News
‘Dead Effect’ Review: Space Mass
The perception of mobile-to-PC ports is changing ever so slightly, and as Steam and other platforms open to a wider collection of developers, it continues to blur the line between mobile and desktop games. It’s more the monetization model that separates desktop games from mobile ones, which then influences design choices.
It is not inherently bad, and each game style continually influences the other, and yet it is nevertheless nearly impossible not to attribute some of the negative connotations associated with games clamoring out of that freemium model.
‘Dead Effect’ lies somewhere in the middle. Originally released on iOS and Android in Fall 2013, Dead Effect is a corridor shooter that bears striking resemblance to its mobile sibling. It has stripped out the freemium hooks and added some content but remains vaguely reminiscent of a mobile style game.
Despite some pretty glaring problems, including lazy design choices, cliched writing, amateurish voice acting, and vanilla mechanics, Dead Effect nevertheless manages to provide enough entertainment for those in search of a simple, somewhat throwback experience.
The year is 2045, and the player awakens from a lengthy slumber, only to find the entirety of his / her ship has been infected with — brace yourselves — the zombie virus. After that revelation, players must blast their way through over a dozen levels to escape this increasingly hellish situation.
That is the basic setup for Dead Effect. The game introduces a connecting sub-plot, of sorts, but it isn’t really worth mentioning, save for the fact that you’ll probably see the end coming well before it’s laid out for you. You can also collect tablets to get snippets of story, but none of the story is particularly satisfying. Beyond that, this game is all zombies, all the time. You’ll spend the bulk of its three-to-four hour running time blasting away the undead en masse.
Essentially, the level design consists of filling every room and corridor with as many zombies as humanly possible and daring people to blast through them. There are horde and survival modes, but that is moot because the entire game is a giant survival challenge. If you’ve ever played endless runners, then you might be amenable to Dead Effect being called an “endless shooter.” That’s about the most direct comparison available for the experience of playing the game.
It sounds like a lot of fun at the outset, a frenetic, nerve-racking experience, but over time it becomes tedious, especially considering the lack of enemy types. You are going to see enough zombie lab techs and random dead girls to last you a lifetime, and if you can make it through the entirety of the game without screaming profanity at the grenade zombies, I’ll eat my favorite t-shirt.
Despite the myriad (legitimate) complaints leveled at the game, Dead Effect’s saving grace is the shooting. I think plenty of people have commented negatively on the gunplay, but I actually enjoyed it just fine. It felt pretty basic, but I liked the weight of the weapons, especially the shotgun.
It helps that the game is pretty short, but collecting money and upgrading the guns gave me a reason to experiment, so I never tired of any one combination of firearms. Combine the shooting mechanics with a grotesque and satisfying head-exploding animation, and you’ve got a perfectly reasonable reason to give this game a shot.
There’s a hacking mini-game. There’s a New Game Plus. You can upgrade weapons and purchase new ones, although using gold is a bit on the nose, considering this game’s roots. It carries with it the vestigial organs of mobile design, and most of those elements are clunky. You gather money that you use in order to revive yourself when you die during a level. Run out of money, and you have to start the level over entirely. This is nigh intolerable, considering Dead Effect is already interminably repetitive.
Otherwise, mechanically it doesn’t do anything special. Plenty of them seem to have been lifted directly from the mobile version. You’ll tap the spacebar to open lockers and use the arrows to substitute for swiping, but otherwise it feels fairly mundane. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the game was set up to sell me things, and even though the game doesn’t actually try to sell me things, that feeling pervades the experience.
It would probably “feel” a lot different if the game weren’t an obvious freemium mobile port, where level design can be accused of relying on frustrating players into spending money as much as it is engaging them. This feels like a hollow indictment of the game and others like it, but it should be said I came to the conclusion that Dead Effect was a mobile port long before I ever looked it up. It possesses an aesthetic specifically reminiscent of games I’d find in the App Store, and somehow this affected how I viewed it.
I’m conflicted. The reviewer in me wants me to say Dead Effect is a game devoid of any original ideas, a playground with rusted toys. The gameplay is shallow, the AI is uninspired, and the game’s plodding monotony is not ripe for a hearty recommendation.
Dead Effect started life as a playable mobile game, where first-person shooters are few and far between and good ones even fewer and fartherer between. The platform is just not a good breeding ground for this particular genre. There are literally dozens better shooters out there in the world on PC. Log into Steam, and you’ll see a handful on the front page that play better and are more conceptually interesting than Dead Effect.
The Final Word: As far as shooters go, there are plenty more interesting, even independent ones, out in the world. Still, for $7.99, Dead Effect is not entirely without allure. Pick it up if you like shooting (A LOT OF) zombies.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
You must be logged in to post a comment.