Dead Block Review
Game: Dead Block
Developer: Candygun Games
Publisher: Digital Reality
Available on: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC (Reviewed on PlayStation 3)
The concept of a 3D, real time tower-defence game where you use the awesome power of 1950’s Rock ‘n’ Roll to lay waste to wave after wave of marauding zombies is a concept that certainly pricked up this reviewer’s ears. Unfortunately, after spending just a short amount of time in this cloyingly zany, post war Americana setting you realise what could have been a pretty cool idea is actually a downloadable exercise in tedium that will have you questioning your innate love for everyone’s favourite brain-munching undead nemesis.
Dead Block sees you take control of one of three playable characters. A hulking construction worker resembles something from the Village People re-imagined as a steroid-pumped wrestler. A lardy, freckle-faced boy scout is as goddamn annoying as he sounds. The final character, a sassy African-American traffic warden called Foxy Jones, is inexplicably removed out of a 70’s Blaxploitation flick and dropped into the mix.
The meat of the game is simple, you find yourself trapped in a building which you have to protect from zombies in a variety of ways. Each of the unlikable trio have their own abilities to help achieve this aim, and you can search through each environment to find objects and traps that can be deployed in order to progress to the next area. The traps and puzzles are as simple as they come – smashing up furniture provides you with wood that can be used to barricade windows. Booby traps can be set in doorways to sometimes amusing ends. I do not have a heart of stone, and seeing a shuffling zombie get battered with a rolling pin is always going to amuse me.
Other traps have effects that we have seen before in games like the vastly superior Plants Vs Zombies – such as slowing the enemies down, or sending them bonkers, attacking their brethren or helping you smash up the scenery. There are televisions which can be turned on, which lure the zombies in, transfixed. In a shockingly unoriginal addition there are jukeboxes which (get this) make the zombies dance. Each of your characters can use a melee attack if the zombies get too close, and also have a “smart bomb” which can be used to clear large numbers of foes but takes a period of time to recharge. Clear enough zombies and you can get your hands on a guitar, which leads to a simplistic rhythm action section where you use rock, and indeed roll to finish off the attacking hordes.
Forgive me if this actually sounds like a laugh, because it really isn’t. The majority of the time will see you running around a confined space, smashing furniture or searching through crates. Smashing things up should be fun, right? Not here. It takes bloody ages to smash things up, and each action you perform is carried out by pressing one button repeatedly or in some form of predetermined sequence, for example; alternating the shoulder buttons to search, and you will be doing a lot of searching, believe you me. You will often find yourself overrun – yet given the small environments and woefully inadequate melee attacks you won’t last very long. It is all incredibly boring. Did we mention the controls are poor as well? Having the same button mapped to perform the barricading of a window but also the removal of said barricade was one ball-aching clanger I found particularly annoying, as you waste your limited wood resources time and time again, for bugger all.
The one saving grace of this dreary title is the surprisingly excellent soundtrack, which showcases swampy rockabilly and surf guitar, and is the least annoying part of the whole sorry affair. The other sonics on show aren’t great however, particularly the irritating voiceover in the tacky cutscenes and intro and the phrases that the mightily poor triumvirate of heroes trot out, again and a-sodding-gain.
VERDICT: It is hard to process the thought of anyone wishing to play through the ten levels on offer here, let alone delve into the split screen multiplayer that allows more than one masochist to repeatedly break interior furnishings into firewood.There are some nice ideas here, and if someone wants to return to the zombie infested well and come up with a decent 3D defence game of this ilk then I would be all for it. But please, God let us hope that they have a look at Dead Block first and learn from the mistakes therein. Sadly, an idea that had so much promise, has turned out to be an exercise in tedium, with little charm and repetitive gameplay and visuals. It’s a real shame, but Dead Block is one to avoid.
