So here I am spending my Saturday night wondering what the hell happened to my day after playing Trapped Dead: Lockdown. After getting to review a few decent titles over the past few weeks, it was only a matter of time before a dud came across my desk. Trapped Dead: Lockdown is low quality from the second you boot the game up.
Story
Trapped Dead: Lockown is yet another generic zombie apocalypse type game to come out in an already crowded market. I have the feeling that these type of games are the easiest to make when dealing with a tiny budget and team. I mean, the games blurb says it all, “A small American town is overrun by the living dead!”
The game sets a number of playable characters on different quests with a connected end goal. Some are more interesting than others (The Marine looking for his with holds the most weight), but it does give you the ability to replay each character; although you probably won’t want to. The classes amount to a marine, meat butcher, assassin, US marshal, and an exorcist, because why not.
You’ll make your way through the infected town trying to find out what happened and why the dead are rising. The game tries to mix things up by having a virus as the cause, but it’s nothing that you haven’t seen elsewhere done better. There are a number of chapters and locations, but as this is a zombie game, everything will begin to blend into itself with the dark and muddy tones.
But let’s face facts here, you aren’t going to be getting any sort of deep story. The dialogue is stilted and flows about as well as the character animations. Story elements almost seem to be ripped out of the notebook of a Freshman High School student, and not one that excels at writing. It’s boring, been done better, and you’ll almost immediately forget it. I just finished the game about 10 minutes ago and it’s hard for me to call-back any major moments.
Gameplay
Trapped Dead: Lockdown plays very similar to Diablo. I’m not talking about Diablo 3 here, instead it’s more along the line of the original Diablo. The only difference is that it doesn’t look or play as well as that game that came out some 19 years ago. It’s a shame because there are some interesting things going on in Lockdown, it just isn’t anywhere deep enough to be worth it.
The five classes all have their own strengths and abilities, but aside from weapons being locked off from certain classes (you can still pick them up to sell off later), I didn’t see much of a difference when I played around with each. The Butcher is a melee guy, but I spent a fair amount of the game using melee attacks as the Marine who is a heavy weapons expert.
As this is a semi Diablo clone, loot is going to be a large part of the adventure. Unfortunately, there isn’t a wide selection of drops for your characters to find/buy. I has access to two or three of each weapon class available to me as a Marine. A couple of pistols, some shotguns, and a few heavy weapons, but as all these weapon classes look and act the same, it gets boring quick.
You will have access to more powerful weapons as the game goes along, but as the enemies also rise in level, that new pistol will end up feeling just like that old, less powerful pistol. Where the game does mix it up is with the special abilities that you can add to your weapon and person. Its got a skill tree that can be unlocked with the points you earn (that same classic Diablo RPG progression) and these not only add power, but can also look pretty neat.
The problem is that these abilities just don’t fit into this world or narrative. Remember that you are just a regular person, so having lighting powers, or being able to ricochet a bullet off of multiple enemies isn’t within the scope of your average guy behind the meat counter at Vons . But like the weapon abilities, these perks are very limited in their animations, and the eye-candy factor wears thin quickly. It must be said though, that the skill tree is pretty deep for a game of this small size and spending points is pretty fun.
You can also upgrade you character with another set of upgrade points, but these almost felt tacked on and showed no real effect in game. About half way through playin, I just started tossing points into random categories with little noticeable effect. My Spirituality and Intelligence was ridiculously low, while my Strength and Weapons were on the level of Conan the Barbarian.
Getting around is a point-and-click affair which works just fine and the game also lets you drive vehicles around during many sections. These are probably the best parts of Trapped Dead: Lockdown as they offer a nice change of pace. It may be cliché and overdone, but it’s always fun mowing down zombies in a car.
The game says that the enemies are diverse, and they would be correct in a sense, but the enemy types only really change because of the environment you are in. Citizens in the town, mechanics and factory workers in the industrial area, Doctors in hospitals and so on. Many are just re-skins, but as the levels progress these types do expand and some are fun to see. The boss characters are all the same as well. Just click to kill (having a ranged character makes the game much easier) and rinse and repeat. If you die you’ll be revived at the nearest checkpoint (always pretty close to where you left off) with all your gear and the boss won’t regain any health.
You’ll also be able to galavant around the world with the help of online buddies. Trapped Dead: Lockdown offers drop-in drop-out mulitplayer and it seems to work well enough. During my time I had only one person join me that stuck around to be any use for longer than five-minutes. More often than not, the person that dropped into my game was 10 plus levels below me and couldn’t survive a single encounter. It seems like the game just throws a player into a random game regardless of the level of the party leader. It’s possible to play with four other, but I could never find more than a single player to test out that feature.
Graphics
Things here are pretty terrible on the visual department. There are games that hit shelves back in 2003 that look better than Trapped Dead: Lockdown. Heck, just off the top of my head I can call out Hunter: The Reckoning that dropped in 2002 on the Gamecube as an example of looking as good or better. Characters look amateurish at best and all have this awkward shine to them. I’m not exaggerating when I say that most 3D Android games put this one to shame in the looks department.
Cut scenes are mostly static images of the in-game engine (which is already ugly) with a filter thrown over. It’s very basic in its presentation, and while that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, here it just kills the game. The menus are laid out in a way by someone that had no idea about colors or patterns. Everything is muddy and clashes enough to give you a headache. Okay, so I may be embellishing a bit, but it’s just not a pretty sight.
The menus aren’t difficult to navigate as they are all laid out in the standard RPG style, but it’s damn near impossible to follow them within the clutter. Every time I opened the skills upgrade menu I felt like I was looking at one of the magic eye puzzles. It’s all just so strange with regards to the graphics here. The game works just fine and the engine does a respectable job, but the graphics used are just terrible.
What’s funny is that almost all of the clothing options are exactly the same item, only with a palatte swap to give the vague illusion of change. You be wearing those same pants the entire game, but you’ll be seeing them in a ton of different gritty colors. The only thing that does get a noticeable change are the helmets that you can sport. It was pretty funny seeing my Marine (that looks exactly like Guile, although his hair style and color changes from cut-scene to actual model) wearing a welders mask and carrying a huge double-sided axe straight out of the middle ages.
The world textures are also extremely repetitive and bland. I also don’t think Sprouts Market would be all that happy to see their logo all over the supermarkets used in the beginning town stage. Not the best PR to associate a national chain market with rot and decay. Oh, and the achievements haven’t even been properly cut out correctly as the transparency is all messed up allowing you to see this ugly red ring around them in your Steam menu.
Sound
It has some. Trapped Dead: Lockdown does feature a fully voiced cast of characters, unfortunately the games writing is so bad that none of the characters speak like human beings. The voice-acting is adequate enough, but the lines they are forces to read are just terrible and with little direction. That and my Marine seemed to only ever be able to say is, “I’ll do it.”
The music is there, but nothing that will stick with you. I couldn’t even hum you one of the tunes if I had a gun to my head. All the weapons will also have the same sound, regardless of type and zombies all have the same grunts and groans. It gets the job done, but it does little to elevate the experience in any meaningful game.
Fun Factor
Here’s the funny thing about Trapped Dead: Lockdown, after all the things I knocked the game for, I still managed to have a good time playing it. You see, the basic structure and underlying elements of the game and it’s engine work great. Even a bad Diablo clone is still a Diablo clone at the end of the day, and that basic idea will always be a bit of fun.
Unfortunately, you don’t want to remind your players of better games while you are playing theirs. No matter how much fun I was having during my short time with Trapped Dead: Lockdown, I still wished I was playing the better, and longer, games it was inspired by.
Final Thoughts
Yes, Trapped Dead: Lockdown does offer a bit of fun, but I can’t in good faith recommended it anyone. The game lists for a whopping $19.99 on Steam which is simply grotesque by any standard. I can easily go into the Steam sale section and download half a dozen amazing AAA games for the same cost of Trapped Dead: Lockdown. Hell, for $14.99 you could just buy Torchlight for your action RPG fix and still have cash left over for something else.
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