From the time of Duck Hunt on the NES right up until the latest round of home consoles, the light gun genre has been a staple - especially in the 32-bit Saturn/PlayStation era, where big guns (pun intended) like Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, and House of the Dead enjoyed a lot of success. Sadly, the genre has died a grisly death similar to the ones suffered by so many bullet-magnets throughout its history.

Every now and then, some developer decides that the DS’ touch screen is the perfect place to attempt a resurrection. Enter Touch the Dead.

Suffer Like G Did?

Someone over at Dream On Studios is a fan of Sega’s classic shooter, House of the Dead. Touch the Dead isn’t a complete rip-off of the ultimate zombie gun game, but it does feel like a bit more than homage.

The idea here is that you’re a prisoner in a jail that, for some reason, has been overrun by zombies. And now you’re running through the building shooting down every bit of dead, shuffling manflesh that comes your way, generally appearing out of nowhere. How this all happened or why remains a mystery. And really, who cares? Shooting zombiefied cops and robbers is really its own reward.

Or at least...it should be.

Ugly in A Bad Way

Even if the awful, Nintendo 64-era graphics don’t turn you off on Touch the Dead, the controls definitely will. 

First and foremost, tapping a little plastic pencil on a two-inch wide screen will never feel even remotely similar to shooting a brightly colored plastic gun at your expensive big screen. Half the draw of these shooters was the visceral feeling of blowing holes in your enemies by pulling the trigger. It sounds bad, but it’s true.

The bigger problem, though, is actually the way Touch the Dead requires you to reload your weapon. Each time your clip runs empty, you have to physically drag a new one into your gun by sliding the stylus across the bottom of the screen. Sounds simple enough, but it takes an excruciatingly long time to complete in the heat of the moment, especially since successfully dragging said clip also triggers a reload animation on the screen. And it’s worth noting that the whole act of reloading can be quite unresponsive. In a game where enemies come out of nowhere at a fevered pace, even a fraction of a second can be fatal.

Don’t Touch the Dead

Even if developer Dream On hadn’t completely botched the controls, Touch the Dead would still be a mediocre game. It moves really slowly through some of the most boring levels in the history of the genre, and constantly drops new enemies into the scene completely out of nowhere. It’s just not fun at all.

Article by: Greg Sewart
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin