Developed by BadFly Interactive, Dead Effect 2 makes its way to Xbox One. The game was previously released on Steam, and also developed for Android and IOS, mixing FPS, RPG, and Horror elements exceptionally well if I might add.

 

 This isn't the first time a game has done this, some examples I can point out are the Borderlands Series.  What Dead Effect does differently is taking a more dramatic approach, while delivering more action with less grinding for XP or guns.  As you start story mode, the player can play as Gunnar Davis, Jane Frey or Kay Rayner. During my play through I picked Gunnar Davis, the clichéd action hero who can't help but spew lame jokes and hit on his partner Danette. I actually really liked this character. He is similar to Duke Nukem if I had to compare. You start out on a operating table with a creepy man by the name of Doctor Bielik who is experimenting on you, you black out then wake up again to a emergency happening on the Spaceship ESS Meridian. Danette helps you escape the room and soon you are on your way to finding out what's going on in the ship. Immediately encountering zombies with nothing more than a pistol, the action begins. Danette guides you through this scary place to meet her in her base. Where you will be spending time later upgrading guns and skills.

 

As you go on in the story you will meet another ally by the name of Minikin. A somewhat slow minded failed super soldier science experiment. He will help you on your journey by selling you some badass guns and upgrades.

 

Gameplay is incredibly fun. As the huge FPS fan that I am I was already excited for a FPS game to hit the ID@Xbox program. Like I said before the game is somewhat the more serious version of Borderlands mixed with the game Dead Space. Action is always happening and you won't be spending countless hours grinding to get good guns and armour. After the first few missions you will be returning to Danettas base in between missions. There is a huge hologram in the middle of the room for you to pick what you want to do next. You can choose between story missions or the many other game modes present in the Xbox version. Modes like Biohazard which is a wave survival mode, or straight up survival where depending on difficulty you will need to survive a nonstop horde of zombies for a set amount of time. Guns the you get are available in every mode. Same with the armour and character trait stats. Story missions are generally 5-20 minutes long and also have secondary task which are actually the achievements. One huge part of the game that is missing from the Steam counterpart is the co-op and PvP modes. Why they were not included is a mystery to me but the developer has hinted at a possibility of a future update adding these modes to Xbox.

 

Graphics are well done for a indie game. It does a good job of taking advantage of the unity game engine which the game was built with. There is a somewhat grainy effect but it honestly works wells with the horror aspect of the game. Music is another strong point too, heavy electronic tracks kick in right when action starts. There is a wide variety of background music and I never found my self annoyed by any tracks. As for sound effects, they were done sorta well. Some guns and zombie sound effects sounded out of place sometimes but this wasn’t a big issue for me.

As for achievements, there is no shortage with a whopping list of 100 achievements. Ranging from 5-15 Gamerscore each. About 90 of the achievements are tied to story mode. Each mission has 4 achievements tied to it, one for completing the mission then 3 for various secondary objectives like finishing the mission in under a set amount of time, not taking damage or killing a boss with a certain gun. Don’t be intimidated by the huge list. I managed to unlock 92 achievements in 12 hours, the other 8 achievements were for killing a few thousand enemies and surviving 50 games of Biohazard, or 100 survival matches. Those other 8 took about another 12 hours to do. Which wasn’t too bad as I really enjoyed the game and it wasn’t too long of a grind compared to games like borderlands. So you can expect about 20-25 hours of gameplay if you go after every achievement.

 

Overall Dead Effect 2 is a good game, the lack of co-op or PvP is only a minor problem with the game. For a fair price of $11.99 you still get a great value. The action is always present and gameplay is a welcome relief to the horde of platformers that we have been seeing on the ID@Xbox Program. Whether you play for the FPS action or RPG elements, I highly recommend checking this game out.

 

Final Score - 8/10

 

Written by John aka YoDz.

John@nastymastadaddy.com

Twitter @AkaYodz  Xbox:YoDz

 

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review

 

You can purchase Dead Effect 2 on the Xbox Store Here

 

Release Date - Friday‎, ‎January‎ ‎13‎, ‎2017

Price - $11.99

Download Size - 6.59 GB

 

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