Name: Touch the Dead
Genre: Survival Horror
Platform: Nintendo DS

It is not often that you get a mature game for a Nintendo system. Resident Evil 4 proved that all types of gamers enjoy gore, so other companies realized the untapped (foreshadow!) market of putting violent games onto all platforms. Touch the Dead is a very violent game in which you play the part of a criminal who breaks out of his jail cell in the middle of a large zombie infestation.

Everyone goes into a video game with expectations, hopes, and pre-determined thoughts. No one goes in with a blank slate despite what they may say. As a reviewer I try my best to remain neutral while reviewing games, but that is virtually impossible. I have always been a fan of slaughter, especially when it comes to the undead variety, so Touch the Dead aroused my interest. However, the images and videos of the game have led me to believe it would be utter crap.

Well, it isn’t utter crap. But it isn't very good either.

The plot is minimal and secondary to gameplay. It doesn’t get in the way and all gamers can laugh as the games developers try and throw witticisms into the mouth of the main character in a pathetic attempt to create a video game icon. Sorry, but Duke Nukem fills the bill of “stupid guy with a gun saying macho things.”

The games title could not be any more fitting unless the game was a necrophilia simulation. You literally tap the screen to shoot zombies. It is intuitive and easy; the developers spent time making sure the hit locations were perfected so your time spent poking a head or a leg shows.

What isn’t as intuitive is reloading. After an hour into the game the reloading mechanism isn’t as much of a problem and does start to come as second nature. Even so, it still sucks. You need to drag a clip of bullets from the bottom right to the bottom left. I can understand the developers wanting to create a sense of panic and making reloading a gun – something which should be harder than shooting in the air – an move that takes time. The problem lies in what happens after you reload your gun: your player reloads on screen. It takes double the amount of time it should because after I put the bullets in the gun the character on screen does too. An unnecessary attention to detail hurts the game more than it helps and leads to frustratingly long reload times that you can not change.

There is not much originality in the game either. It subscribes to the stereotypical survival horror mechanic of enemies appearing from under, over, and beside you every few seconds. The zombies and other enemies are also uninspired. Typical undead in grey shirts or fat undead in blue ones litter the early levels and it does not get much better later in the game.

The game is not House of the Dead; holding a gun and shooting fake zombies has more charm than holding a stick and shooting fake zombies. This game does give at least a few hours of fun and allows for multi-cart (boo!) multiplayer. Finding two people with this game may be more of a problem than finding your way out of a prison filled with the undead.