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Trapped: Undead Infection Review
Written by Chris Buffa on Monday, February 9, 2009
Neat concept, we love zombies.
Characters are too small, environments lack detail, boring "find this keycard" gameplay, ammo is too scarce, items disappear when you re-enter rooms.
Trapped: Undead Infection is a 2-D adventure game that pits you against a horde of zombies. Unfortunately, its developers failed to bring a Resident Evil style experience to the iPhone. While the concept of exploring a mysterious facility hunting for clues and shooting undead monsters sounds appealing, tiny characters, imprecise controls and boring gameplay left us wanting more.
Like all good zombie movies and video games, Trapped begins with an experiment gone awry. You play as some unnamed scientist that wakes up in a seemingly abandoned research facility and must find clues to escape. Within the first few minutes, however, you come to realize that you have company in the form of zombies, and now you must avoid these monsters or go with the more enjoyable option of shooting them.
You play the game horizontally and maneuver your character with an on-screen d-pad. To shoot/change weapons, you simply press the respective icons, and you can always view a map or check out your PDA that holds all sorts of useful information. The problem is the game's designers limit the amount of pistol ammo, and for whatever reason it sometimes takes more than four bullets to kill a zombie. You can always fall back on your default weapon, the stun gun, but it's officially one of the most useless items in video game history. It takes so many electric shocks to stop a zombie that we'd much rather run away.
That, sadly, poses another problem. Our scientist moves way too slow to escape three zombies. This proves especially frustrating in a small room, where attempting to run away often results in some cheap deaths.
In addition, items that you miss automatically disappear when you re-enter a room. This only seems to happen with the least important things (keycards stay put), but there's no excuse for this.
Presentation wise, nothing stands out. Characters lack detail and are much too small (forcing us to play with the iPhone close to our faces), the environments look bland and the music failed to inspire us. Trapped has a decent intro, with cool zombie drawings, but we can only watch it so many times.
Part of what makes a zombie game fun is the adrenaline rush one experiences while shooting the creatures and the random scares that pop up along the way. Publisher Com2uS had a solid foundation, but never delivered the fun. As a result, we cannot recommend this monster mash.
