Preview | A Way To Be Dead

LifeisXbox’s A Way To Be Dead preview | Being a gamer without a very competitive drive, the asymmetrical 4 v 1 PVP genre is a bit of an anomaly I enjoy. I love being able to work co-operatively with your friends to beat a single overpowering foe, or being that often unholy force of wickedness who has to try his hardest to disrupt some good teamwork. So when A Way To Be Dead popped up I jumped at the opportunity to see if it scratched that same itch as Evolve or Dead by Daylight. A Way To Be Dead is both developed and published by Crania games who have also released Roots of Insanity.

The doctor will kill see you now |

In a way to be dead, you play as one of two sides in a deadly game of cat and mouse. On the cat side, you have Doctor Riley. A crazy doctor who is on the hunt for some unfortunate souls who happened to be in a zombie-infested hospital at the wrong time. From what I can only assume is madness, you have forsaken your Hippocratic oath and are out for blood and freshly extracted hearts. Consume these hearts to mutate and grow stronger in an effort to tend to your “patients” more effectively. On the Mouse side of the ring, we have quantity over quality. Four victims managed to make their way onto Doctor Riley’s consultation list. Being the only non-zombified entities in the complex, you must search properly dead, not moving bodies for limbs to donate to a number of graves spread across the map. Much to my initial surprise, A way to be dead is rather picky with what bodies are searchable and ever pickier with what bodies yield acceptable limbs. These victims now have to risk life and limb to escape before being turned into the living dead because if you’re a zombie when the round ends, your fate is sealed forever. 

A small gripe | 

During my time with A Way To Be Dead some things did irk me gameplay-wise. For example, not all bodies on the floor are searchable for the limbs you have to collect. After a couple of rounds, I did start to see which ones are searchable, but even then there are a lot of bodies that don’t yield any results. It was not uncommon I’d go an entire match searching up to 5 bodies but without a single part to show for it.

Killer potential |

From the 4 hours I have played so far, I feel the game has a lot of potential. At the time of writing, there is only a single map, Dr. Riley, standard victims, and nurse class to cure victims of zombification. With a police officer and janitor class still on the way, I can only wonder what these will bring in terms of gameplay. Some versatility with Dr. Riley’s mutation ability would be nice too, as it’s powerful, but easily countered at this point. Also promised are new maps with more gameplay mechanics, extra game modes, character customization, and more. Since the full release is slated for late 2022 that leaves the team over at Crania games to work out all of the above and possibly even more.