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Review: Dead 'n' Furious (AKA Touch the Dead) - Nintendo DS

by Steven Williamson on 18 January 2008, 10:10

Tags: Dead n Furious , Koch Media, DS, Shoot 'em up

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An 'armless zombie shooter

Dead ‘n’ Furious (AKA Touch The Dead in the US) is a new horror shooter from Dream on Studio that unashamedly attempts to recreate the arcade style gameplay and dark atmosphere of SEGA’s classic zombie-bashing House of Dead series.

Though a zombie shooter on DS can never fully capture the intensity and gore of an arcade or console version (there’s no light gun for starters), the developer has conjured up an atmospheric and challenging game that makes good use of the stylus and will almost certainly appeal to zombie-obsessed fans who like their encounters to be of the pant-wetting kind.

The storyline follows Rob Steiner, an innocent prisoner wrongly sentenced for murder who has been incarcerated in Ashdown Hole State Penitentiary, a gloomy US maximum security prison. One evening, Steiner finds his prison cell door unlocked and sees it as his chance to escape from his life behind bars. However, when he enters the murky corridors of the Penitentiary he discovers that his fellow inmates have grown an unhealthy taste for human flesh; they’ve turned into zombies no less. And so the zombie bashing begins as you attempt to escape from the prison before the un-dead catch up with you and tear you apart limb from limb!

Luckily, you’re not alone in your plight as some kind soul has handily left a gun filled with ammo that you’ll be holding onto for dear life during your on-rails journey through the dingy corridors, murky sewers and rooftops of the prison and the abandoned military base (and other typical horror locations made famous from 101 different games of this ilk) on the outside.

There are a few different paths to take in Dead ‘n’ Furious as you shoot your way through five chapters, but the game is still played totally on-rails so you’re guided through the sections. This means that you need to stay focused and watch out for those shifts in tempo. You'll need to react with razor-sharp precision in order to take out the constant threat of moaning zombies that have a zombie-like tendency (obviously) to lunge towards your jugular.