Reviewed: June 6, 2007
Reviewed by: Ansel Newcome-Beill
Publisher
Eidos Interactive
Developer
Dream On Studio
Released: May 15, 2007
Genre: FPS
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Mature
5
4
4
3
4.4
Supported Features
The concept of the light gun game has been around since the days of Duck Hunt on the original 8-bit NES, but never before has this type of game been translated onto a handheld system. Touch The Dead by Eidos for the Nintendo DS does just that, using the long standing light gun gameplay mechanics and replacing the traditional light gun with the DS stylus.
Touch The Dead puts you in the shoes of military prisoner, Rob Steiner who has recently been transferred to Ashdown Hole state prison. It isn’t long before things begin to awry, as it appears that the entire prison has become overrun with flesh consuming hordes of the undead.
Touch The Dead despite its rather uncanny title, resembles many other light gun games in the same category, particularly the House Of The Dead series by Sega. That being said, any fan of the series will immediately know exactly what the game has to offer, which is shooting tons of zombies in the face.
Anyone who has either seen or played even one light gun based game, either in the arcades or in their living room, has the basic concept down pat, and despite the total lack of a gun, Touch The Dead is really no different than any of its predecessors.
The one area in which Touch The Dead differs from other light gun game is it’s substitution of a stylus for a light gun, and instead of aiming and pulling a trigger, players simply tap where they wish to shoot. This is something the game handles surprisingly well, the controls are responsive, accurate, and do a fairly decent job of fulfilling the light gun’s role in the game. Players also use the touch pad in a couple of other ways as well. By dragging a clip of ammo from one side of the screen to their gun, it reloads, replacing the more traditional “shoot off screen” method found in other light gun games.
Later in the game players also gain access to a crowbar which is used by rubbing the stylus horizontally across the screen. These seem like pretty cool concepts for a handheld game, but all of these mechanics just puts what feels like a sort of dumbed down spin on a genre of game that has remained relatively unchanged over the years.
In Touch The Dead players are guided on a preset path as their character wanders around the environment, and are given access to a handful of standard weapons, which operate much in the same way. Players are also occasionally given some options as to which path to take on their journey. This really has no bearing on how the game unfolds other than giving you a slightly different sequence of zombies to blow away. This wouldn’t be so bad except for a handful of issues that really disrupt the flow of Touch The Dead.
While your enemies do come in a decent variety, they tend to all look the same and attack in the same manner which means throughout the entire course of the game you will be following the same pattern of shoot, reload, repeat. There are a few boss fights that mix things up a bit, but are of relatively little challenge as the game tells you how to beat them right off the bat. The repetition only gets worse during the latter portions of the game, when you have to empty whole clips into your enemies which accomplishes nothing except forcing you to use the reload mechanic every two seconds which becomes terrible nuisance.
Touch The Dead in its entirety feels like a throwback to the days of the original House Of The Dead, with its chunky, quasi 3-D graphics and matted textures. The one satisfying thing about the graphics is the ability to amputate various parts of the zombie anatomy with carefully placed shots. The game does also serve up some interesting cut scene animations served up comic book noir style, which is a shame considering they are used only twice over the entire course of the game.
The zombies all look relatively identical, but aren’t very creepy, this goes for the boss monsters as well who don’t carry a very threatening posture with them thanks to the dated look of the game. What’s even more is that the seemingly endless waves of zombies you must combat, at times, literally materialize from thin air, just shuffling into your kill zone as though you hadn’t mowed them down mere seconds before. The environments as well tend to start looking the same after awhile and carry a bland, flat look to them.
While the dated graphics in Touch The Dead are somewhat understandable considering the level of hardware involved, there are many other 3-D games in the DS lineup, which have managed to push the hardware so much further and really put the antiquated graphics in Touch The Dead to shame.
The sound effects in Touch The Dead are an unexciting blend of repetitive moaning and groaning, which aren’t so much bad as they are flat. The same goes for the weapon and environmental effects as well. The bang of your weapons tend to sound fake and unappealing, and the reloading sound is heard so often it’s enough to make you mute the game altogether.
Things take a bit of a nose dive during the Touch The Dead’s cut scenes, because while there is no voice acting, the story is delivered to the you via atrociously translated text on part of the games protagonist who prefers to communicate with incomplete sentences.
The one slightly redeeming feature in the game’s sound department is the absolutely absurd death metal loops that play during the boss fights. These tunes aren’t too terribly shabby, but the music for the remainder of the game along with the sound effects are easy to ignore.
The playtime involved with Touch The Dead is disappointing at best. The game, while frustrating in some parts can still be easily completed in one sitting. The game tries to coerce you into playing again by adding a couple of difficulty modes and bonuses to be discovered in the game, but this all can be overlooked as it just means playing through the same game twice.
There is a Wi-Fi feature that enables you to play through the game cooperatively with one other player, but does not do much in terms of drastically extending or altering the game, as you both play the game from the same point of view.
Touch The Dead is something of a convoluted concept as it is trying to bring new life to a declining genre by using repetitive, simplified mechanics on a new generation system. Light gun games have always been fun, and I’ve always had a blast playing them, but there simply just isn’t as much to be had when you take away the gun. I found Touch The Dead to bring back some decent memories of older, cabinet style light gun games, but I found the more I played the more I just wanted to find the nearest arcade and play House Of The Dead.
Touch The Dead is a decent enough game for short bouts of zombie slaying, but at its brief length, players may want to wait until it shows up in their local bargain bin, or simply save your money and blow some quarters on a true light gun game.
