Death Dome for Android – Review

Death Dome is the latest in a tradition of games best exemplified by the brilliant Infinity Blade 2. It’s essentially a time-and-slash game where the basic objective is to dodge, parry and block your enemy’s attacks as you battle through duels of increasing difficulty.

There really isn’t much to say about the plot. In the fairly distant future, something called the M-Virus has broken out and turned people into pumped-up mutants who mostly resemble ordinary human beings with roid rage. You control a feisty young lady called Paragon, who battles through this landscape in a bid to, erm, survive or save the world or something.

The gameplay in Death Dome is enjoyable, but it lacks the intricacy of similar such games. There are no combos to remember, so when you manage to daze your foe after enough dodges, it’s just a matter of slash-swiping at the screen as frantically as possible. This makes Death Dome pale next to its rivals.

Jumping on the cel-shaded bandwagon so well led by Borderlands, Death Dome is a great-looking game. The gameplay is cinematic and the graphics are comically brutal, making this game a good looker.

Death Dome is one of those cunning freemium games that makes the game a bit of a slog if you don’t spend a bit of coin in it. Rather than simply demanding more dedication and skill from the player, the game effectively forces you to grind through levels you’ve already completed to get the appropriate equipment for later levels. This wears thin quite quickly, and it’s a shame that the free-to-play experience isn’t a bit more rewarding.

This is by all means an enjoyable game well suited to mobile platforms. However, it falls short where rivals in the category excel. Infinity Blade 2 remains the top of the genre, while the Roman-themed Blood & Glory shows a bit more imagination in its gameplay, if not the setting and level variety. Who knows? Maybe this will be more suited to your tastes than the aforementioned games, but the bar has been set pretty high in this increasingly crowded genre.

We rate this app 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Download Death Dome for Android