Good shooters in VR are hard to come by for several reasons. First, if you don’t have motion controllers, they usually aren’t that exciting. Secondly, running around in virtual reality with fewer options is usually a good way to get sick. Most of the time, you’ll find stationary shooters in mobile VR, and while it’s fun for a while, it’s usually pretty repetitive. The guys at Pixel Toys have just released their answer to this lack of zombie shooter experience with more than enough immersion to keep you busy for a while. It’s called Drop Dead, and based on our early development, you’ll probably want to install it on your Gear VR right now.
Drop Dead is all it takes to improve the quality of FPS in mobile VR, and so far that mission has been accomplished.
You are the last agent on the planet capable of destroying the evil, crazy doctor who continues to resurrect people into zombies to take over the world. With an arsenal of weapons provided by your team and the promise that when you die they will keep bringing you back in non-zombie form while traveling through time, you will be on your way to save the world! The story is fun and simple, with no shortage of one-liners designed to make you laugh and keep you playing for a few more minutes.
Drop Dead is basically a shooter on rails, but you navigate through a lot of different environments with a comfortable zombie-tracking headset and so much firepower. You can play with both trackpad and gamepad because the gun floats next to the HUD and offers an aiming system to make killing zombies easier. Instead of focusing on jump scares — they still exist, but that’s not the focus — Drop Dead is all about getting the highest possible score through headshots, stunt kills, and bullet-style escape sequences. You fight your way to the end, and if you run into a grenade or two along the way, it won’t hurt.
This game works because it is simple and non-repetitive. The HUD works great, adding a bit of immersion as you progress through the game, and being able to look around instead of being locked into a 180-degree shooting center makes things a lot more fun. Drop Dead is the next logical step in mobile VR shooters, and the zombie focus is perfect for passing the headset on to friends, Halloween is right around the corner and The Walking Dead was on TV.
We briefly spoke with Pixel Toys CEO Andy Wafer, who has had some experience delivering a fun zombie shooter to mobile devices in the past with Gunfinger — The Zombie Apocalypse. This game has inspired a lot of what you see in Drop Dead, but Wafer has made it clear that it’s a completely different experience. The inclusion of two different game modes to ensure that those who can’t handle movement in VR was also a big problem, although the fully-enabled combat mode does look and feel great if you can handle it. Drop Dead is all it takes to improve the quality of FPS in mobile VR, and so far that mission has been accomplished.
It’s unclear if we’ll see Drop Dead on other VR systems in the future, so for now Gear VR owners have something unique to grab and enjoy.