Trapped Dead

The Good
If you like zombie games, you'll meet many familiar character types here. You get the grumpy sheriff, the doctor, the crazy survivalist, the female journalist and the average jack-of-all stats guy that is you.

The level design is nice, at least for the levels set in urban areas. There are a few ways to kill zombies: shooting, bashing them in the head, shooting at explode-y things that are near them, kill them with level-specific traps. Each level has a unique trap that can kill a lot of zombies in a spectacular fashion, including but not limited to: a giant chandelier, an incinerator, an room with wet floor and an electric chair at the middle. Also, hits to the back of the zombie's head do more damage so a viable tactic to save ammo is to "kite" one or two zombies from a herd, let a character act as bait to lure them around, while the other character bash those zombies from behind.

Near the end, after you have stockpiled a decent amount of ammo, you can literally go in guns blazing and plow through the herd, to make up for levels after levels of stealth-killing.

The Bad
Horrendous voice acting. The guy that's supposed to be the player character has a ridiculously amateurish and inconsistent voice. The doctor says "damn" every other second which sounds very forced and out of character. The sheriff (no sir, an ordinary police officer won't do, sir, he must be the sheriff, sir) can only sprout one cliched line after another. The dialog is so disjointed that you are absolutely sure that each voice was recorded separately and hastily slapped together into a conversation.

No sense of achievement. You finish the level? Good for you, now off to the next one. You're done with the game? Well done, now go back to the menu and play it again. Aside from that little summary at the end of the level (how many items you found, how many zombies you brained,etc) there is no unlockables, no higher difficulties, no nothing. There's little incentive to replay the game.

A few rough edges in gameplay design. As you load the game, all characters un-equip their weapon, which at best leads to some annoyance while re-equipping them, and at worst leads to another reload as you get swarmed by zombies with your survivor unarmed. The upside is that it resets the "bleeding" status (which does not lower your health but attracts zombies to you like sharks) so you can save a medkit if you're running low. There is a certain variety in character types, but as soon as you find a combo that works for you, it's unnecessary to try anything else, since the characters don't develop at all stat-wise and there is too little personality for you to root for anyone.

A few severe bugs before the patches. The slightly annoying one prevents you from picking up the crossbow, a long range, silence weapon. The unforgiveable and truly game breaking one prevents you from triggering a certain event and gets you stuck in the final level. It is an absolute must that you find and install newest patches before playing the game.

The Bottom Line
It's an OK game. Considering how few zombie strategy games there are in the market, I appreciate the game makers taking the risk releasing this title. However, flaws in game design and presentation, along with low replay value will put off a lot of people from this game.