Zombies have been hitting the entertainment rounds over the past several years. From movies to games and all points in between it seems. It can be next to impossible to put a twist on it that can keep it interesting anymore. Trapped Dead puts a nice mix of tactical strategy and interesting presentation into a game that not only the zombies are looking for brains, but also the player needs brains to think out what best to do to make it through Trapped Dead.

One of the things that you get the feel from the game is that the developers must love zombies. It is hard to explain, you just get the feel a fan of zombie films put their stamp on this game. It has that 70’s or 80’s action adventure vibe to it, in a cool horror setting.

The presentation seems to have gotten influences from comic books, as the cut scenes are ala motion comic and are very entertaining. It is a design choice that is spectacular in its simplicity.

It is a classic horror story start with two characters running out of gas, finding their way to a gas station, and into a world gone horribly wrong. The ghoulish creatures here are the classic flesh craving shamblers. Moving ever forward a tireless dead thing with a ravenous hunger for the living. That being said, one or two of them may not pose a threat, though get them in larger groups and the problem becomes shear numbers.

Now there are a couple of special zombies that I will not ruin the surprises for you, they are interesting. All zombies have claw and bite attacks that can cause the player to bleed. Now it is bad enough that with the blood loss, the player can bleed out after a while, but the blood draws the fiendish ghastly grotesques. Running and making more noise seems to also draw them. Therefore, this gives the player more tactical things to thing about.

In the game, there are couple different classes of weapons if you really want to get technical about it. There are the close and personal weapons for bashing them, firearms, and then longer range or weapons that you can throw.

Then, then my friends there are the traps…hence the name of the game Trapped Dead. Pretty cool heh? Through out the game there are sections that you can lure zombies into an environmental trap of some sort and take them out in amusingly cool ways. This is introduced earlier on when the main character finds a zombie in the garage of a gas station; the beastie is in the grease pit under raised car. Well of course, hit the controls to lower the vehicle and crush them. What fun!

Through out the adventure our main character your introduced to finds other survivors and they then band together in a rather misfit squad to try to make it out of this night mare. Interesting concept, wonderful game, but there are times that you just wish for a bit more. The game feels linier for the most part. That is not necessarily a bad thing mind you since it rather simulates a main goal that must be carried out to get through the macabre happenings. However, there is no real reason to look around anywhere for exploring, just getting from point A to point B is the goal and get there alive, survival at its basest form. The slow methodical gate the game takes may put some off, it can get into a repetitive rut to be sure. However, it stays true to the source inspirational material. What the game is honoring it does an excellent job.

One thing that was rather maddening for me was that occasionally there would be delays in clicking a control for the character to do something, often times in battle, so imagine my utmost frustration when I am clicking to bat a zombie’s brain in and the character just stands there to die as the zombie gets it’s a attack on. Not sure really, if it is just me playing badly or I may see a patch in order for the game.

A bit more horror suspense somehow would go along way here. The game does exactly what it sets out to do, being a fun quirky veneration of the Zombie horror genre. Some movies are fun pop corn flicks of pure entertainment; you just are not going looking for Ben Hur. There are some games in the same vain. They are just pure fun entertainment. You remember fun entertainment. Right? Trapped Dead come off to me like a big concept game, which plays like a casual game. Trapped Dead is well worth it for the retro zombie fans out there.

Get your Zombie fill here…. http://www.meridian4.com/games/trappeddead

Have fun, play games….
Survive a classic style zombie tale!

Edwin Millheim
United States Editor Impulse Gamer