-
Attack from the Dead Review
If you enjoy games like Zombie Invasion, you’ll probably get a kick out of this app.
It seems that Touch gamers are obsessed with zombies. Or at least you'd think so based on the number of zombie killing games on the App Store. Attack From the Dead is another zombie killing, survival shooter similar to Zombie Invasion [App Store Link], and I don't necessary mean that as a bad thing. In the wake of games like Resident Evil and House of the Dead, I think there's good reason people are obsessed with these games.
Attack From the Dead is a fun addition to the line-up. The premise to the game sets up players as the sole surviver of a special-ops military team sent into a zombie infested town in order to retrieve a valuable scientist and any other survivors you might find along the way.
Click to EnlargeWhat we'd like to see in future updates: Basic UI improvements; balancing improvements; survival mode with global leaderboards (See above for more detail).
Gameplay is fairly simple, but has a bit more to it than Zombie Invasion. Like Zombie Invasion, zombies wander onto the screen, and you try to blow them away before they can reach your barrier. If you can survive the waves of zombies until daybreak, you are awarded 3 action points. You spend your action points to search building on the map (see the images above) for survivors, new weapons, and items to strengthen your barrier against the zombies. Your action points expire if you don't use them all, so you have to make smart decisions. There are multiple weapons to discover and any survivors you find will help you defend against the zombies. Once your action points are spent, you return to your barrier and prepare for the next night's onslaught.
Honestly, I found the game to be relatively enjoyable and possibly more fun than Zombie Invasion, which can tire out quickly. I also think this App should have a higher rating on the iTunes App Store; however there were a several elements that slightly affected gameplay and could be improved in future updates. I'll take a little bit of space to address some of these issues. First, you can walk your character up and down along the barrier to get better aim at some of the Zombies, but you can't shoot while moving; this should be fixed. The trajectories when aiming towards the bottom of the screen are cut unusually short, forcing players to walk all the way to the bottom to kill those incoming zombies; this should be fixed. A related problem is in overlap preference of zombies. Zombies die faster with headshots, but the overlap gives preference to zombies higher-up on the screen. This means if two zombies are neck and neck in the race for your barrier, you might be aiming for the lower zombies head, but preference will be given to the higher zombie, and you'll end up shooting the higher zombie in the knee instead of the lower zombie in the head; this definitely needs to be fixed.
End of game continues are another issue. players seem to be given unlimited continues, and at the beginning of a continue, all ammunition for every weapon you've found is restored. Basically, this rewards players for dying (sometimes I found it easier to let myself die and start a round fresh with full ammo & barrier strength rather than to waste action points on repairing). This somehow needs to be addressed and might be accomplished by better balancing weapon ammo supplies (maybe zombies should drop supplies in addition to finding them in buildings). Maybe continues shouldn't be unlimited, but players can unlock additional continues.
Overall, I think this is a very enjoyable game that you will get your .99 cents worth out of. I would gladly recommend this game to anyone who has the extra cash and is looking for a fun zombie shooter game, but maybe not to those individuals who only have $0.99 to spend for the month or even week. The area where this game loses to Zombie Invasion is the lack of global leaderboards. It would be nice to see a survival mode with leaderboards added. I believe doing so would give this game a strong advantage over Zombie Invasion. Basically, as long as the developer supports this title with updates, I think it could become very strong.
And finally a tip to players: If the zombies reach your barrier, shake your device to slash their heads off with one swipe of your blade! It makes a big difference, trust me.
