Review: Dead 'n' Furious (AKA Touch the Dead) - Nintendo DS - DS - HEXUS.net

What do Zombies like to eat for dinner? Braaaaain's faggots

Dead ‘n’ furious certainly can’t be criticised for its lack of a decent challenge; it’s fiendishly difficult in places. The game shifts in tempo, at times giving you space to breath to examine an area to all of a sudden being totally overrun with zombies. It’s at these latter stages that the game can get repetitive and where some of the flaws become obvious.

For all the game’s good points, Dead ‘n’ Furious does have some negatives. First off, it killed my fingers due the constant tapping and reloading on the screen. After just 1 hour of gameplay I had to rest due to cramp setting in (this may well be my age). The constant screen tapping could be deemed as being repetitive, though I can’t see what else the developers could have done to rectify this as they do seem to have made extremely good use of the stylus. Re-loading though can be very irritating because it takes precious seconds to drag the stylus from one side of the screen to the other and in the more difficult stages you don’t really have that time to waste.

Dead ‘n’ Furious also lacks any significant visual or audio appeal. There are some decent looking environments, but the backgrounds lack variety in places. The game also lacks any shift in audio tempo during frantic scenes, and instead ambient sounds will play that don’t quite manage to capture the feeling of the scene.

Despite these negatives, Dead ‘n’ Furious does manage to create a tense atmosphere thanks to its challenging gameplay and constant threat of zombies around every corner. With a bit more variety in the levels, an upgrade to the graphics engine and a small tweak to the reloading system, I can see Dream On Studio returning with a far superior second game to the series. As it stands Dead ‘n’ Furious is still good fun to play and the addition of extra game modes, multiple endings, hidden rooms and multiplayer Wi-Fi Coop Mode does give it added replay value. When all is said and done, Dead ‘n’ Furious is an above average on-rails shooter.

Pros
Blasting zombies is fun
Challenging.
Plenty to keep you coming back for more.
Good use of dual-screen

Cons
Zombie graphics suck
Takes too long to re-load
Audio doesn’t run alongside the game
Repetitive levels

A fun, challenging blast and a title that cries out a sequel.