Product Description

In Touch The Dead, you'll unleash hell on an army of zombies through your Nintendo DS. You are Rob Steiner (a.k.a. Prisoner #1809), a man who wakes up to find himself the lone human in a jail teeming with zombies. Players use a deadly arsenal of melee and projectile-based weapons and come face-to-face with the never-ending swarm of zombies, none of whom have avoided the icy cold touch of the undead.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10654 in Video Games
• Brand: Eidos
• Model: STOUCEUS00
• Released on: 2007-06-05
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 5.00" w x 5.25" l, .20 pounds

Features

• Use the stylus and touch screen to destroy every type of zombie that stands in your way
• Battle your way through hordes of flesh hungry zombies with a deadly arsenal -- blow each limb off separately
• Stand alone or with a friend as you face armies of zombies, in WiFi multiplayer and Co-Op story mode
• Addictive arcade action tests the reflexes of even the fastest gamer
• Four terrifying chapters of horror, suspense and action lurking around every corner

Customer Reviews

Bloody zombie action on the DS
Seeing a mature rated game on the DS is a rare thing indeed. Seeing a mature rated game featuring hordes of zombies is even rarer (in fact, I do believe the only other game to feature both for the DS is Resident Evil: Deadly Silence). Touch the Dead for the DS seems like a first person shooter with zombies at first glance, but upon playing you'll realize how linear the game really is. First off, you play on a rail-based system; meaning you really have no control of where to go on a pre-determined path as you progress through the game, kind of like a light-gun shooter. The only thing you really can do is fire your weapon at the hordes of the undead that are all hungry for you. The catch of Touch the Dead is that the game is surprisingly difficult as these zombies aren't completely brain dead, which is a nice touch in the gameplay. However, most of the difficulty stems from the game's best feature. Tapping the stylus against the touch screen fires your weapon on the zombie armies, which in itself is a blast, but there is hardly any room for error. Graphically, the zombies themselves look fantastic despite the bland areas and backgrounds, and the game's control scheme works well, but be warned that Touch the Dead isn't for all gamers. The increasingly tough difficulty and some insane boss battles may turn you off, but if you stick with it, you'll find some fun with Touch the Dead. All in all, shooter or zombie fans that own a DS should give Touch the Dead a look, but don't say I didn't warn you.

I should have read and not skimmed the other reviews. You should too.
I purchased the game for two reasons: zombies and a great Amazon rating. Unfortunately, I barely skimmed the reviews and ended up with a game that just is not my cup of tea. I would recommend reading those detailed reviews first, then come back here.

The "rail system" can be very repetitive, boring, and challenging for, in my opinion, all the wrong reasons. The graphics, even by DS standards, are rather poor. The shortness of the game and the replayability are slightly below the "meh" range. The story is... well, there really is no story, at least not one that makes enough sense to follow. Overall, the game is about rapidly tapping the screen and not really about thinking.

That said, it can be an adrenalin jolt, and it has zombies, so, while I did somewhat enjoy it, I was let down. I was hoping for something along the lines of a Resident Evil 4 meets Metroid Prime Hunters, and instead I got a very short mishmash that seemed like a scaled-down port of an old mid-90s arcade shooter. I loved those games circa 1996, but in 2007 I expected a lot more considering how many innovative games have been coming out for the DS.

I give it 3 stars for those reasons, but have to bring it down one more notch for the following. Because the game is so simplistic, the programmers could have at least made it longer by adding a couple more levels and not just the same levels with different difficulty settings. Also, the save system could have more options. The way it is set makes the short game challenging but not necessarily in a fun way. An option to save more often or to allow multiple saves for a player to test better strategies could have helped this game reach a wider audience. And again, even for the DS, the graphics are truly subpar.

The positives: it is easy, it is adrenalin-pumping, it can be challenging, and it is zombies.

Just figure out whether or not the very short, very old school "rail system" shooter-style game is what you enjoy. (It's nostalgiac but not innovative.) If you're not into that, skip this one and wait until something more interesting is released.

Surprisingly it works
If you were a fan of the House of the Dead games in the arcade, then Touch of the Dead is definitely the game for you. This rail-shooter is more or less House of the Dead with touch screen controls. The end result is actually pretty cool. It suffers from a few flaws, but it's not so bad that you won't enjoy the game itself. Touch of the Dead actually works.

While playing the game, the first thing to note is that it's on rails. This means the game does the walking. All you have to do is shoot. The control of the game is exclusively touch screen based. When enemies come are present, you simply touch them and your character shoots where you touch. Blasting zombies has never been easier, and of course you can use all the rounds you like... except you'll have to reload at some point. In the arcade reloading is as easy as shooting off screen. Here, it's a little more complicated than that as you actually have to drag the bullets over to your ammo meter for it to reload. This means you'll take more than just a second to reload, and you'll be left open to take damage. It makes the game surprisingly hard in some spots, and sometimes you'll just end up taking damage because you had to reload. This is also because the game just has to show you the reload animation as well. At first this was pretty cool, but after a while you'll wish you could reload faster.

Speaking of challenge, this game provides quite a bit of it. For more than just reloading. For one, check points are few and far between. And when you actually do restart from a checkpoint, you've got the exact same health you had when you first got to it. This is a good and bad thing. The problem with this is that if you keep dying at the same spot, you'll probably continue to die at the same spot. It also really sucks if you didn't have a whole lot of health to begin with when you found the checkpoint. To a point, you'll find yourself having to restart the whole game simply because you didn't have the health to take on the enemies and the game never resets you with full health. The good thing about this, of course, is that gamers looking for a challenge will have found it. For the most part, though, you won't find yourself restarting often but you will find yourself frustrated in a few spots.

There are also additional weapons that you can find throughout your adventure, and you can switch between them using the directional buttons whenever you want.

The game is just a lot of fun. Even if you get frustrated with the checkpoint system you'll still have a blast. The game, like many on-rail shooters, is fairly short. You should be able to complete it in a day, but unlike House of the Dead, it isn't easy to do it. So you won't be busy for a while (and that makes the price tag hard to swallow sometimes), but at least you'll be having some fun. Even better, if a friend of yours has the game you can do some co-op play.

I wish I could tell you the game looks good, but in reality it does not. It's 3D and it has some detail to it, but for the most part, a lot of the game looks very pixilated, grainy and ugly. It's nice to see games taking advantage of the DS's 3D capabilities, but this game is downright ugly. The game runs perfectly fine, though. And even though it's ugly that shouldn't stop anyone from actually enjoying it. And just because it's ugly doesn't mean it isn't detailed. For example, if you shoot a zombie in the arm, they take damage in the arm. So while the game is fairly pixilated, the graphics on the whole are not bad. Again, it's just an ugly game, not a bad running game.

The soundtrack is fairly forgettable but it's appropriate for the game itself. You won't find yourself humming any tunes, but you won't find yourself annoyed with the music either.

Chances are you'll like Touch of the Dead. It's by no means the best Nintendo DS game out there, but it's a fun one and that's really all that matters.

Pros:

+Easy to pick up gameplay
+It's a lot of fun to play
+A challenge for those who want one

Cons:

-Checkpoints are few and far between, and the way the system works will without a doubt frustrate some gamers
-Reloading is too slow
-The game is just ugly