A prelude to a potentially good genre for the DS!
Touch the Dead isn't a horrible game, but it's not a great game either. Most of the charm of the game really seems to come more from memories of being in the arcade, pumping coins and feverishly shooting anything that moves, (including poor innocent by standards) than the actual gameplay.
Anyway, this title definitely has more potential than what was included. I think the developers just wanted to make something that you could just pick up, play for a few minutes...and then maybe put down after a while. The infamous "pick up and play" type genre that seems to work so well with the DS. If you want, you can of course breeze through the game in a few hours.
It's not a very hard game, although it can get frustrating at times, most so due to the simultaneously uncomfortable and challenging reload mechanism. You have to slide the magazine or, ammo from the right side of the screen to the left (in right handed mode...other wise it's from left to right in left handed mode).
The visuals of course are lacking...very much so. I feel like I'm playing an old Playstation game more than anything...but...there's nothing wrong with that. I loved those old creepy shooters on the PS. But what seems to make this game lack more than visuals or cumbersome reload mechanics are the environments. Most of the time they're pretty bland. For a while I thought I would never see an outside area and wished to be out of the confined indoors.
But then once I actually got outside...it didn't seem to be much better ;) I think that perhaps if more time were taken into also making the enemies come out of more logical areas (they seem to just come out of nowhere) it would have given the environments a bit more credibility and maybe would have driven the team to make them more dynamic.
But again, for what it is, a rail-shooter...Touch the Dead isn't so bad. Hopefully this type of gameplay will open up doors for other titles to take what TTD did, and improve on some story and gameplay. I think a Resident Evil title like this would be pretty awesome if done right just right :)