War… war never changes. Actually not exactly “war”, since in the game that you will soon read about there’s not much left of the human resistance. “apocalypse” is a better word, a zombie apocalypse. Imagine blasted ruins of a city, still burning cars turned upside down, a haunting wailings of the siren alarm and TV broadcasts warning the leftovers from the incoming hordes of zombies. We know that image. We’ve seen it before already in a number of cult-classic films, such as 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, where a group of survivors make their stand against the swarm of brainless, biting and unforgiving walking dead. Now, try to imagine yourself being thrown into the worst case scenario of a deadly pandemic disease spreading throughout the world and turning humans into zombies. What would you do? Would you run, barricade yourself in a shelter or try to get on a plane or a train and escape as fast as possible from the area of danger? In Critical Strike: Dead or Survival you don’t run, but you do resist. With guns blazing.
You’re the hope of humanity, one of the last who survived, a soldier of fortune or a vendetta girl who might have lost her beloved ones during the progressing disease outbreak and chose to fight for the survival of the living. In the game we don’t get an answer to that, but we certainly do belong to the human resistance against the dead. Having a weary rifle at your side you choose your safe spot, carefully take your aim and shoot zombies, right in their heads!
Critical Strike: Dead or Survival is a new Android title created by Real Road Racing, which features elements common to first-person shooters and role-playing games. As you might have already guessed, your main task is shooting zombies with your guns, and these, you will have plenty at your disposal. When the mission begins, your character spawns in an isolated safe spot, such as a roof of a building or a board of a helicopter from where you can take a good aim at the zombies. Then you shoot and pray that the bullets land true.
The main difference between typical FPSs and RPGs is that your character cannot explore the entire area of the game, but can only move a few inches left and right to position herself before shooting the incoming dead. In such a way, your character cannot die literally in the game, but still can lose by letting passing humans die. That’s right. Apart from sending the dead back to the dirt, your other job is to make sure no human survivor is eaten by any of the zombies. Oh, and you better watch your crossfire since the game does have a friendly fire option on!
The shooting-saving job may seem to you rather straightforward, but if you are new to the game, you may find our Critical Strike: Dead or Survival tips, cheats and strategies useful.
1. Maximize Your Reward Gain
In Critical Strike: Dead or Survival your progress in the campaign mode is made by completing missions. Whenever you finish a mission you receive a reward, appropriately high to the number of completed objectives, killed zombies, found secret boxes and successfully delivered headshots. For each of these points completed you get money – the main currency in the game which you will need for buying and upgrading your weapons of war. In order to be successful, try to maximize your money gain in a number of ways.
The first and the foremost thing you want to take care of in the game, is making sure that every human survivor is alive at the end of the mission. This is why you have to aim true and best right in zombies’ heads for the maximum damage. You must also remember that survivors are not immune to your own shots, so make sure not to get any of them in your line of shooting. Whenever a human dies, whether from a zombie attack or your own accidental shot, the mission is lost and has to be re-started. The good thing is, regardless the result, you’re keeping the money earned by finding secret boxes.
Zombies usually die after 2 or 3 bullets shot in their guts, legs, arms and… any other non-vital parts of their undead bodies. However, if you shoot them in their heads they will most likely die instantly. Just like in the movies. Make it count, since headshots, apart from making your shooting more effective (and spectacular!) also increase your money gain. If you are particularly accurate in your shooting and if you manage to waste only one bullet per zombie, you can get an additional 20% higher reward. The only way to achieve that is by performing headshots.
Sometimes in-between shooting zombies and saving the survivors you will notice small yellowish boxes with question marks appearing on the streets. These are secret boxes which contain, as the name says, a secret item. Its contents can be harmful, but it also can be useful. It’s up to you whether you decide to open it (by simply shooting them) or leave it where you have found it. Regardless of their possible cons, you want to get them as many as possible. However, if you see two or more boxes spawning in the single mission, you want to take it carefully, since most likely one of them will be a box containing a nasty surprise.
The majority of mobile games are heavily based on microtransactions concluded via the in-game store, and at this point Critical Strike: Dead or Survival is no different. There will be moments in the game, in which you will be offered to watch an ad video for a certain time and in return you will receive several gold bars – a currency used for the in-game store purchases and for refilling the power ups – special powers with a limited number of uses. Most likely you will not waste your time on watching the ads only to farm gold, but once in a while it doesn’t hurt to do so, especially if there is a particularly attractive sale.
2. Play Efficiently
Collecting money and gold doesn’t guarantee you success. Whereas at the early stages of the game you shouldn’t have problems with managing the flow of the zombies, later you might need to rely on weapon upgrades or power ups to balance the odds. Here are several tips that will make your zombie shooting more efficient.
Despite the fact that you have a limited movement capability, you still have to position and reposition yourself whenever necessary. To have a better overview at the different parts of the city, if you are on the roof you can move from left to right. Sometimes it will be difficult for you to spot a zombie, especially if one is sneaking between the trees or narrow alleys. Zombies can be sneaky, but they do have a one single weakness. They are noisy. They do not come and go quietly, but they roar or growl or make other unspecified sounds. Make sure to follow their voices and they will bring you right to the zombies which are making them.
In Critical Strike: Dead or Survival, just like in reality or Triple-A games, your aiming is hindered by the camera shaking effect which resembles your character breathing. It’s a cool, realistic feature, but it makes your shooting difficult. Because of that you have to time well the moment of your inhales and exhales when you’re taking the shot, especially if you’re aiming for a headshot.
Lastly, your character has a set of power ups at her disposal, including a radar, candy bars and a utility which spawns a distracting dog. Each of them has a different effect and should be used at a particular moment in the game, so before you activate any of them it’s best to learn first what they do. Because power ups have a limited number of uses you want to manage them well and activate only when the conventional means of dealing with zombies fail. You can refill them by using gold bars, and if you lack them – real life money, but you don’t want to rely on that too much, since every recharge is quite expensive.
3. Get The Right Weapons And Manage Their Upgrades
In Critical Strike: Dead or Survival zombies will die from a whole range of weapons you can get, including rifles, machine guns, crossbows and bazookas. Each weapon differs from one another in regards to its statistics, so in order to be effective, first, you have to learn what they mean and which weapon is best to be used in a particular situation.
There are four main stats assigned to a weapon: power – indicates a weapon damage, stability – makes the camera less shaky, zoom – allows for zooming the view, and capacity – shows how much of ammo can a weapon contain. By remembering what each and every one of them stands for, you will know how to choose and upgrade the right weapons to be the most effective in killing zombies.
Sometimes you will be already given with a particular set of weapons for a mission, but most often you will be able to choose which guns you want to carry with yourself. At the beginning of the game, you are given with a rifle as your primary gun, and a machine gun as a secondary weapon. Both are deadly in their own ways, but only by knowing their capabilities you will be able to maximize your in-game effectiveness.
For example, a rifle fires single shots, is extremely precise and has a good zooming view, so it’s best to use it for performing headshots or when zombies are scattered around the shooting area. When upgrading the rifle, you want to go in the first place for the stability and zoom stats. Increasing its power is also good, however, headshots provide instant kills, so at least at the beginning of the game, you can avoid pumping that stat. You also might want to slightly increase its capacity, because the base value allows you to have only 3 bullets in the clip and at the later stages of the game you may simply not keep up with the incoming zombies.
Whereas Mosin 91/30 is best for performing clear headshots, more devastating weapons, such as a machine gun or a bazooka are perfect when you have to deal with tight clusters of zombies. They make up their lack of zooming ability with high damage and a wide area of effect. Because of the latter, however, you want to make sure that there are no human survivors within the proximity of the zombies you are aiming at.
Once you’ve learned pros and cons of your weapons, as well as what their statistics stand for, you can proceed to carefully plan their upgrades.
Sometimes in Critical Strike: Dead or Survival you will be notified about weapon sales and price reductions of certain guns. It’s good to keep track on them in order to save some extra money and gold for later spendings. Mind that, however, sales are usually temporary and last from several hours to several days at best, so whenever you see one, you might want to think of giving it a shot.
4. Learn And Manage Your Power Ups
Power ups are powerful utilities that may change the course of the encounter with the zombies. They have, however, a limited number of uses, so you want to save them only for the time you need them the most. Before you activate them, you have to learn what they actually do.
The initial uses of each of the power up will be free in order to demonstrate you how does one work. After the first “test use” your power ups will run out of charges every time you decide to use them, and one of the ways of refilling them is by buying their uses for gold. There is a variety of power ups that can be useful at the particular moments in the game.
Spanky Bars, for instance, slow down the movements of zombies, so use them only when you have a problem with killing a major group of enemies or if there is a risk that a survivor will be killed. One Spanky Bar will give you plenty of time to get back in control on the battlefield.
One of the first power ups you get in the game is Radar which shows precise locations of the zombies, humans and secret boxes on the field. Each and every one of them will appear as a dot of a different color in the lower side of the game screen. You want to use this power up mostly in situations when a single zombie or a group of zombies runs out from your line of sight or when you want to make sure that you didn’t miss any of the secret boxes on the way.
There is also a power up allowing you to spawn a dog which distracts the zombies around. Use it only when the zombies are catching up any of the survivors or when you want to make sure that there are no enemies that you could have accidentally omitted.
5. Rank Up And Unlock New Missions
Once in a while, after completing a task, your character’s experience bar will fill up and then she will rank up. Every new rank provides you with certain rewards, such as gold bars. These you can spend on a variety of things, including power ups recharges or different store features. It’s good to keep track on your ranking progress in order to better plan your spendings for the future.
By ranking up, you will also have a chance to unlock new campaign missions and different game modes, such as Weapon Trial, Extra Missions and Superzombie mode. Each of these modes offers you a different fun, but also a different challenge. For example, in Weapon Trial mode your task will be to take down all of your enemies using only a particular kind of a gun, whereas Extra Missions offer you an exciting helicopter tour amongst the city’s skyscrapers and a possibility to shoot zombies from above. Your range of view from the helicopter is, however, quite limited, so you will have to time and land your shots well in order not to miss out any zombie.
Before you decide to play a particular game mode, you will be given with an insight whether your weapons are powerful enough for the mission or not. You may, of course, decide to participate in the mission even if you do not meet the preferred requirements, but it’s good to keep that advice in mind.
And that would be all for our Critical Strike: Dead or Survival beginner’s guide! We wish you a happy zombie-hunting and can only hope that some of the above tips and tricks will be of any help for you. In case you have any advices and remarks regarding the game and want to share them with us, please make sure to put them in the comment section below!