Dead Block Review
Dead
Block is set in the U.S. during the 1950s and takes place when a gallon of gas
cost a few pennies, when movies were in the “golden age” and when rock ’n
roll swept the nation – and causes the decease in the walking
dead apocalypse. The campaign tells a story through a TV series, which portrays the fight for
survival of the three protagonists in several episodes. Every time you start a
new mission you get a short fifteen second intro that summarizes what you need
to do in that mission. It’s very original and I really like the approach to
this since the story isn't the main focus. That’s a good thing because the
combat is horrible.There are three survivors you play as
during the zombie onslaught – Mike, Jack and Foxy. The main goal is to
collect
musical equipment such as a guitar, amp and speakers to defeat the
zombie
invasion. After you collect the equipment you are treated to a "Guitar Hero"
button-mashing game, where you have to play music that sends the zombies
back
to their grave. Along the way you will have different objectives but
it’s still
the same game; find certain objects to blow away the zombies on the map.
You
start off in a shelter house where you are fortifying windows and
setting entertaining traps like the Cardboard box head machine that
makes zombies attack
each other or the Freeze Ray which causes them to break into pieces.
However,
in order to gain materials needed to build these traps, you need to
destroy furniture and other objects throughout the environment. Once you
collect enough resources, you can plop a blockade or a trap down in any
windowsill or door frame. A few at a time is fairly manageable, but the
more
zombies that pour in, the more hectic things tend to get.
You
will be slashing your way through waves of zombies while setting countless of
traps for zombies to fall into. Dead Block offers only 10 single-player levels
as well as the option to play with a group of your friends in the 4-player mode. Over
time each of the levels often feel repetitive to the point you want to throw
your controller at the screen.
The split-screen multiplayer mode has eight additional co-op levels where
players can fight side by side. The co-op was the funniest part of the game for
me with its eight level co-op offering. Although it's co-op, there aren’t any new maps, so
it’s just a re-skin of the single-player mode. I like co-op more because it’s more hectic,
with players forced to communicate while zombies are quickly spawning
trying to take you out
Dead
Block is just another entry into the zombie genre. There just isn’t
a lot of replay
ability. Once you get through the 18 missions (10 single-player, 8
co-op) in the
game, there isn’t enough to go back for besides getting all of the
achievements, making my visit in the Dead Block world very short.
