DS Roundup

Dead 'n' Furious (Touch the Dead in the US)

Sega's long-running series of light gun-based arcade games is loved for its light-hearted but gory frenetic shooting, hammy acting, camp scenarios and creatively gruesome monsters. Dead 'n' Furious, far from being a necrophilia-'em-up, follows in these lumbering footsteps by translating the light gun interface to a more abstracted control scheme.

Here you hammer the stylus on the touch screen at the point at which you wish to fire your gun before dragging a clip of ammunition from the bottom right of the screen over to your weapon in order to reload. It's a system that works curiously well and, while you'd think simply having to touch where you want to shoot might make the game a little simple, by limiting the amount of ammo in your clip, skilful timing of reloads becomes of paramount importance.

The ridiculous storyline casts you as Rob Steiner, a prisoner at Ashdown Hole State Penitentiary who is lounging in his cell when all of the prison's doors mysteriously unlock. Stranger still how all of the other cells and corridors are empty and, curiouser and curiouser, Steiner finds a handgun lying unattended in the toilets. The story never really advances much from this sparse introduction: you shoot zombies and escape the prison. Narrative closed.

While the game is on-rails, guiding you through the prison step by step while you concentrate on the shooting, you do get the occasional binary choice as to which direction to take (by shooting at a left or right arrow on a wall). Over the course of the four main chapters, each closed with an intimating boss fight, you'll pick up a shotgun, a crowbar and a submachine gun. For these other weapons you'll need to find ammo by shooting crates and so your eyes are constantly searching scenes for both monsters and containers.