As a seasoned gamer with over two decades under my belt, I’ve seen the rise and fall of countless genres, and I must admit, Dead Season piqued my interest from the get-go. With its XCOM-like structure and zombie apocalypse setting, it seemed like a tantalizing blend of two of my favorite gaming subgenres.
Titled “Dead Season,” this fresh tactical turn-based game is developed by Snail Bite, offering some unique twists on familiar concepts. However, just because something is intriguing doesn’t guarantee its quality. Being mauled by a Rottweiler might be an attention-grabbing occurrence, but it’s hardly a heartwarming memory either.
It’s fascinating to note that there hasn’t been a game resembling Dead Season – featuring zombies – merged with The Walking Dead license before now. In this game, you direct a group of four survivors: Holly, Matt, Travis, and Paige, navigating them through numerous situations filled with the undead.
Right off the bat, Dead Season seems brimming with innovative concepts. The developers have made an effort to distinguish it from a typical tactical shooter, leaning more towards a gritty zombie game experience. Yet, it’s not just another XCOM copycat dressed up in new clothes. However, not all ideas are executed flawlessly. For instance, the hit-or-miss mechanism resurfaces, this time manifested as the probability of inflicting critical damage on a shambler. Given that these creatures are already deceased, it’s challenging to eliminate them permanently. This idea makes sense theoretically. Nevertheless, it often feels like your characters are missing swings against stationary zombies with a crowbar. If each strike connected and the chance were presented as either high or low damage, the same effect would be achieved without the disheartening feeling that accompanies every failure of an otherwise intelligent character to hit a motionless object.
Since you’re not proficient shooters like Holly (who’s a cop and has more practice), your shots have a higher chance of missing. To balance this out, the game increases the likelihood of any gun malfunctioning approximately 25% of the time. This means it can jam frequently. Even though it still uses Action Points and requires additional Action Points to fix, this mechanic is often seen as frustrating or unfair by players, hence the term “absolute bullshit”.
The mechanic enhances a feeling of urgency, as your characters aren’t particularly resilient. To increase their chances of survival, you must gather equipment for durability and upgrade their inherent abilities like minimizing weapon jams or saving extra action points. However, they all share the same, albeit limited, skill progression path, which means there isn’t a great deal of diversity in character development.
In Dead Season, your inventory may be randomly depleted during gameplay to maintain the feeling of continuous storytelling between missions. This can sometimes lead to unexpected penalties, like setting out on a mission armed with a shotgun and an AK-47 only to find that they’ve mysteriously disappeared. This adds to the sense of urgency and scarcity, but it can also disrupt your perception of progression. Regularly, you’ll need to search for new weapons and toolkits to fortify doors and fend off hordes. You’ll also encounter unique zombies such as those wearing hazmat suits who leave poisonous clouds in their wake or hooded runners reminiscent of Left 4 Dead’s hunters.
In this game, noise plays an important role. With each turn, more zombies will appear, regardless of what actions you take. However, the louder you are, the more zombies will be attracted and they’ll become more aggressive, moving further and attacking with increased accuracy. Firearms tend to create the most noise, but missions often find ways to make things noisy as the game progresses. For instance, a zombie might fall off a roof onto a car, setting off an alarm, or you could enter a store for supplies and accidentally trigger lights and sirens. Each mission becomes a test of endurance as you try to move cautiously, eliminating whatever threats you can with the resources at hand. On normal difficulty, it sometimes feels like the odds are stacked against your fragile characters, as they can’t take many hits before they’re gone.
If you misplace a life during a mission that lasted nearly half an hour, the task becomes impossible to complete. Unfortunately, I experienced this in my last mission. What made it more frustrating is that there’s no automatic save feature. You can manually save and reload at your convenience, but the game doesn’t offer any auto-save option. If you fail to save before meeting your demise, you have to restart from the beginning. That particular setback was difficult to overcome.
I had a good time playing Dead Season, yet I don’t feel inclined to play it again due to some shortcomings. The game falls short in terms of customization options and mission progression, which were disappointing for me. While the characters are alright and the narrative is as typical as any zombie story, it relies heavily on silent still images and occasional voiceovers for storytelling.
Dead Season is an acceptable game for enthusiasts of the turn-based genre who appreciate a sense of despair. Although adding zombies to the mix doesn’t significantly innovate the genre, there are some strong concepts in place, albeit with execution that can be unstable at times. If you’re up for a tough challenge and enjoy the undead shuffle, it’s definitely worth checking out.
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2024-10-08 16:16