A fun portable light gun experience if you aren't expecting anything cutting edge.
You play as some convict who was wrongly accused and in spending the remainder of his days in prison. But not all is well as the prison itself has become increasingly quiet, luckily for you, this leads to the power cutting and your cell door opening. Upon walking out, you discover a spare pistol lying abandoned on the bathroom floor. Picking it up and moving on, you shoot a doors panel system and enter the next room. Doing so, you come under attack by the walking undead and find out that the whole place has been overrun by zombified guards and convicts! From here you must use any means, (weapons) necessary to ensure a safe getaway and try and find out what happened.
From the opening scene your man is restricted to on-rails movement and the only interaction is poking, (or 'touching') the dead until they fall once and for all. Firing your weapon is as simple as using the stylist and having it come into contact with the nearest enemy. To reload you touch and drag the bottom right clip icon and bring it over to the left ammo reserve icon. This method of reloading isn't terrible, it can just be troublesome when your surrounded by zombies and are in need of a reload. Because of this, you will be hit and probably die... alot! Another slight annoyance is how those walking flesh eaters randomly appear out of thin air. You can be walking into a room, wipe out a horde of zombies, walk the span of the entire room, and have another horde pop up from nowhere at all. Some may say it's creepier that way since it does a good job of catching you off-guard, but since this game really isn't scary at all, it just proves to be more of a flaw than anything.
Every so often you'll come up against one of the big bosses of a level. Before fighting, the game gives you a quick picture of the boss and its several weak points. After studying these quickly, you automatically run about the room and just fire upon them until the foe falls. These scenes aren't too difficult because of the fact that they clue you in on the vulnerable areas in each fight, thereby removing any of all experimenting, but also preventing much trial and error. It's a double edged sword to say the least, one that'll be fine for some and not-so-fine with others. Through an through, though, these battles are still a nice a change of pace from the slaughtering of all the expected zombie types, (skinny, fat, super skinny, etc.)
The graphics in this game do nothing to show off the system's capabilities. Granted, the DS can't power a graphical presentation like that of it's big brother, but it can most definitely churn out more attractive visuals than this! Everything, whether it be viewed close or at a distance, is pixelated and ugly to look at. The colors in this game are also flat and unappealing. And sadly, the music doesn't fair much better. You get a few quiet tunes that try an add some eeriness to each level, but otherwise it's forgettable. The sound effects are standard and aren't anything special outside the number of zombie grunts. And really, the only saving grace in the audio department is the rocking guitars that play with each boss fight.
Value is hit or miss. The main game will last you probably around 4 to 6 hours max. Afterwards there's some unlockable cheats that might encourage another playthrough, and even two player local-play multiplayer mode. But unless you know someone who owns a copy of this game, you won't be able to take full advantage of it. Overall, its passable.
So with all these negative remarks you might be wondering why I'm choosing to give this game a decent score? Well because despite its shortcomings, underneath it's ugly exterior is a game that still has a a sizeable amount of enjoyment to offer! It can be unfair sometimes, and the short length isn't doing it any favors, but if you can look passed that then you just might find an on-rails shooter that'll grow on you and continue to do so the more you play!