THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A small American town has been overrun by the living dead and - for any character you choose to play as (there are five to choose from) - there is a reason you have busted through the quarantine, entering this stricken town. From then on, you battle along the infected streets, dispatching Zombie after Zombie, scavenging loot, equipping armour, chowing down on health-restoring food wherever it can be found and gaining deadly new skills in an action-packed role-playing game in the same vein as Diablo 2. You'll also have to help out town survivors, both out of kindness (or to get more experience points) and necessity; tasks they need completing before they give up what you need to progress. Drivable vehicles will enable you to cross long distances but, be warned, the dead are not the only threat in this apocalyptic nightmare.

MY VERDICT:

Trapped Dead: Lockdown is a very 'love it or hate it' style game. So much of the gameplay is borrowed from Diablo 2 that if you liked that game (and who didn't) and you like Zombies (and who doesn't), it's a fair bet that you will like Trapped Dead. There are some letdowns that mean this awe-inspiring statement is not totally true - the inventory management is annoyingly fiddly and the requirement to reset your two equipped skills every time you change weapons is particularly aggravating - though, for the most part, Trapped Dead feels like a reimagining of the aged Blizzard classic. This, in my mind, as a diehard fan of the Diablo franchise, is an extremely good thing though there are very few 'new' elements adding to the basic hack 'n slash, action RPG structure - a fact that will lead many players to feel bored or disappointed. One feature that I do particularly like however, comes later in the game. At some point on your adventures, you become infected - unavoidably being bitten by a ghoul that took the character you play as by surprise. There is no cure for the curse that now flows through your blood; all you can do is keep popping pills and injecting yourself with universal medicine to delay its rampant march to your brain, holding off becoming one of the mindless dead until your mission is complete.