Recently, we reviewed Dead Trigger, the latest offering from Smartphone developers extraordinaire Madfinger Games. In our review, we detailed the game’s many selling points, and the flaws that offset them, but our special focus was on Dead Trigger’s graphics. After all, that’s the game’s chief selling point, and the reason many are heralding it as the first example of a truly competitive Smartphone game; one that’s capable of going toe-to-toe with benchmark offerings from the PS3 and Xbox 360 and come out victorious. But what are the graphics like on different devices? Is a Tegra 3 chipset truly necessary to experience all of Dead Trigger’s frills? In our latest exposé, we aim to highlight the differences between disparate versions of Dead Trigger, and how the game is handled on different devices.
First up, the HTC One X. This device is the perfect high water-mark for testing the game; not only is it one of the strongest Smartphones currently on the market, it also contains the much-touted Tegra 3 chipset. For those who didn’t peruse our review of the game, Dead Trigger was designed with the Tegra 3 in mind: those fortunate enough to own a Tegra 3 device are privy to a special “ultra-high” graphical option which substantially improves the game’s graphics. Predictably, of the three devices we tested, the HTC One X came out on top.
The game ran extremely smoothly, but that was no surprise. What really amazed us was the quality of the effects. The colours were vibrant, the bloom effects were polished and miscellaneous effects such as water droplets, steam coming from pipes, and of course the muzzle flashes from your weapon were incredibly realistic. Loading times between missions were minimal, and movement was predictably smooth. In fact, the only issue we found was unrelated to the game itself: as a by-product of running the game on the coveted “ultra-high” graphical setting, we found that the HTC One X became very warm, and ran out of battery power much more swiftly than otherwise. However, battery power is a notorious issue with the One X, and the warmth of the device appeared to have no adverse effects, and swiftly faded.
Next, we tested Dead Trigger on the Samsung Galaxy S3. Despite being arguably the strongest Smartphone currently on the market (at least in terms of raw specs), the S3 is only comparable to the One X in terms of graphical capacity. Samsung do not outsource chip production to Nvidia, as HTC do; they produce their own graphical chips in-house. The Galaxy S3 runs a quad-core ARM chipset dubbed Exynos 4, which is a competitive SOC but doesn’t yet have the same range of support as the Tegra 3. Consequently, there is no option to opt into the “ultra-high” mode for the Galaxy S3. But as we saw with the overheating and battery consumption of the One X, “ultra-high” essentially constitutes overclocking: ramping up the game’s graphics at the expense of much more power. So is that necessarily a bad thing?
Well… yes, frankly. The highest normal graphical setting is certainly impressive by the standards of a Smartphone, but it fails to match up to the HD next-gen graphics set by ultra-high. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination: the water effects in particular retain their sheen, right down to the droplets which spatter the camera when you walk under a leaking pipe. But when compared side-by-side to the One X version, the lighting is somewhat more muted, movement is slightly more jerky and loading times are noticeably longer. However, this is solely because it lacks the ultra-high setting; Samsung’s chipsets are generally on-par with Nvidia’s in other respects, so it seems obvious that the S3 has the capacity to run as well as its competitor, it just isn’t being allowed to. We’re sure that once Madfinger Games gets around to it, the S3 can expect similar integration to that enjoyed by the One X.
Finally, we tested Dead Trigger on a Motorola Xoom tablet. To be honest, we weren’t expecting much from the tablet, as the game was designed with Smartphones in mind, but we were pleasantly surprised. It suffers a definite loss in quality; the colours are significantly grainier, loading times were longer, and – crucially – there’s a time lag between touching the screen and seeing it transfer to an on-screen result, which means you’ll often find yourself missing targets through shooting too late. On the other hand, the larger screen made things a lot easier to see, and the controls were easier to use, courtesy of the broader buttons. And in some respects, the muted colour palette actually added to the attraction – Dead Trigger, after all, has faced a lot of criticism for its overly-colourful design, with many One X users reporting headaches after prolonged use. Overall, though, the tablet experience was significantly different enough from the One X and S3 to almost qualify as a new game entirely! We definitely had a few Resident Evil 4 flashbacks while playing it.
In summary, we’d recommend that you stick with a Smartphone, though – the majority of users aren’t going to be impressed by easier controls, if the trade-off is noticeable lag. Both the One X and the S3 versions are fun to play, and if the coveted ultra-high setting makes its debut on the S3 before too much longer, they’d be virtually identical anyway!
First up, the HTC One X. This device is the perfect high water-mark for testing the game; not only is it one of the strongest Smartphones currently on the market, it also contains the much-touted Tegra 3 chipset. For those who didn’t peruse our review of the game, Dead Trigger was designed with the Tegra 3 in mind: those fortunate enough to own a Tegra 3 device are privy to a special “ultra-high” graphical option which substantially improves the game’s graphics. Predictably, of the three devices we tested, the HTC One X came out on top.
The game ran extremely smoothly, but that was no surprise. What really amazed us was the quality of the effects. The colours were vibrant, the bloom effects were polished and miscellaneous effects such as water droplets, steam coming from pipes, and of course the muzzle flashes from your weapon were incredibly realistic. Loading times between missions were minimal, and movement was predictably smooth. In fact, the only issue we found was unrelated to the game itself: as a by-product of running the game on the coveted “ultra-high” graphical setting, we found that the HTC One X became very warm, and ran out of battery power much more swiftly than otherwise. However, battery power is a notorious issue with the One X, and the warmth of the device appeared to have no adverse effects, and swiftly faded.
Next, we tested Dead Trigger on the Samsung Galaxy S3. Despite being arguably the strongest Smartphone currently on the market (at least in terms of raw specs), the S3 is only comparable to the One X in terms of graphical capacity. Samsung do not outsource chip production to Nvidia, as HTC do; they produce their own graphical chips in-house. The Galaxy S3 runs a quad-core ARM chipset dubbed Exynos 4, which is a competitive SOC but doesn’t yet have the same range of support as the Tegra 3. Consequently, there is no option to opt into the “ultra-high” mode for the Galaxy S3. But as we saw with the overheating and battery consumption of the One X, “ultra-high” essentially constitutes overclocking: ramping up the game’s graphics at the expense of much more power. So is that necessarily a bad thing?
Well… yes, frankly. The highest normal graphical setting is certainly impressive by the standards of a Smartphone, but it fails to match up to the HD next-gen graphics set by ultra-high. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination: the water effects in particular retain their sheen, right down to the droplets which spatter the camera when you walk under a leaking pipe. But when compared side-by-side to the One X version, the lighting is somewhat more muted, movement is slightly more jerky and loading times are noticeably longer. However, this is solely because it lacks the ultra-high setting; Samsung’s chipsets are generally on-par with Nvidia’s in other respects, so it seems obvious that the S3 has the capacity to run as well as its competitor, it just isn’t being allowed to. We’re sure that once Madfinger Games gets around to it, the S3 can expect similar integration to that enjoyed by the One X.
Finally, we tested Dead Trigger on a Motorola Xoom tablet. To be honest, we weren’t expecting much from the tablet, as the game was designed with Smartphones in mind, but we were pleasantly surprised. It suffers a definite loss in quality; the colours are significantly grainier, loading times were longer, and – crucially – there’s a time lag between touching the screen and seeing it transfer to an on-screen result, which means you’ll often find yourself missing targets through shooting too late. On the other hand, the larger screen made things a lot easier to see, and the controls were easier to use, courtesy of the broader buttons. And in some respects, the muted colour palette actually added to the attraction – Dead Trigger, after all, has faced a lot of criticism for its overly-colourful design, with many One X users reporting headaches after prolonged use. Overall, though, the tablet experience was significantly different enough from the One X and S3 to almost qualify as a new game entirely! We definitely had a few Resident Evil 4 flashbacks while playing it.
In summary, we’d recommend that you stick with a Smartphone, though – the majority of users aren’t going to be impressed by easier controls, if the trade-off is noticeable lag. Both the One X and the S3 versions are fun to play, and if the coveted ultra-high setting makes its debut on the S3 before too much longer, they’d be virtually identical anyway!
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The plot is typical zombie fare: a dystopian vision of society, where the common man rose up against the ruling classes – and the corrupt politicians release a virus to turn people into bloodthirsty monsters en-masse to make good their own escape. You play a generic grizzly-voiced survivor, who stumbles into a haven of other survivors (imaginatively dubbed ‘Safe Haven’) and becomes their primary protector, roving around the city and using a selection of guns to help out his new friends. But the plot is almost immaterial; the short missions (rarely lasting more than a few minutes) and broad-strokes storyline lend itself to a burst style of play, putting Dead Trigger in the curious position of being a lunchtime game with next-gen graphics. We approve of this pick-up-and-play style of gaming, but it might have made the game more engrossing if there was an ongoing story – unfortunately, most of the ‘plot’ consists of text-only info-dump at the start of story missions, and it’s easily overlooked by casual gamers, who click “skip” to get to the zombie jamboree as swiftly as possible.
On the plus side, there are a large variety of missions. Some of them charge you with merely surviving until the timer runs out, and generally place you within an enclosed area to make the task more difficult. Others force you to protect escape routes to let your fellow survivors make good their escape. However, with a fairly small handful of enemies to shoot in the face, and repetitious map design, it can become tiring doing the same thing over and over. Fortunately, the wide range of different guns – everything from pistols to machine guns to a freakin’ mini-gun – and a prompt to change your equipped weapon/s at the beginning to each level (along with a ‘Recommended Gun’) means that you’ll at least have a healthy arsenal of weapons in your war against the undead. The game has faced some flak for only allowing the best weapons to be unlocked by spending real-life cash, but given the price of Dead Trigger itself (currently retailing at £0.75 on the Android app store), it’s difficult to find fault with Madfinger’s strategy. They have to recoup money somewhere, after all.
In terms of graphics, it stands head-and-shoulders above its competitors. (It’s certainly a far cry from, say, Temple Run!) In particular, the Tegra 3 version of the game automatically pre-packages an “ultra high” graphics setting, which dramatically boosts the quality of such niceties as water effects and the muzzle-flash on your gun; but if you’re fortunate enough to own a Tegra 3 chipset device (such as the HTC One X), you’re going to notice a sizeable decrease in your amount of battery time when running ultra-high. The lower settings still permit a respectable experience - particularly when compared to competitor games, or even Madfinger’s previous offering, Shadowgun – but if you’ve purchased Dead Trigger, you’ll probably want to set your graphical settings as high as possible. Unfortunately, on older compatible devices, this can cause frame-drop issues which seriously interfere with the experience.
Speaking of issues, there are several to be found with the controls. Dead Trigger opts for a similar input to Shadowgun: the left-hand side of the screen permits movement, the right permits aiming, and a small targeting reticle allows you to shoot. (There’s also an option to zoom in, via another button located close to said reticle.) But the touchscreen controls aren’t always the most responsive. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, a careless sideward swipe can cause your character to spin around, allowing a zombie to bite at your back before you have a chance of recovering. More serious is the indistinct overlap between the left and right hand sides of the screen: occasionally you’ll attempt to alter your aim, only to find you’ve began running towards the enemy, instead. And as a veteran FPS player, I found the zoom-in function slightly lacking: often, the targeting did not accurately map to the location I was shooting, and reloading causes you to exit the zoom-in function entirely (unlike many comparable console shooters, which zoom out for the reload animation and instantly zoom back in, permitting seamless fire). We’d recommend anyone playing Dead Trigger on Android to opt for a gamepad, which Madfinger (wisely) support for use in their game, as this makes the experience vastly less frustrating.
Overall, Dead Trigger is an excellent game that suffers few problems. These problems are restricted mainly to its polish and presentation; with just a little more pre-testing, the annoying issues with aiming and controls could have easily been averted. The repetitious level design is a little harder to remedy, but given the majestic, baroque environments of Shadowgun, we’re sure Madfinger had more in them than a succession of dreary car parks. Nevertheless, Mobile Madhouse heartily endorses Dead Trigger, and recommends you purchase it – because despite its issues, it’s just fun to play. It might not devour your brains, but it’ll sure eat up your lunchtimes!
