Shadow Gun dead zone

Shadow gun dead zone on android (nvidia shield k1)

After starting playing online again with an android tablet (nvidia shield k1 + shield controller), with mostly modern combat 5 (MC5), I was unsatisfied by the current playable FPs on android with the controller. As mentioned in the MC5 page (see the reddit links) many titles do not support natively the controller and the interaction of those with the gamepad mapper from nvidia is not exceptional. There are other gamepad mappers (for example tincore keymapper) but those requires root and I'm not yet willing to put effort in the procedure.

Until the discovery of Shadowgun deadzone (SDZ from now on) the FPS that could be playable with the controller more or less properly: blitz brigade, neon shadown, modern combat 5, both from gameloft.

Blitz brigade is not bad, but the advertisement and pay to win features are massive. Moreover the hud is too spammy. Neon shadown is a bit too dry, it is ok for quick games, it i a pity because the idea is great. I would like more engagement with an atmosphere like quake. Modern combat 5 is very engaging, although full of advertisement, but the problem is that it requires a lot of resources to run smoothly. I found the way to run it as smooth as possible on the nvidia k1 (see linked page) but it is still on the border of acceptability.

Then, I do not know why I did not discover it before, I got to know shadowngun dead zone through reddit. It is great. It is like neon shadow but not dry just for casual games, there are many ifnormation about the multiplayer so one is more engaged. There is not so much possibility to manage teams within the game but through forums is possible.

Until pixel gun does not add a gmapead support, this is the favourite FPS so far.

Strength points

Antilag

Antilag is a technology introduced in multiplayer games long ago, I guess around 1998 with quake3 or even before. It is a very nice technology to ensure that people with different connections can play with each other a bit more fairly. Unfortunately people either are unwilling to understand the concept or they are unable (I think the first). It is likely that people that benefits from the technique then complain that they die "behind the corners, or behind boxes".

This because the enemy was hitting them before they got behind the corner, but they will never see the case that they hit someone that will die behind a box.

Of course too much of antilag can create surrealistic problems, but until the antilag is set up to 200ms of compensation (nothing strange with current mobile and wifi networks) it should be fine for most of the players from the same geographical region.

Quick and not so much advertisement.

Playing is very quick. Advertisement is minimal. If one has 15 minutes, one can play a match.

Playing all the maps

I saw many times that the community, if possible, tends to stick with few maps out of dozens available. This happens in modern combat 5 for example (so far: rooftops, streets, construction site, containers). Here instead the map is randomly choosen by the game, and that's great for variability.

Not demanding for performance

While modern combat 5 barely runs at 30 frame per second (fps) on the nvidia shield (what is important is the minimum fps, not the maximum), SDZ is likely running at 30 fps stable or even 60 on the nvidia shield k1. Both SDZ and MC5 are likely to use one core only to create the models for the 3d visuals.

MC5 is unplayable from - not so expensive - sd cards, continously lagging (it reads every now and then information). SDZ has almost no problems.

Controller support

As written in the linked pages on reddit, the controller support is really satisfying. Not a chance that the game would not recognize the input from the controller (it happens often with MC5). Possibility to remap and great possibility to reduce the sensitivity.

Economy in game, with or without money

There are plenty of weapons to unlock and upgrade (even if MC5 has even more unlockable stuff). The game is not so much pay to win, rather "who play more has more chances" but that's true in every human activity, who has more experience normally gets better jobs. Otherwise one can pay money and speedup the unlocking process.

Problems (in my opinion)

Not so much modes

Maybe the publisher did not want to risk to scatter the palyer base (around 1000 players on the weekend in the europe server) too much between modes. Anyway there are only deathmatch (the player plays for himself) and zone control (the player plays for the team). Not bad but sometimes I miss team deathmatch.

Zone control spawn system

The spawn system is geenrally good and avoids mess like in MC5. The problem in zone control is that when one sneaks behind the enemy lines and capture a remote zone, the spawn does not compensate for it and only tactically aware players can fix the situation, otherwise the team capturing the remote zone can completely capture all the rest of the map quite quickly, because the tactical situation is completely reverted.

To avoid ending games too quickly.

If the player's team suck, then it is suggested to capture a remote zone to balance the situation (the other team will qucikly recapture the zones back but in the meanwhile the score is balanced). Otherwise is better to focus on the next zone to have a bit of deathmatch and to not end the game immediately.

Not so much statistics

Apart from kills, death, time of play and time of play distributed between modes, there are not so much more statistics about other players or the usage of weapons. Those statistics are registered but not shown.

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