Dead Rage: Prologue’ Review – Epic Bullet-Time Mechanics, Zombies Included

‘Dead Rage: Prologue’ Review – Epic Bullet-Time Mechanics, Zombies Included
While browsing through the App Store you’re going to come across a plethora of zombie shooters, but how do you know which ones’ are good?

While browsing through the App Store you’re going to come across a plethora of zombie shooters, but how do you know which ones’ are good? Well, I decided, it’s my job to find out which are worth buying and which are trash.

After downloading Walking Dead: Prologue , a minuscule 40 MB (I can’t believe how small it is!), I launched the game. Okay, first impression: the help menu was a bit blurry, even without retina display. Not a great start. Secondly, I noticed the extremely basic UI, which isn’t a bad thing, but it could certainly be enhanced. Oh, and the game is available in Chinese and English.

A familiar story, WD: Prologue starts off in the near future. People and animals are infected with a bio-chemical disease, ravaging them into pieces of living, rotten meat. You have no partner, no backup, no support. All you have are your guns and your trigger-happy finger. However, this game isn’t about playing to a story (you expected different?), it’s a game where you shoot zombies for entertainment in cold-blooded, cackle-inducing slaughter them.

In Walking Dead: Prologue , you’ll start out with a basic pistol, same as CoD: Zombies if that means something to you. Immediately, I noticed that the zombies spawn in the exact same place. Every time. Literally, once you kill one, another one pops up almost out of the same area. It would have been more gratifying if they dug themselves out of the ground, as the more traditional lore would have them do. It was weird to just watch one spawn right in front of you, although, it did speed the game up by reducing the their spawn time.

Turns out that after a round, you’ll be directed to a rewards menu to show you how many coins you gained. The thing is, I could not figure out the use of the coins because there is no shop or store to purchase anything. Perhaps it’ll come in the near future, but for now, it seems to be an entirely useless feature (it’s not even recorded in the Game Center leaderboards).

It won’t take you long to work out that shooting zombies in the head dishes out twice the damage, giving you a strategic advantage if you can aim. However, if you have aim assist on, it’ll almost give you a headshot every time you pull the trigger, as long as you aim upwards. Something unique to Walking Dead: Prologue is the bullet-time mechanism – it slows down time, turns your screen red, and makes bullet trackers which looks something like you’d see in the Matrix . The bullet-time mechanism can be activated when your combo bar maxes out, which slowly regenerates as you kill zombies. Another detail I noticed was the variety of zombies, including: regular zombies, old ladies, construction workers, sprinters, birds and dogs. Each had their own variable traits, such as their speed or health.

The graphics are great for this unknown developer, optimizing the OpenGL 2.0 engine. The movements are smooth, but there are still a few glitches on the animation when the zombies move around corners. The sounds are effective and I didn’t notice anything obtrusive. Overall, WD: Prologue is a decent shooter and quite a cheap one if you’re looking for some quick FPS entertainment.

More information on Walking Dead: Prologue is available on the Facebook page. The iOS version can be downloaded at the App Store, universal for iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

[review pros=”Awesome bullet-time, decent graphics, sweet variety of zombies” cons=”Could be smoother, more maps, more weapons” score=76]