(I remember getting this a long time ago off of a giveaway. Was probably a gleam giveaway...)
[h1]What kind of penalty would this game deserve?[/h1]
Well, I remember a history with this one. Something about revoked keys after they were part of giveaways. Stories about how this game would also mysteriously appear in people's libraries. Weird stories...but most prominent are how the licenses were revoked from users. And there's only one person at the core...the lone developer behind the game. But...let's talk about the game itself, not the developer.
[i]Death Penalty: Beginning[/i] takes us back to the days of Digital Homicide a former company that made awful games, mostly asset flips, and would sue its customers for posting libelous reviews about their games. Their games lacked save features, flipped purchased assets for a profit, and mostly focused on gameplay with horde attacks from enemies...this very formula you see here. Of course, you are presented an option screen from the beginning...after you figure out how to bypass the screen with a zombie that runs up and just stares past your camera (what I can only assume was supposed to be a title screen, but focused on the wrong area and without a prompt on how to proceed). You can edit your settings, but you cannot save these settings...you'll be locked in this screen until you force-close the game. This means, you're stuck with the default settings. The settings menu is a lie.
You begin with a plane ride, that you can just bypass by pressing E. Then you're in a corridor walking straight...if you look back, you can see a clone of yourself. Then you wind up in the middle of a desert and have to seek refuge in a cave. There are several zombies in the cave and all this activity causes your performance to drop like a stone. If you make your way out of there alive, you are introduced to a vehicle and a shed before being told to have fun. You get into the vehicle and a short distance away, you see a literal pile of zombies the developer clearly wanted you to plow your vehicle into (and all that activity...get ready for severely crippled gameplay). After plowing into these zombies, you're told to go to far away area on the map, but you'll be out of gas long before this point...meaning a 10 minute run past zombies and giant spiders (you'll be fine. You can outrun them) to the next point before being told to go halfway back the way you just came...except you can't because there's now an invisible wall 1 minute from getting to the spot in question...thus technically ending the game due to not being able to continue.
I managed to die in the cave once, but the problem was that afterwards, I shoot the zombies with my unlimited ammo (save for the infinite mandatory reloads) and somehow ended up recovering health as I killed the zombies. Clearly there are problems with the game design and conveying what the basics are to the player.
Now we get to the graphics and sound. The graphics...are bad. I mean, they seem decent, but as your machine is forced to render all objects, the map, and all activity you see, you can expect the performance to suck...especially since the option of being able to change these settings is an outright lie. As for the sound...the zombie groans suck, the gunfire is basic, and the voice actors are abysmal...especially since they're drowned out by the loud music...which seems to be the only good thing for the ears, but man does it get repetitive. Not just that, but it just doesn't set the mood of whatever you're doing. I mean really...you're a girl in the desert (or cave) fighting off zombies and giant spiders to poor performance lag to what I'm guessing is punk rock music. I'd forgive that...if the music was quieter than the other audio AND fit the mood of the missions.
Of course, we come to the rating and my own personal opinion on this. Is [i]Death Penalty: Beginning[/i] worth playing? No. It isn't, but I don't completely regret playing it. I now get to see what kind of product it is with my own eyes. I remember invisible walls being a problem in another game like [i]GASP[/i] and while this game is similar to that in that flaw alone, the rest of this game is (intentional or not) homage to Digital Homicide in quality and scope. I would only recommend playing this for 3 reasons: To punish someone (or yourself), to understand poor game design before implementing good game design (learn from other devs failures), or if you simply have nothing better to do. Fortunately, this game is removed from stores and cannot be obtainable anymore. If it were obtainable, however, I would say it would not be worth any price other than free.
0.01 / 10 If this was only the beginning, I fear what the rest of it would have been like.
