I'm going to be honest with you. I sat at my computer ready to write my review for Dead Horde, the new top down, run and gun shooter from DNS development, but I had a tough time getting through it. Oh, it's not that the game has complex themes of survival that are hard to sum up or anything like that, it's just that it's such a boring paint by the numbers experience that I often had trouble remembering just what happened during my time with the game.

From blockbusters like Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead to indie darlings like I made a game with zomb1es 1n it!!!, there are a lot of zombie games on the market, and you're going to have a hard time finding one as bad as Dead Horde. It's predictable, has no personality and does nothing that the...excuse the term...hordes of zombie games has done before it.

"It's all been done before..."

Dead Horde places you as one of the lone survivors of a zombie apocalypse and your job; your only job is to shoot and blow up as many zombies as you can to survive. Sound familiar? Dead Horde employs a top down view that finds you holding down one button to shoot and another to move forward and that's it. Sound familiar? It should. It's all been done before in games like Zombie Apocalypse and I made a game with zomb1es 1n it!!!, but the key is that those games did something to inject the formula with a novel feeling. Zombie Apocalypse for example featured four player co-op (as opposed to 2 player here) and I made a game with zomb1es 1n it!!! was just plain silly, here we get none of that.

And there we have the key problem with Dead Horde. It's obvious that the developers have played the key zombie shooters of this generation and have lumped all of their key features into their game. For instance there's an almost carbon copy of Left 4 Dead's Boomer in the game. It's a pretty widely accepted fact in the gaming industry that the zombie shooter is a dated and stale genre and it's titles like these that offer absolutely no new ideas that are the perfect example of that.

"...I never thought that the zombie apocalypse would be this boring."

Throughout Dead Horde you'll gain the option to upgrade weapons at certain points and while it's a cool addition, in reality it does nothing for the gameplay. All of the weapons feel the same and lead to the feeling of merely grinding through each section from beginning to end. There's no real reason to explore, and you'll find yourself holding down two buttons and moving in one straightforward direction (well, except when you'll have to back pedal from enemies). You know, it's funny - I never thought that the zombie apocalypse would be this boring.

If Dead Horde had a saving factor it would be the vehicle sections which do tend to offer a break from the monotony of the game. It's quite fun to mow down the undead in a jeep or utility truck - the first few times, but when it happens again and again, it loses its appeal quickly. It's also important to note that the vehicle controls never really feel as tight as they should, and they often feel like you can't get control no matter what you do.

You've already played Dead Horde, even if you've never touched the game - it's all of your favorite parts from all of your favorite zombie games, only here they aren't done as well and have no personality. Dead Horde is an obvious attempt to grab a piece of a large yet dwindling audience. There are a ton of great zombie shooters on the market; hell there are a lot of competent zombie shooters on the market, why choose this one?