Dead Slash: Run and Gun Review

Dead Slash is a 2D endless runner from developers ObuutTech. The game has you play as the local city’s ninja/assassin, who is tasked with decimating every single local gang member, with nothing more than your trusty katana.

Gameplay is what you would find from your typical side-scrolling endless runner. You tap the screen to jump and you tap a button to attack. Eventually, you will meet your demise and you’ll see your final score, which will then be applied to a leaderboard so you can see just how well you do when compared to thousands of other players. The gameplay really doesn’t get much more complicated than that, and the only real increase in difficulty is in the number of enemies and enemy types.

The game does do a good job of slowly introducing you to new enemy types the longer you survive, but the stages themselves come across lacking, and I’m not just speaking from a visual perspective. You see, on the levels themselves, there is absolutely no danger whatsoever. There aren’t any holes for you to suddenly fall into or some spikes for you to accidentally jump on. Instead, you’ve got an infinite horizontal plain that brings no challenge, with the only addition being the occasional platform that you can jump on and even then you don’t have a real reason to. The one and only thing you have to avoid in the game are enemies and that kind of betrays the platforming nature of endless runners.

Thankfully, to combat the fact that all you’re doing is slicing up gangsters; you are also tasked with collecting coins so you can upgrade your character permanently. These upgrades can come in the form of an increased timer for your score multiplier or increased range on certain weapons. As you may have guessed, there are other weapons in the game, taking shape in the form of three guns you can purchase for yourself. These guns are the following: pistol, shotgun, and RPG.

You may be wondering, “If I have access to ranged weapons, why would I ever go back to the sword?” Well, at the stage of every new run, you have no ammo whatsoever in any of your guns and will be forced to find it whilst you're endlessly cutting your way through legions of gangsters.

It’s not just ammo that might show up floating around the screen, as you can also be treated to some health regeneration, score multipliers, and even “Superpower” upgrade. Superpower is basically, “kill everything on screen” until the timer runs out and is surprisingly satisfying when you do actually get one.

Aesthetically, the game isn’t anything too special, but it does do a nice job with the art-style. It aims to keep things simple with the majority of its design, and I would say that’s a point in the game's favour. It doesn’t particularly distract you when you’re playing and isn’t too in your face, making repeated runs on this game more of a pleasure than a chore.

One major downside I do have with the visuals in the game, however, is exclusively the stages. I understand in an endless runner you’re bound to get loops on these types of repeating levels, but it just gets too stale too quickly. There’s little in the way of variety, so if you’ve seen one gun shop, you’ve seen them all and that can be over 20 in just one run. That’s not all that fun to look at in the long run.

Another small issue I’ve found with the game is the animations. They could be described as fairly basic, with not too much fluidity attached to them when they are performed. Not to mention the fact that when you slice your opponent to ribbons, the same stock blood splatter that literally does not change, simply moves a little bit and falls off screen from view. It’s a dull animation, one that you’ll get sick of in a matter of minutes.

The game does employ missions for you to complete to level up your account and gain huge chunks of cash to upgrade your character, along with daily missions as well. These missions are something we’ve seen before in games of this type and doesn’t get any points for originality, but it does help keep the game alive longer.

Overall, Dead Slash: Run and Gun is a fun, little endless runner, that I get the feeling is fun from a short-term perspective, but lacks any real kind of long term longevity. Animations and stages soon wear themselves thin and it makes going back to the game not quite as enjoyable as it once was. Gameplay is rather fun, and I can’t deny that the main reason I kept going back to the game was to increase my high score and see just how well I could do on the leaderboards when compared to everybody else. With the additions of daily quests and missions, it adds to the game's length, but doesn’t make it a long term investment.