Dead Trigger: Best Free 1st Person Shooter App with Zombies

   Dead Trigger has quickly become one of those games that you just have to bring up when talking about quality apps since it's release in June 2012. It's a first person shooter with various weapons, character power ups, special items, and amazing graphics quality. The details are meant for more recent higher end devices, but for us with about 1 Ghz memory, we can still play the game smoothly on low setting and still get a great looking game. The controls and zombie motions are smooth, the guns look great, the h.u.d is respectable, there are a variety of items, weapons, and power ups, blood gushes nice, you can move your character who walks as a medium pace. In my opinion, Dead Trigger is the Best Zombie App and Best 1st Person Shooter app that is FREE. If you want to challenge that statement feel free to let me know of another awesome app. I've also tested the COD: BOZ app and wasn't impressed with that one. If you want to fight waves of zombies, you can do that in Dead Trigger too.

My Sony Xperia Play doesn't capture screens really well while under pressure.

    One thing that sets this zombie killing game apart from others is that it contains a storyline. Play Main Missions to progress in the story. Side missions are also there if you feel like taking a break from the storyline, or you can't defeat a main level and need to accumulate gold and money. The story doesn't last forever, but it keeps the game fresh longer and from getting completely repetitive. There is some humor and suspense in the story. You're adventure is presented to you in text, but that leaves it up to your mind and imagination to interpret how things look and sound.

Very informative loading screen. I'll let it do the talking concerning the controls. It might contain a thousand words.

There are many different types of main weapons: Pistols, Sub-Machine Guns, Shotguns, Alien Gun, chainsaws. Tip:Towards level 15 of the game, make sure you save enough money to purchase the Striker shotgun. It has less recoil and a faster fire rate than most other shotguns. It's best quality is the quick reloading capability. It reloads with just one cartridge for all it's ammo. With other shotguns you have to reload one ammo at a time(even if you only used 1 ammo, you must reload the total number of maximum shots that the gun started with before upgrades). Sucks to be putting in 5 bullets in your gun individually while zombies are close by sprinting, crawling, biting and clawing at you. With all weapons, you don't lose any unused Ammo in your old cartridge while reloading(not realistic, but I don't mind, it's a tough zombie game). It does however become less effective at later levels before rank 43. I'm currently rank 42. I started trying to play the hard missions sometime around rank 30. I noticed my minigun was only able to do carnage in medium difficulties.

Some of those words might ring some bells for fans of Supernatural. Just pretend they're Croatoans.

Purchasing new guns can be tricky. First you don't know whether or not the weapon will be that much better vs upgrading what you have. Usually buying the next weapon vs upgrading will get you more accuracy and distance, but it still comes pretty close. Another thing is that you don't know how the other weapons shoot and their fire rates. Although the game tells you and does a good job at giving you a fairly good idea with the weapons stats, a little difference during crunch time can make the difference.

Zombies Types 
Gotta have more than one type of zombie right? Right. As of now Dead Trigger features over  8 kinds of zombies(9). Some regular zombies include:
-Male Zombie : Guy in a Hood Sweater
-Frino Zombie : Looks like a farmer.
-Hasmat Zombie : Scientist that has been turned while wearing their contamination suits.
-The Mobster zombie : Shirtless kinda Chubby guy.

Now for some tougher zombies.
-The Police Zombie : is almost normal except he can run a little quicker, naturally due to his training. He has a unique ability to spit blood at you. Yes the projectile blood does hurt you unlike blood on the floor or splattered blood. He tilts his head back before spitting and spitting produces a sound effect. He also seems to have a little more hp than regular zombies.
-Female Zombie :  can sprint  longer than the regular guys and even has a little more health even though she looks skinnier. She also has a scarier growl and scream and arm waving.
-SWAT Zombie :  The equivalent of a toned down version of a Sentinel from Call of Duty. Shooting this dude anywhere except the face will do little damage and make sparks with sounds of shooting metal. He is armored and has a helmet so only his face is exposed.(I'm not sure but maybe you do more damage right after he flinches). My worst Zombie friend.
- Athlete Zombie : You don't have to worry about this guy much unless you participate in the Arena map Stadium of Dead. He can do a lot of damage and sprint much longer distances (as he has been training his whole life to be a fast zombie).
 -Hulk Zombie : The name even implies the size and strength of this guy. He is a big round shirtless guy and does the most damage, has the most health and resistances(not sure about that last one compared to a SWAT zombie). There are moments when this zombie stands still and looks around. When this happens he is invincible.

Credit for zombie names and other information goes to Dead Trigger wiki.

Showing off some non-explorable scenery before Zombies reach me.

Free gifts
Daily-  There are two types of currencies in the game. Gold, and dollars. Get 1-5 Gold from the daily reward mission. The icon for this mission is 3 gold bars on the world map. Defeating this mission will get you more arena entries and casino chips. There are also casino chips which can by used at the Casino.  Each day you get 3 chips and 3 Arena Entries just from loading up the app. Your chances with the slots are one of the best I've had with slots. The most you can go on without winning is 2 Days. The prizes are nothing small neither: money, 3 more chips, or items. Items don't come cheap. If you're only prizes from spending 3 chips are 3 more chips, then I suggest reserving your chips for another day. However, that can just be me being superstitious.(1/1/13) It seems that the chances of winning gold from the slot have gotten lower. Not sure if this assumption is wrong, or if it's based on player level or total gold already obtained. I usually log in every morning to get my 5 gold. Not sure but on days when I seem to be winning small prizes considerably less(measly items and red cherries that are worth approximately 2 g's), there seems to be a much higher chance of winning gold. 

Bonus Missions
 After you complete 3 missions you get a bonus mission. That bonus mission is dropped off by a supply chopper on the world map. It will look like a care packaged being dropped off and parachuted onto the ground/city.  I believe these mission's difficulty are set to normal. Once completed, you get an item set of items of the same name.


The Arena (Waves)
Like I said, if fighting zombie waves is your thing Dead Trigger has that too. The Arena has 4 maps.
Bloody Subway, Haunted Graveyard, Stadium of the Dead, and Bloody XMAS. It costs arena entries to enter a wave game/arena. The map Stadium of Dead is only available in The Arena. You can only enter 3 times a day upon opening up the app. Of course, each wave gets harder than the last. And the Arena's increase in difficulty as you rank up. Leveling up in the game is called Rank up. I haven't tested out this portion of the smart phone application more than 5 times yet. After the end of the year updates (1.7) in 2012, Arena entries became unlimited.


Guns 
Pistols:Walther P99, Colt 1911, Alien Gun (reminds me of the Ray Gun from the Black Ops Games.) I head the alien weapon is lousy though.

Submachine Guns: Scorpion, Project 90, Uzi

Rifles: Colt M4, Winchester, Enfield 303, AK 47

Shotguns: RMGT 870, Lupara, KSG, Striker (My Favorite until late game pre rank 43), RMGT Tactics(reloading manually loads 6 but still counts as 8 shells)

Machine Guns: Minigun, Lewis, Bren (My 2nd Favorite until I got the minigun)

Melee/Others: Chainsaw T-800(when paused you can still hear the motor running), Brain-Mill, Crossbow, Grenade Launcher(easily became my favorite weapon).


Healing Items++
There are a variety of powerups and items in the store. To be honest I have not bought any items besides the healing items. I save up the other items from bonus missions and bonus rewards and casinos. Health items include:
-Bandage - White packet that Heals a little. (costs for $300 for 4)
-Medkit - Heals to full health (Costs $500 for 2)
-Revive Kit - Revives you upon death and destroys surrounding enemies. (costs $2000 for 2)


Powerup Items
These are expensive and you probably won't be buying them without using real world moolah. Once obtained, they can by used unlimited amount of times. I haven't gotten enough gold to purchase any of them.
-Money Booster- Greatly increases the amount of money you get from completing missions (Cost:400 Gold)
-Speed Booster- Increases your walking speed by 25%. (Cost:250 gold)
-Damage Booster- Increases damage output a good amount. (Cost:450 Gold)
-Head Flator X1- Inflates zombies heads for deal easier damage and headshots.(Cost: 199 Gold)

Other Items (1 Time Use)
All the items are costly. The good news is that Dead Trigger lets you obtain these items as rewards from daily missions and reward missions and the casino in addition to buying them with money.
I haven't used any of these items. May update in the future if I ever do try them out.
Frag Grenade (cost $1000 for 2)
Bait Grenade (cost $750 for 2) - not sure why this costs less than a grenade when it's a grenade with a special better improved feature. Maybe it does less damage and is rated down for losing the ability to roll longer distances to attack zombies.
Mine (cost $500 for 4)
Bait (Costs $300 for 2)
Turret (Costs $1500 for 2)
Blade Cutter - Cuts legs, making zombies crawl. Explodes when health is gone. Explosion has no effect.
Laser Turret - (Costs 9 Gold for 3) Explodes when health is gone. Explosion kills zombies.
Laser Cutter - (Comes in 2's and costs $1500) Improved Blade Cutter. Kills instead of just cutting off legs. Explodes when health is gone. Explosion kills zombies.

Character Upgrades
Weapon Slot - You may buy up to three of these.
Item Slot - You may buy up to 3 of these. 
Ammo Supply - You may buy up to 2 of these, each increasing your total ammo by 25%. Clips also hold more than before too.
Autoheal Kit - Slowly regenerate more than 1 bar but less than 2 bars of health per 12 seconds. (Extremely important and helpful at higher levels if you're like me and not pro)
Improved Radar - Your radar can now see up to 15M. What the game doesn't tell you for comparison is that your beginning radar sees up to 10 Meters.
Additional Health - Increase your health by 20, or 2 bars. 3 of these items may be purchased.


Xperia Play Optimized?
   Although the app description claims that "The game was not tested on Sony Ericsson devices", the hardware controls of the Play are compatible. Not only that, they are very compatible. Free up space on your screen and view the game. Dead Trigger has brought back some life into the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. Thank You. You get to use R Trigger for shooting and the Left Trigger for Zooming(iron sight). The touchpads work like that of a laptop (better than mimicking a joystick like on Black Ops Zombies app). Walking is also better with DT than BOZ. Speaking of the device, my device stopped working after lots of Dead Triggering. Luckily on a rare occassion that I saved my progress on a "cloud" feature for an app(Go to New Hope then login by choosing name and pw then save or load data), it proved useful. I was able to continue my profile on another device, and another.

There are a 2 Xperia Play glitches with this game however. First, once in a while the camera/character turns to a really odd angle really fast like in a flash. The turn is a twitch much quicker than my sensitivity would allow me to voluntarily do.  Most of the time I'm not close to zombies anyways so I can adjust to where I am facing and resume what I was doing (by letting go of the left touchpad and trying to continue to play as usual). A bit frustrating when zombies are closely chasing you though. Second, there is an Xperia Play effect where if you are holding down the trigger button the moment you beat the mission and it enters slow motion, there is a good chance your weapons will keep shooting during the slow motion scene if you let go of the button. During the slow motion effect at the end of a game, your guns fire rate actually speeds up and keeps shooting even while your character is involuntarily reloading and the weapon has no ammo. Blood will still splatter slow. It's pretty cool. I thought this effect was normal until I noticed it didn't happen on the Samsung Galaxy S II  and this effect wasn't mentioned in Dead Trigger Wikia. These glitches aren't useful, but yeah. (update 12/12/12) I've tested this by using the minigun only the last couple seconds and activating the glitch. At the results summary screen the minigun shows up as my favorite weapon of that round. I'm assuming the accuracy and other stats are still calculated during the slow motion sequence.)

Tips and Trivia and Hypotheses and Hints:
-When a zombie must climb to get to you, if you shoot it's legs it won't be able to climb and it will die after a while.
-The Remington 870 cannot be upgraded or modded ingame to become the RMGT Tactics. I don't know anything about guns and thought it might work and tested it.
-When you shoot off a limb of a zombie, there is a slight moment when zombie becomes harder to kill when it falls to the floor. (taking off a limb may increase the time and effort required to kill them)
-Headshots seem to become less possible as zombies are ducking through a gate slowly.
-Sometimes when a zombie is starting to climb over an object such as a road block or window and you shoot it, it will disrupt it's climbing animation and cause it to slide through the object. The zombie will no longer need to climb and will actually be closer to you in less amount of time.
-This is one of those rare big games that are/were updated on Android OS before iOS.(not a lot sooner and might not be a big deal).
-Although the world Map looks detailed, pinching and zooming isn't available(not important).
-Special shots include Headshot, Limb out(arms), Leg out, and Carnage(most likely when your gun does a lot more damage than the zombie can handle according to your rank). I only got Carnage for a short period of time after purchasing a weapon or one of my upgrades until I got the minigun to its maximum level. 
-After a zombie bites you(your hand), if you still have health left you may continue playing without having to worry about ever turning into a zombie.
-Cheat: By saving at New Hope, you also save your casino chips. If you aren't satisfied with what you got for the casino, you can reload your profile from the cloud data and retry. I use this almost every day. Some days don't get anything after a few tries though. This might be a build in cheat to reward dedicated players who are willing to put in the time and effort to achieve gold this way. This is my main strategy of obtaining gold. Another part of my strategy is to make purchases when I get one time offers (to purchase guns at a much lower price than usual). These are 75% off. However I made sure I kept enough around to purchase what I really needed (minigun and Health Regeneration) so I skipped some offers. I don't know if these are random or not. I thought they might come back but they don't. For making money tried to get carnage with the minigun as much as possible and collect cases of money. Sometimes one case of money will be available in a level (often become accessable after new areas of the map are unlocked after a set time)

Some possible problems/glitches or minor defects
According to Dead Trigger Wiki, many of the shop items don't look as cool ingame as their photos. This in understandable somewhat because the pictures do look cool, but the rest of the game is so top notch that you might not expect something like this to happen on such a big scale(still a minor thing). There are other more useful glitches available. I'll just refer you to the Dead Trigger Wiki. I mention the site again because that's where I got a lot of clarification and information from. Highly recommended visitation spot if you are into the game.


Madfinger Games has done it again with Dead Trigger. This isn't the first game they've made that has gotten great reviews. Shadowgun and Samurai and Samurai II:Vengeance has also been critically acclaimed. Their posters can be seen below (and on the Bren weapon) in Dead Trigger. It's probably a combination of advertising and boasting. I don't blame Madfingers for doing so. If I was part of a few great games and could brag I would too. They can all be found on Google Play and the iOS store, all with great ratings. I haven't used most of the items and weapons. How about you go test them yourselves? It's definitely one of my favorite games.

 I discussed a few of the updates here. http://www.gametrender.net/2013/01/dead-trigger-updates-are-like-free-dlcs.html

Enjoy