*random guy sheepishly raises hand*
It's cool, you're excused.
Trapped Dead Lockdown is a neat little isometric-view hack-slash-and-shoot zombie annihilation game. You choose one of five characters (each their own class) and live out their own personal missions inside a city gripped by a zombie apocalypse. The world is about as cheerful as you'd expect, with all the typical tropes of characters being the worst possible people you could imagine when things start to get hairy.
The game is pretty much a Diablo homage. The replication is to the point of copying numerous game elements to varying levels of success. Experience is replaced with lessening Fear. As you defeat enemies, your Fear is reduced, thus increasing your effectiveness in combat.
Loot is plentiful… to the point that you'll wonder why you even bothered picking it all up. Equipment degrades as you use it, but for some reason the game didn't let me repair anything, just use it until it fails apart then equip something else. On my playthrough as the Butcher (a slightly more chatty Barbarian), I spent the first hour fighting barehanded because the benefits that I started off meant that I was doing nearly the same amount of damage without having to use any of my weapons in combat. I eventually got over it and powered my way to the end-game in about 2 to 3 hours of total game-time.
Getting my hands on a Beta release of a game can either be an insightful early look at where the game is heading, or the last chance for the developer to complete some QA and patching prior to going Gold. In this digital age where buying a disc-copy of a game for the PC is rather rare, Gold isn't a much of a final step as it once was rather just a good starting point to release a game. Then the developers will battle the problems as they become uncovered. The beta release of Trapped Dead: Lockdown that I got to play with was about 2 weeks prior to going Gold – and for the most part it had successfully gone through the majority of the shakedown unscathed. There were a few bugs that I experienced on my playthrough that were fixed the second time I tried to recreate them post-release.
Early levels are very linear -- you are nearly funnelled to your destination. Later levels show a greater level of discovery and exploration, but by that point it is less about enjoyment but the completionist in me that powered me to the endgame. Any replay value would be experiencing the other 4 characters, but I didn't have the heart to try.
The mid-game driving mechanic that opens up the larger maps allows for some quicker exploration of the larger maps but all it really shows is all the wasted area that was included on some maps to pad the game-length.
As an indie game release, it has some playability for those looking for simplified hack-and-slash gameplay but with considerably less depth than Diablo. It's not the prettiest game (obviously by design choice and subject matter) but that's not necessarily a draw for some people – and you could even sort of tell yourself it's almost an aesthetic choice to sort of sell the "B movie"-vibe of the game.
All in all, it's a little pricey in my mind for 3 hours of minimal enjoyment but then again I'd just throw Diablo on instead.
- Tazman
The Good:
- Looking for a Zombie themed Diablo?
The Bad:
- Expecting to get Diablo? You'll be sorely disappointed
