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23
Apr
09

Review: Tap of the Dead


Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Tap of the Dead takes the infamous Typing of the Dead and translates the zombie-filled game to the iPhone. Instead of typing out pseudo-words and practicing your asdf skills, Tap of the Dead has you tapping one of four symbols: Triangle, Circle, Diamond, or X. Each symbol corresponds to one of the four corners of the screen.

The game starts you off with a couple of comic-book inspired scenes where a flimsy story about a virus is laid out. Then it throws you into a scene where zombies appear and you have to tap out a sequence of symbols that corresponds to each zombie. As soon as each sequence is completed, the zombie is shot dead(er?) and disappears off the screen.

All this worked in Typing of the Dead, but it doesn’t come off as well in Tap of the Dead. Each stage is just a static background with sloppily drawn zombies which appear to come closer, but only by getting bigger on the screen. This wouldn’t look as low-tech as it does if the sprites weren’t so low-res.

The only challenges in the game are the fast-moving zombies, but even they’re easy to deal with once you learn the trick: tapping part of their sequence slows them down enough to a manageable speed so that you can finish them off with the rest of the symbols with leisure.

Tap of the Dead is a one trick pony and that one trick gets tiresome after the first ten minutes. Unlike its B-movie graphics, the game itself isn’t even in the “so bad it’s good” category.


12 Responses to “Review: Tap of the Dead”

To the reviewer: I watched the youtube video of this game after reading this review (I do not own it). I have to say, that you left me with the impression that the zombies moving towards the player was crap – which could not be further from the truth.

The fact is, that the motion of the zombies is unique and stylized and is presented well.

Why is it that easy games are always a target for low scores? One thing to keep in mind is that not every game is written for your (reviewers skill level) level of game playing skill.

I guess you have to be a ngmoco game to get more than 1 star here.

Ian Dunlop on April 23rd, 2009

Nope, the reviewer is right. This game looks utterly utterly awful. The whole concept is flawed too, since the concept that made “typing of the dead” so cool doesn’t translate well to the iPhone (and why didn’t they use the actual iPhone keyboard?)

There’s just tons of awful games in the App store and it’s only right that they get bad reviews.

henk duivendrecht on April 24th, 2009

I didn’t give the game a low score because it was easy. I gave it a low score because it just wasn’t fun. The static background and the zombies just didn’t mesh well graphically. It was like watching a movie with bad blue-screen special effects.

I agree with henk about the keyboard though. Maybe typing out words with the keyboard would have added a little more variety to the game.

Louise on April 24th, 2009

Ok, I played it for about half-an-hour.

The game does not look bad or play at all. Certainly not deserving of the criticism here.

For a casual game, it is pick up and play and challenging. I didn’t get bored and found that I wanted to see the next level.

I’m certainly not saying this game is great – far from it. It does have it’s issues, but 1-star? Sorry, this it not a 1-star game.

I give your review 1-star.

Ian Dunlop on April 24th, 2009

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