levels and beating the game somehow unlocks the Furious Mode and God Mode difficulty settings, to be honest they are not all that worth it. Dead 'N' Furious has a few ideas but overall it comes out as a rotting zombie shooter that is badly executed on both story and gameplay. There's no story development what-so-ever, the reloading mechanic is a pain to get used too and you can be surrounded by about over 5 to 7 zombies and they can take so many bullets in the face to die which doesn't help the situation. It has awful and dated graphics and little to no replay value to be worth the asking price. Even for zombie fans there really isn't much good things to be found here. With the DS port of the original Resident Evil and Dementium The Ward, Dead 'N' Furious just isn't worth playing through unless anyone is just to edger to have another zombie shooter to take on the go.
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The Good Points:
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1. The Boss Fights that are fun to fight then the actual enemies in the game
2. The Zombie Groaning Sounds
The Bad Points:
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1. Storyline that is very climatic and provides no backstory
2. Reloading (while realistic in a way) is too slow and leaves you open to enemy attacks
3. Too many zombies can easily flood the screen and all weapons deal little damage to them
4. Dated and Awful graphics and animations
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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