Dead Trigger 2 Preview

First-person shooters have become the exemplars of the “console-quality” movement on mobile, and Madfinger’s Dead Trigger led the charge in 2012 with its stunningly detailed visuals and effects.  For anyone who likes their zombie shooters even sharper, gorier, and more nightmare-hauntingly realistic, Dead Trigger 2 is being made for you.

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Although I was hoping to finally play as a zombie with a gun, this will do.

First-person shooters have become the exemplars of the “console-quality” movement on mobile, and Madfinger’s Dead Trigger led the charge in 2012 with its stunningly detailed visuals and effects.  For anyone who likes their zombie shooters even sharper, gorier, and more nightmare-hauntingly realistic, Dead Trigger 2 is being made for you. 

Dead Trigger made waves last year in both Google Play and the App Store, with over 20 million downloads total and numerous honors, including Best Technical Achievement and Community Choice at the Unity Awards.  It successfully bridged the gap between console-quality and free-to-play, providing a truly blockbuster shooter experience at the cost of absolutely nothing.  Although the high price of better equipment ran many players into an inevitable in-app pay wall, the game was an overall success for anyone who wants to play $60 games without worrying about the $60 part.

Dead Trigger 2

Dead Trigger 2 promises to follow suit and bring even more to the table, although the game’s price (or lack thereof) has yet to be officially announced.  Being optimized for NVIDIA Tegra 4 devices, Dead Trigger 2 will set “a new standard for mobile graphics and gameplay,” according to Madfinger CEO Marek Rabas.  From the brief tech demo shown at CES this week, Rabas isn’t kidding.

The demo, developed for NVIDIA’s new “Project Shield” gaming platform, shows off an outdoor battle with a hulk of a zombie, large enough that he towers over the shops lining the street.  The level of detail in the buildings almost camouflages a handful of standard zombies that are milling about, but our player takes them down with his M4 before moving to a mounted turret nearer the giant zombie. After lacing him with a barrage of burst-fire bullets complete with muzzle flash, the monster topples to the road, shaking the entire environment and releasing a hazy cloud of dust into the air.  And this is just one minute of what is ahead.

Dead Trigger 2

Will the rest of the game live up to this tech demo?  We can’t say for sure until Dead Trigger 2 releases on Android and iOS in Q2 of this year.  Until then, stay reassured by the fact that you can see arm hair in the current screenshots.  If they’re rendering arm hair, oozy weepy entrails are sure to follow.   

Jillian will play any game with cute characters or an isometric perspective, but her favorites are Fallout 3, Secret of Mana, and Harvest Moon. Her PC suffers from permanent cat-on-keyboard syndrome, which she blames for most deaths in Don’t Starve. She occasionally stops gaming long enough to eat waffles and rewatch Battlestar Galactica.