Whether your name is Lana or not, it's still a rampage... a Dead Rampage, to be precise! In this action-packed zombie game from Elven Games, your quaint moonlit drive through the post-apocalyptic wasteland is interrupted by a rocket the blasts your van to smithereens and leaves your stranded on the side of the road with only your trusted pistol, and a distress signal that's going to need a lot of work to get functional again. Your job is to hold off the waves of undead mutants for as long as it takes you to repair it, using [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move and jump, and the mouse to aim and shoot. Blasting baddies not only earns you experience points to level up and skill points to enhance yourself, but cash to spend on sweet upgrades and new weapons from the oddly fortuitous kiosks that just happened to be set up nearby. (In my day, we bought our upgrades from shadowy hooded vendors of dubious humanity and we liked it.) Don't get too caught up in blasting, though, since you need to be standing beside and actively repairing the beacon to make any progress, and without help, you're probably just going to end up another shambling corpse on the roadside, and that's how you get ants.
Dead Rampage is basically another version of games like John Cooney's Balloon in a Wasteland... not that more shoot-y, run-y jump-y, upgrades-and-corpses-y action is ever a bad thing, just that Dead Rampage does feel a little familiar. It's simple by design, and the grind is basically the objective, so players who demand more depth and strategy to their games might find it a little repetitive to their tastes. On the other hand, if you are looking for some good old fashioned zombie slayin' action like mama used to make, Dead Rampage is a solid little diversion. It looks and sounds great, but the controls are responsive and the action will keep you on your toes. If you leap out of reach atop your van, zombies will begin attacking the beacon instead, forcing you to get down and distract them if you don't want them to undo all of your repairs. It is, admittedly, a little slow to escalate, and the periodic saving feels obnoxiously miserly, but if you stagger your purchases for the more powerful weapons instead of buying each new gun as it becomes available, you won't have much trouble. It's coffee break carnage, making zombies cute again (?), and if you've got an itchy trigger finger and a desire for a little action without a whole lot of gore, then Dead Rampage is a fine game to make a short playdate with.
Really boring. Gave up on wave 18 when it seemed like I was making no progress. Even with repair speed maxed the beacon's meter went up painfully slow, which just went down again during the fighting which is really repetitive and uninteresting.
It only goes down if you hide on your rv and let the zombies destroy it. That said, it does take ~30 levels to fill it up, which is the entire progression in the game.
Awesome Archer reference.
Well, I found it to be quite *meh*. I know the review kinda forewarned that, but really it seemed like too much of a cartoony and watered down Baloon in a Wasteland. It didn't add anything to the genre, really just stripped out some of the nuances. Game was not only a grind, but an unbalanced one - I found it far to easy to level xp, gold, and engineering and beat the game. I didn't even use the van to hide.
Having said all that, it's a nice tight little game that has potential if the gameplay was upgraded.
I found 2 out of 3 secret achievements, and I'm assuming the last one is some sort of grindy one. I'd be interested to know what it is if someone finds it.
First hidden achievement:
Easy Money: Has collected $300000
Third hidden achievement:
Men in Saucer:Abducted by Alien
This one is achieved by completing the beacon; it's not much of a hidden achievement, as you are trying to do this anyways. I sorta thought there might be a second ending, but no luck finding one as of yet.
Finally, can we all agree that there should be a ban on "Get all achievements" achievements? It's pointless; once you get the last actionable achievement, you are done regardless of whether a "get all achievements" exists or not.
Second hidden acheivement:
"Stormtrooper" - miss a lot of shots
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