I should preface this review by letting you know that I enjoy zombie related media. The Walking Dead is one of my favorite TV shows. I enjoy games like Dead Island, Left 4 Dead, and Plants vs. Zombies. I also like movies like 28 days later, Resident Evil, and Zombieland.
Now I don’t blindly gush over everything zombie, but when done right, zombies can make for some compelling storytelling. This game is not a good example of how to make a zombie game.
Dead Weapon: Zombie overview
Dead Weapon: Zombie is a 3D FPS game that has 5 game modes.
- Campaign
- Wave
- Defense
- Arena
- Minigames
The campaign mode has levels that you have to advance through. You start with a tutorial that walks you through the basics and then move on to the first level, which is much, much harder than the tutorial.
The first level gives you a club with nails in it for a weapon. You can purchase more weapons in the store using the in-game currency, coins. You earn coins by watching advertisements, or you can buy coins via in-app purchases.
The club is incredibly difficult to use, so I recommend you upgrading to a firearm as quickly as possible. To conserve ammunition, you will want to go for the head shot as often as possible.
Don’t forget to buy ammunition for your firearms, because there is no other way to gain ammunition in the game. Also, the ammunition does not replenish when you die, in fact if you die after running out of ammo you start over out of ammo as well.
The mechanics of shooting are fairly simple. Aim and the gun will fire automatically when a target is in sight unless you are aiming through the sites, in which case you need to tap to fire.
The wave mode is fairly self-explanatory. Zombies come at you in waves and you have to kill them. The only problem is that they don’t come all at once or even in the same area. I couldn’t even finish the first wave, because after I killed 6 zombies, I couldn’t find the other 4 that I needed to finish the wave.
The defense mode is where there are entry points for survivors to escape to. It’s your job to fend off the zombies so that the survivors reach their destination. In this mode, you get to use the sniper rifle, even if you haven’t purchased it. But again, you’ll need to purchase ammo for it. Â I found that this mode was more enjoyable than the campaign mode, but only until I was swarmed by a mob of zombies while I was searching for zombies on the roof top. Then I got frustrated and tried the next mode.
The arena mode is a melee mode. You only get to use melee weapons and the condition of those weapons deteriorates over time. You can repair the weapons after each wave using, you guessed it, coins.
The minigames are really just silly nonsensical games. One of the games allows you to kick soccer, or football if you will, penalties with a zombies head. Another allows you snipe zombies as if they were clay pigeons. This can be a little difficult. Another minigame is war. In this game the zombies are much more aggressive and fast, you also get a fully automatic weapon for this mode. The last minigame is an endless runner. In this game, you dual wield a couple of uzis and run down a tunnel, all the while shooting zombies that get in your way. It’s important to note, that to play the minigames, you must use coins.
I highly recommend that you watch a ton of video ads so that you can purchase the best weapons up front.
Dead Weapon: Zombie setup
The only setup other than downloading and installing the app from Google Play is to log into Google Play Games service so you can track your achievements and such.
Dead Weapon: Zombie gameplay
On one hand, I love the concept. On the other, I think it still needs some work and more polish. The graphics aren’t very good, but that will also allow it to play on lower end devices. I used a 1st generation Moto G and it performed well, even after setting the graphics to high. Even on high graphics, the textures are low resolution.
I found the controls to be difficult, especially when you are trying to use a melee weapon. You have to swipe across a joystick to swing your melee weapon. If you don’t get it just right then you also end up moving your view.
The one thing I liked was that the ads were not mandatory. You only need to watch the ads to get more coins, but you get 250 coins every day, so in theory you could play without ever watching an ad.
What we liked
- Non-invasive ads
- Zombies
- Cool guns
What could be better
- Controls
- Better tutorial
- An actual story for the campaign mode
Dead Weapon: Zombie summary
Overall this game feels like it’s unfinished. There’s a lot to like about it, but in the end that just wasn’t enough to keep it installed on my phone.
[pb-app-box pname=’com.theguild.deadweaponzombie’ name=’Dead Weapon: Zombie’ theme=’discover’ lang=’en’]
