There must be an audience remaining for trashy zombie pop culture, hence Dead Alliance. It’s fetid and crude; that doesn’t matter so long as zombies explode all cool and stuff. They do in Dead Alliance, the hook being undead can be placed under human control. The two warring factions sling killer zombies at each other as often as they do bullets.

Whatever the cause for this mayhem doesn’t seem to matter. Zombies exist, so accept that, and two military groups want each other dead, so accept that too. The tone matches the aesthetic and gameplay, messy and unrefined, hokey and cheap. Interactive grindhouse, if Dead Alliance had any aspirations beyond being a B-grade clunker, anyway. Even then, the sense of humor about all of this is nill. Dead Alliance is played straight.

It’s a collection of blood and hardened shadows, hardly picturesque even for an apocalypse, where people shoot each other as if there wasn’t enough death around them already. That fuels Dead Alliance’s online only competitive style. It’s such an empty thing, utterly devoid of personality or consequence – zombies for the sake of zombies, shooting for the sake of shooting. Entertainment is rarely this hollow.

1/5