Developer/Publisher: ByteMark Games, Inc.
Genre: Zombie/Twin-Stick Shooter
Price: $1.99
Acquired: Review Copy Provided
Verdict: A Z-rated game with an A-rated name.
Pros: It’s called Dawn of the Dead, which is an awesome film, you can purchase the game on your device through the game’s menu system.
Cons: Horrible controls, uninspired level design, no story, generic sound and graphics, oh…and horrible controls.

George A. Romero…see, I ‘ve already caught your attention. In the world of zombie fandom, that’s all it really takes – a single mention of his name; and largely synonymous with his name are the titles of his films: Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Dawn of the Dead. When I first heard that an iPhone game was being made entitled Dawn of the Dead, my inner zombie lurched a bit. I was stoked. As a fan of smart zombie cinema, my mind reeled with the possibilities in an iPhone game…and then I played it.

The premise is less than simple. You survive a zombie onslaught through four levels of action. To start, you select from a list of characters – a nurse, a police officer, and a salesman – each of whom has different ability stats. For example, the nurse is faster, but the police officer is better with firearms. Following the character selection, you select your armament out of a selection of melee weapons and guns. Then, you’re dropped into the first level, a mall parking lot, and given no real instructions. It turns out that you have to find the key to the mall and get into the building, but figuring this out with zombies chasing you is more annoying than fun. There is no story here; there are only scene descriptions at the beginning of each level. The levels have a logical progression, but its adds little to the game. It would have been the exact same game had the developers just dropped me into random scenarios.

Dawn of the Dead’s gameplay is bad. I’m not talking like Too Human controls, which could have been better but were usable once you got used to them. I’m saying that  the controls almost make this game unplayable. To move, you use the now infamous iPhone phantom joystick with your left thumb. With your right thumb, you use a similar joystick type control that tries to pull off thumbstick shooting, a la Geometry Wars. This is the part that does not work. In order to aim properly, not only must your character be facing the correct direction (left joystick), but a pie-piece shaped arrow on the right joystick must also be facing that direction, which, when held down, fires your gun or swings your melee weapon.

The level design is just as bad. The game gives you a limited top-down perspective in which you basically walk around a large rectangular area with some set design in the background and some props to cause obstacles. Furthermore, the camera is too close to the characters, not revealing enough of the surrounding area to have effective gameplay. In some cases, this could be atmospheric, but it ended up making an already bad game worse. I was bored within two minutes of the first level, but I braved through it to finish the game. As an additional feature, there is also a series of uninspired challenge modes, which ask you to do things such as survive for one minute, or kill twenty zombies. Yawn! They could have at least borrowed from Left4Dead 2 and had you collecting gas for an escape vehicle, for example. The final stage of the game almost does this, just having you collect a single box of rations.

Graphically, the game looks like a standard iPhone game. The top-down perspective does not really showcase what the developers could have done with this game on the iPhone. Because zombies are prone to being hunched over and slow, almost all of them look like the stereotypical old lady crossing the street as they lumber toward you. The sound is also quite typical, complete with a short repeating set of minor chords and lots of moans, groans and blood splatters.

All in all, the game took me about 20 minutes to complete. There is a higher difficulty level, but it is more of the same. Even at a low price point of $1.99, I do not think I could recommend this game in good conscious. What could have made this game a worthy investment?

• Better, more inspired level design.
• An actual story with plot points, even if it was short.
• Either copy the Geometry Wars thumbstick shooting mechanic or don’t. Trying to innovate did not work.
• Wider field of view for the top-down perspective.

These things could have made for an interesting game. As is stands, Dawn of the Dead on the iPhone is just a Z-rated game with an A-rated name. Actual zombies would be highly offended if they had the cognitive capabilities to know how they were represented in this game.