Dead Trigger Sets Its Sights on Android Gaming. Is It a Bullseye, or Is It Shooting Blanks?

Just when you thought the Bath Salt smoking, face eating, slow creeping Zombie craze was coming to an end, MADFINGER Games has unveiled its latest game “Dead Trigger“, on Android and iOS.  Does Dead Trigger slowly saunter into the night, or does it rage its way into a brain-eating frenzy?

Gameplay

Dead Trigger is your standard first-person shooter.  Touch screen controls are, much like many other mobile-based FPS, pretty basic, with one virtual control stick set for movement, a few on-screen buttons for various functions and aiming performed by touching the right side of the screen anywhere a button doesn’t already exist.  Players move down corridors and hallways taking out zombies in an attempt to save themselves, all while earning experience and money that can be applied to upgrading your character and becoming stronger, faster and better.

See that picture up there?  Better get used to it.  One of the bigger negatives of Dead Trigger is the fact that there’s a pretty lengthy loading screen between every level.  Even worse?  The level length isn’t exactly long, and you’ll end up seeing that screen every couple of minutes.  This adds up to a lot of time spent waiting around for the next level to load.  How bad was the loading times?  Once or twice my Bionic actually timed out of the standard 30 second screen shutdown.

Once the loading has finished, however, the game is pretty fun to play.  There’s a slight learning curve when it comes to moving and aiming at the same time, which seems to be a fault of touchscreen controls on a mobile device, rather than the fault of the actual game, but it’s fairly easy once you’ve got the gist of it!

Graphics/Design

The graphics of Dead Trigger really seem to be where this game shines.  It looks like a late-gen PS1 game, which is mind blowing when you think that this game is running on a device we can carry around in our pockets.  Dead Trigger is the type of game that, much like a game like Infinity Blade, really exhibits what can be done on a mobile platform.  Colors are rich, character models are clean, and the Zombies actually look pretty darn good.

Unfortunately, what this game gains in graphics, it really loses on design.  My biggest issue with Dead Trigger is the fact that MADFINGER Games is charging $.99 in the App Store.  Why is this an issue, you might ask?  Play the game for 20 minutes or so, and you’ll discover that not only has MADFINGER charged for a game, they’ve also built in a free-to-play style, paid content store.  Want the best guns?  That’s going to require you to fork over some real money to be able to purchase upgrades.  Sure, you can buy the lower-tier items, but you’re probably going to get killed (a lot) in the process.  Dead Trigger loses points in its inability to decide if it wants to charge for gameplay, or be a FTP model game.

Sound

Dead Trigger has some excellent sound design.  The zombies sound like zombies, the gun sounds fantastic every time you pull the trigger, and the atmosphere created by the audio cues are top-notch.  I have very few complaints about the sound which, coming from the rest of this review, is probably for the better.

Conclusion

Dead Trigger certainly has its faults, but it’s a fun game to play and if you can stomach gameplay that’s hindered by in-app purchases, probably worth the $.99.  I don’t see myself paying real money to buy fake money to buy weapons upgrades, but that’s never really been my thing.  Dead Trigger won’t be for everyone, due in part to the IAP and the fact that shooters on mobile devices are an acquired taste, but if that’s your sort of thing, then it’s probably worth the $.99.

Gameplay: 8/10 (Fun, but it’s still a mobile-based FPS) Graphics/Design 6/10 (Horrible decision to include IAP in a game that you already have to pay to play) Sound: 9/10  Overall: 7.7/10