Touch the Dead

"It's fun, it's unique, it's enjoyable, but admittedly it's pretty average."

Touch the Dead is an on-rails shooting game in the same veil as light gun games such as House of the Dead, Time Crisis, and Virtua Cop. The main difference in Touch the Dead is that instead of a light gun, the stylus is used. Based on the name of the game, I'm sure by now that you've come to the conclusion that zombies are the main focus of this particular rail shooter.

Moving on to the details, Touch the Dead is developed by a fairly small development team in Europe called Dream On, and the production values of this game are frankly on the weak side, so don't expect too much.

Story - No Score: The story is pretty much non-existent, which is the reason I haven't bothered to state the name of this game's main character, or mention the story anywhere in the summary earlier. Rob Steiner may as well be the Doom Guy. He's trying to escape from zombies, he shoots things, and he very occasionally says something that doesn't really matter at all. If you're looking for a compelling story, don't bother. This game is all about the action.

Graphics - 6/10: If you get caught up in this game, you'll likely pay very little notice to the graphics, and for a DS game, Touch the Dead doesn't really look bad. The thing is that it doesn't really look great either. As far as polygon counts go, the models in this game are decent, however the textures are very low resolution, and they can make the models look downright ugly if you see them close up. The environments look pretty good. It's just the models that are the problem.

Audio - 7/10: There really isn't much music, but as a lot of people in other reviews have said, it actually works out for this game. Any music is played low in the background, with zombie effects and gunshots being the main things to ring through your ears. There's nothing to really complain about.

Controls - 7/10: Like I said earlier, instead of a gun, you use the stylus, and it actually works out pretty well. You don't get that slight bad ass feeling from blasting things with a gun, but tapping the screen somehow ends up being pretty fun in itself. Everythings very simple and effective. You tap the screen to fire your gun, and slide a new clip of bullets from one side of the screen to the other to reload. The D-Pad is used to switch between weapons. Again, nothing to complain about.

Difficulty - 8/10: A lot of people think this game is really hard. Unfairly so. The main problem with most people is that you play through the game with one pool of life. You can find life to fill that bar with in game. The game has save points that you restart from if you die, and at every save point some of your life is filled as well, however, if you reach one checkpoint with exceptionally low life, you're going to have to work with it.

There is some merit to these complaints. If you don't like a tough game, this isn't really for you, but this does happen to be an action game, so challenge should be no surprise, and it's not truly unfair. Quick hands, good reflexes, and switching between your weapons efficiently will lead you to victory.

Longevity - 5/10: There's not much to say here. The game has two difficulty levels, and one god-mode which is essentially for screwing around. So ideally this game will be played through 2-3 times, and more if you really enjoy the game. Aside from that though, there is almost nothing about this game to keep you playing. If you're good at the game, you'll probably get a good 8 hours of play time, which isn't that much these days.

Reasons To Buy This Game: Here's the summary of what would most likely make this game an appealing buy. Touch the Dead is the only one of its kind for the DS. As a member of the rail shooter genre, it's nothing special, and as a game overall, it's fun but below average. However, this is the only portable rail shooter that I've personally ever heard of, so it does have something unique going for it in that nothing else really lets you blast zombies arcade-style on the go.

If you like zombies, and you like shooting games, Touch the Dead can probably find a place in your gaming library, and in that case I would recommend buying this game so that a message can be sent that we want bigger and better shooters to show up on the DS.

If you want a game that'll last you a really long time, you expected a compelling story, and shooting zombies and action isn't really your thing, there's not really any reason to get this.

Final Score - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/24/07