Have you ever wanted to play a super stripped down version of a Call of Duty zombie mode? Then I have the 99 cent game for you!
Deathly Dominion is a first person shooter that pits you against endless waves of zombies, with each wave getting increasingly difficult. How does it get more difficult? Well there are just more zombies. And they get a little bit harder to kill. And faster.
Guns! And Other Helpful Items
Fear not! For each zombie you kill, you earn some money. You can also find hidden caches of money throughout the map, that respawn between waves. You can use that money to unlock doors to certain houses, and each house has a little surprise for you. Some houses have new guns, some have medical kits, and some houses have some familiar items that Call of Duty fans will certainly recognize. Namely, a skull that grants you the insta-kill ability and a nuke that clears out the entire map of zombies.
At the start of the game, you are given a pistol and an assault rifle. You start next to a giant tablet that lists what the controls are, which is the only source of controls I could find. Now the game claims to not support controllers, but I was able to play a round with my Xbox controller. Funnily enough, I learned by playing with a controller that there is a melee mechanic not mentioned for the mouse and keyboard controls. And that melee is enough to kill all the zombies without firing a single bullet for the first three waves.
The different guns you find are for the most part all a variety of the starting rifle called the TSR-9. I did also find a sniper rifle in one playthrough that was super ineffective against zombies. So I don’t recommend seeking that out. Inside one of the houses, you can find the TSR-9 Shock. This weapon carried me all the way to wave 21, which is where I eventually called it quits. I say called it quits, I got caught on a railing being careless, but I was pretty over it at that point.
That Zombie Has a Nice Shirt
While the gameplay itself isn’t terrible, Deathly Dominion lacks variety. All of the zombies look the same and there isn’t much to their attack. To that point, you can only take one hit in the first wave, which makes the medical kits redundant after that point. Zombies seem to only spawn in the middle of the map, so if you stick to one side, there is almost no chance of surprise attacks from behind. You just need to make sure you occasionally push forward to pick up an ammo drop before you retreat back to your corner. I should also mention, there are grenades in the game, but for the life of me I couldn’t kill more than one zombie at a time with one.
Once you get tired of killing the same zombie, you can switch to Team Deathmatch mode. In this mode, you and three bots fight over control of a desert or neighborhood map against four other bots. Or people that are somehow worse than me at first person shooters. But I’m pretty sure they were bots. Team Deathmatch is pretty similar to zombie mode, except the sniper rifle you start with is good and one shots everyone. The only issue is, after my team got over 300 kills, the match still hadn’t ended. So I’m not sure how exactly you complete a team deathmatch. Which really bums me out, because I have to know what my k/d ratio was for that absurdly long match.
Final Thoughts
Deathly Dominion is in no way a bad game. But it also isn’t necessarily a good game. Then again, it’s 99 cents so in this scenario, you really do get what you pay for. I squeezed 2.5 hours of entertainment out of it, which seems fair. I’m curious to know what people who regularly play games like Call of Duty will think of this game. If that person is you, please let me know!