Touch the Dead Review (Nintendo DS, 2007)

When Touch the Dead was first announced for the Nintendo DS I automatically assumed it was a spin-off of Sega’s lightgun shooter franchise. I was still convinced of this fact until recently when I finally got my hands on the game. I was confused when I didn’t find the Sega logo anywhere on the box. That’s weird. Instead this one was developed by an unknown developer called Dream On Studio. I’ve always enjoyed light gun shooters and with its touch screen the Nintendo DS is decently suited for them with its touch screen. Despite Sega having no involvement I still had to give this one a try. Does Touch the Dead live up to the legacy of the franchise it so obviously references? Let’s check it out!

In Touch the Dead you’re thrown into the shoes of a musclehead named Rob Steiner. The story begins as he’s been sentenced to prison for a murder which he did not commit. On a seemingly ordinary day he’s resting in his cell and the door suspiciously opens on its own. Unfortunately the entirety of Ashdown Hole State Penitentiary has been overrun by the walking dead. While the opportunity of escape is welcome the hordes of zombies aren’t. Mr. Steiner must now fight his way out first escaping the prison through the sewers until he reaches the rooftop, and then through the nearby swamps to an abandoned military base. The story is really nothing special, and is told exclusively via story sequences using the real-time engine and text for dialogue. Unfortunately Touch the Dead has almost no personality. The main character is about as interesting as a wet paper bag.

The gameplay itself is as unspectacular as the story. Touch the Dead is a fully 3D lightgun shooter where your character moves automatically from scene to scene. Enemies approach, mostly while you’re at a standstill, and you have to defeat them before moving on. This is done with several firearms. You have the standard handgun which fires slowly, and the shots are kind of weak. Ammunition is limited for everything else and is found in boxes you must destroy in each stage. Next up is the shotgun which has more power, and a spread of bullets, but limited range. You also have a submachine gun which fires rapidly but uses bullets rapidly. The final weapon is a crowbar which is the only melee attack at your disposal. Personally I think the arsenal is too limited. There’s nothing original here. A surprise or two would have been nice.

It’s really a shame that the gameplay is so bland. You tap the screen with the stylus to shoot enemies, but each clip only has a specific number of bullets. Reloading is kind of a nightmare to be honest. You do so by dragging the clip from the lower right hand side of the screen to the left. This isn’t a great mechanic because it requires too much focus, and takes you right out of the game. I realize that there was no solution that could match simply firing off screen, but this idea isn’t very good. Furthermore switching weapons is done by pressing directions on the directional pad. In this situation I think using the touch screen would have been a better solution. If the developers had simply switched the two mechanics around Touch the Dead would be much more intuitive.

Another problem is the fact that the game, even on the easier settings, throws too many enemies at you in too close of proximity. You can’t just go and shoot everything that moves. Instead you have to plan, based on their placement, shots that will slow down the enemies just long enough for when you have to reload. It sounds more interesting than it actually is. These zombies are bullet sponges in the worst way possible. It takes multiple shots to take each one down regardless of where they’re hit. Even when you do this perfectly sometimes the enemies will stull rush you and you’re pretty much helpless while reloading in this situation. A way to push them back at least would have been a welcome and necessary addition.

To make matters worse there are very few different enemy types. In the first stage alone you’ll only see the same three zombies. This happens over and over again. It’s especially obvious considering so many of the same designs are coming at you at the same time. As you progress you’ll find new enemy types, and even old ones gain new abilities. For example the standard police officer zombies eventually start throwing their heads at you. You’ve got to shoot the appendage before it hits you or else you’ll take damage. Unfortunately that’s about the only curve ball Touch the Dead throws at you. Sure, you’ll find things like zombie rats but that’s nothing House of the Dead didn’t do, and better at that. Unfortunately the developers had very few of it’s own ideas, and the ones it borrowed it did so in a sloppy manner.

Touch the Dead wanted so much to be House of the Dead that it directly copied the format for boss fights as well. Unfortunately this too is another area where the developers just didn’t seem inspired. For boss encounters you’re shown their weak points at the start of each fight, and then must shoot them in order to disable their incoming attacks. While knocked down their weak points are exposed so this is the time you have to strike for maximum damage. Unfortunately I found these to be mostly boring. Again there’s almost no new ideas introduced here. Each boss encounter plays out largely the same. Worse yet they take too little damage from each hit. I found that these fights were way too drawn out. These were already boring, and so what made the developers think I would want to spend an extraordinary time with these boss characters?

The graphics are also pretty bad as well. As enemies approach the textures become heavily pixelated. Literally all of their features become blocks. It takes away any and all tension Touch the Dead was going for. It also doesn’t help that they’re composed of very few polygons. Seriously, the models are sub 32-bit era. They also animate exceptionally poorly with rigid movements and very few frames. The environments are okay for the era, but very bland in art style. The developers were going for realistic and it doesn’t do them any favors when they were clearly uninspired. Touch the Dead looks like a mess in action. There’s no wonder it became a bargain bin title so soon because the production values were clearly small. Even the soundtrack is boring. There’s some rock music here and there, but for the most part it’s ambient noise and it fails to establish atmosphere.