Game review: Deadlight

By Dave Cook
Published on 19/08/2012 12:35

Yet another zombie game to launch this year, Deadlight has a different approach to most of its competitors. It’s a side-scrolling platformer similar to classics FlashBack and Another World, as well as the impeccable XBLA release Shadow Complex.

Set in the 1980s, Deadlight stars Randall Wayne, a survivor of the zombie apocalypse, as he journeys through a perilous city swarming with the undead. Although the game is viewed side-on, the environments are detailed, underlining the ravaged city and last remnants 
of civilisation.

Randall is athletic and can climb ledges, jump walls, shimmy up ropes and more. Speed and precision are often needed to evade the hordes, as well as some neat environment tricks, such as shouting to goad zombies to stagger mindlessly into hazards or triggering car alarms to distract them.

Eventually Randall will come across firearms and it’s at this point the game will split opinion. Bodies can be looted for additional ammo and you never feel as under-resourced as you should in a survival horror game like this.

Some of the traps later on are poorly implemented, requiring a deal of tiresome trial and error, but if you really love zombies you can probably overlook this issue. If you’re a true connoisseur of the genre you will enjoy tracking down pages of Randall’s lost journal to piece together the origins of the apocalypse.

With a decent campaign length and a raft of hidden extras, Deadlight is a modest zombie game. It won’t win any awards, but it’s superb for most of the duration.

• £9.99, Xbox Live Arcade 12000 MS Points