• Game: Dead Block
• Platform: Xbox Lice Arcade
• Publisher: Digital Reality
• Developer: Candygun Games
• ESRB: T
• Genre: Strategy, Action
• Players: 1-4



• What's Hot: An original take on tower defense, The one rockabilly song they loop at the end of every level



• What's Not: Laborious resource collection, Monotonous objective system, No online co-op

Review by: Justin Amirkhani

If the key to surviving a zombie invasion is preparedness, the developers at Candygun Games are the last folk I want by my side. Dead Block, their debut zombie-themed title, is the most ill-concieved zombie game on the Xbox Live Arcade to date.

Set in a kitschy 1950’s America, players are introduced to a zombie infestation by way of boisterous narration. We’re told – at deafening tones – that the zombies were created by the original public enemy, rock ‘n roll. Whether it was the music itself or Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips that caused the transformation, we don’t know.

An unlikely trio of heroes consisting of a beefier Bob the Builder, a fatter Russel from Up, and a much tamer Pam Grier are the sole survivors. Francis, Zoey, Bill and Louis, these are not; despite being obvious caricatures of movie stereotypes the heroes of Dead Block lack any personality of their own. We understand that the fat kid is fat, and the construction worker is grumpy, and that the foxy lady is foxy, but other than that we’re not given much to go on. All of this could be forgiven of course if the mechanics were enjoyable, but Dead Block is a systemic bore.

One would assume that when making a game with the undead in it, you’d focus the experience on smashing their living dead skulls with various implements. Instead, Candygun thought they would be far cleverer and make the game about avoiding the zombies by throwing up barricades and traps. This of course leads to the creation of a resource system, which then needs a means of collecting said resources; thus the need to smash apart every piece of furniture in every single room for planks of wood. In Dead Block you spend more time swinging a hammer at kitchen cabinets than you do swinging it at zombies.

Mindless defense is worthless without objectives, so in addition to tearing apart living rooms the players need to rummage through the undestroyed remnants in search of guitar equipment. Once collected they can rush to their amp and play a lame minigame version of Guitar Hero to kill all the zombies with rock ‘n roll. If you’ve read this review carefully, you should notice how stupid that previous sentence makes the game; rock ‘n roll is both the cause and cure for this undead infestation.

Ignoring that the game’s rationale makes no sense, there are still some fundamental flaws in a design that takes the player away from doing what they want. There’s nothing wrong with designing a passive experience – every good tower defense game is – but there’s a logical disconnect in placing that experience within what’s supposed to be an action game. It’s like they tried to make a third-person adaptation of Facebook’s Zombie Lane, but without any of the fun social elements.