Dead Trigger: Portable Zombie Killing at its Finest

A console-like experience in the palm of your hand

by Arthur Kotsopoulos

©2012 Arthur Kotsopoulos

Ever wanted to experience the thrilling terror of what Call of Duty‘s Nazi Zombies has to offer? Or witness a game that showed off the capabilities of your latest gadget?

Fret no more, because the team at Madfinger Games (the studio behind Shadowgun, also available on Android/iOS devices) has brought out Dead Trigger, a First Person Shooter set during a zombie apocalypse.

Like most “freemium” games, Dead Trigger is free to download (145mb in size) and is completely free to play; that is, unless you have little to no patience and want to buy all the best weapons and items.

Here is where microtransactions come into place and you have to spend real world money to buy in-game money or gold to purchase the better gear.

Many mobile/tablet games have introduced this method of gameplay to eliminate the need for advertisements, which many free games feature and unfortunately bog down the experience since they tend to not only intrude but usually make the game slow down or crash.

Fortunately for Dead Trigger, if you dedicate time every day to run through missions, you’ll level up and earn enough cash to buy better weapons and equipment.

Gold, on the other hand, requires more patience to achieve. Certain story missions will reward you with gold, or if you’re keen, every “Daily Mission” will grant you “X” amount of gold bars depending on the number of consecutive days that you complete it.

For example, if you complete ten consecutive “Daily Missions,” then on the eleventh day the mission will grant you eleven gold bars upon completion. Failure to do so will result in the tally depleting down to a big fat zero.

Dead Trigger also features a casino where you can either buy chips and risk the chance to earn some better rewards, or again on a daily basis you’ll receive three chips for free to use on the slot machine.

The grand prize for the slot machine is two hundred gold bars, and there have been a lot of lucky players who have won this prize.

Content

What I love the most about Dead Trigger is that you’re never forced to spend money to buy new gear even though the game tends to get harder as you progress.

The difficulty is scaled via its three difficulties in the mission info:

• 1 skull: Easy
• 2 skulls: Normal
• 3 skulls: Hard

You’ll never be caught in a situation where a horde of zombies are hounding for your flesh, and you’ve got little to no ammo to defend yourself.

Your weapons will always be useful and it’s a matter of maneuvering around the environment to never back yourself in to a corner.

Survival

There isn’t a lot of variety when it comes to Dead Trigger‘s missions, which consist of either:

• Defending “X” amount of doors from zombies breaking in for a certain amount of time
• Searching for boxes of supplies and bringing them to drop off points
• Killing “X” amount of zombies to complete the mission

Each level new and old, however, is continually manipulated depending of the task at hand. In the beginning levels, you are generally restricted to two rooms with little to no room to move.

As the game progresses, you’ll battle zombies in newer environments, and older levels that become expanded with additional rooms that are all interconnected with each other.

Zombies can crawl through any broken windows or vents, and even barricades. Suitcases of money are generally scattered throughout each level that you can find if you’re brave enough.

I’ve found that the controls in Dead Trigger are nothing short of spectacular, and on a 4.7 inch screen they work magnificently. There’s enough room to use the left on-screen thumbpad for walking and anywhere on the right hand side you can swipe your thumb to look in various directions.

You can customize the shoot, reload, iron-sights and item buttons if you find yourself accidentally tapping them on occasion.

Story-wise the game won’t exactly be winning any awards for its thrilling and emotional aspects; new characters are slowly introduced as you progress through the missions and each communicate to you via dialogue that you need to read.

It’s a nice break from all the shooting and running that you do throughout the game, and if they were to have cinematics and spoken dialogue, I can assure you not many would have the space to store the game.

Verdict

Dead Trigger is the complete mobile experience.

Graphically, it reminds me of Doom 3 and that in and of itself is a marvelous feat achieved by Madfinger Games.

Gameplay-wise, it runs smooth on my Samsung Galaxy S3: guns will sway when you run, iron sights provide increased accuracy, and playing with headphones on is stunning.

Guns have an authentic sound to them, zombies will moan and groan accordingly, and explosions from grenades do cause quite the bang.

If there is a single feature that makes Dead Trigger a must-download, it would be the fact that you have the ability to create an account and backup your game on on their cloud services.

Log in to Dead Trigger on another device, whether it’s an Android or iOS, and you can download your backpack and pick up where you left off.

Dead Trigger is available on iOS and Android devices now.

“9/10

©2012 Arthur Kotsopoulos

Filed under: Handhelds, Mobile Gaming, Xbox 360 Tagged: | "First Person Shooter", dead trigger, dead trigger game, dead trigger ios, dead trigger review, Free-to-play, Madfinger Games, Shadowgun, Zombie