Game Experience: High
Game Value: High
Quiche Says: Into the wee hours of the night!
Into the Dead was meant for Fire TV. The zombie free-to-play was incredibly annoying on mobile, but I couldn’t put it down when playing on a 40-inch TV and a controller.
It’s a runner — you run through a farm, cornfields, forest, and so on, avoiding zombies along the way. Where you running to? Nowhere and everywhere. It’s very profound that way. The game maintains a constant speed so you can’t slow down. You receive money for distance or kills, which you use for perks and stuff. You can brush up against the undead but if you run…well, into the undead, then you get eaten. There are crates and graves marked with flares that provide random weapons with limited ammo to clear your path as needed. It’s free-to-play so you can either unlock things by playing a whole lot, or you can pay real cash to speed progress.
On mobile, you tilt to move side to side, and use weapons by tapping the bottom right corner. Tilting often affects your sight in the already dark game, and it’s lethal to tilt and fire at the same time. This is where Fire TV takes this game to another level. Controls are like console shooters – move with the stick, fire with the trigger. Just that simple ability to move and shoot without disrupting the sight of your path made this an incredibly addictive game. I would tell myself one more run, but five runs would pass, and then ten…and then it’s morning, time to go to work.
Here are some tips:
1) Use the dog. He’s your best friend. He’ll clear your path and rack up your kills.
2) Don’t use the armed start perk. Waste of money.
3) Grenades suck. Discard them because they’ll screw you up and you’ll die trying to use them.
4) Keep your good weapons as long as possible, even if there’s a reachable crate.
5) If you have to go for a crate, don’t go for it.
6) Save a weapon for the corn fields.
Fire TV has revived my hope for FTPs. Some games I found to be forgettable on mobile are coming back from the dead. More to come.