Dead Stop

The survival of the human race in the event of a zombie apocalypse hinges on one thing - whether or not the undead come at us along easily discernible paths surrounded by stable ground.

If they do, then the hours of practice we've all poured into tower defence games will finally pay off, and mobile gamers can look on smugly as the rest of the world's turret positioning and upgrading skills are found to be lacking.

If they don't, at least we had a lark playing with the likes of Dead Stop. It might not be the most effective training simulator for when there's no more room in hell, but as tower defence games go it certainly has more spark than most.

The game is all about making sure zombies don't reach the lab of a slightly mad scientist or sink their deadly teeth into the tasty flesh of the people who live in the city around the lab.

To that end, it's up to you to position the scientist's various violent inventions along the zombie's intended route to lunch.

You're given a set arsenal of tools for the job on each of the 30 levels, and you can place a maximum of ten traps and ten turrets. You start off with simple single-shot cannons, but pretty soon you'll be finding a place for lasers, ricocheting hammer trebuchets, and deadly multi-directional bomb hurlers.

There are traps at your disposal, too. These are much cheaper single-use items that disappear once they've been triggered by an infected foot. For smaller, weaker zombies, traps will prove fatal, whereas larger, more powerful creatures will take a little damage and be slowed down.

With a limited amount of weaponry at your disposal, making sure everything is in the perfect position can be a matter of life and death. Sometimes, ensuring you've got the best shot can mean destroying bits of scenery to free up a space for your cannons.

Dead zombies spew out coins that you can use to add more weapons or to upgrade the ones you've already got. Often, an upgraded turret will do far more damage than two standard ones, so it's worth saving your cash and strengthening your defences rather than just spending for the sake of it.

As well as the standard tower defence fare, the game throws in some variations. In one, you've got a huge maze to protect and only traps at your disposal. In another you need to slaughter the plague-riddled inhabitants of a football stadium using only your special powers.

These special powers turn up in the form of presents dropped by the undead, or you can buy them using the stars you earn by completing levels. They're essentially super-attacks that will lay waste to swathes of enemies with a few taps, but they're rare, and they don't come cheap.

Dead Stop might not look like the most original of games, but there's plenty here that's going to keep fans of tower defence happy, and the level for entry is low enough that even newcomers aren't going to be overwhelmed.

The production levels are sky high, too, with everything from the soundtrack to the gorgeous graphics dripping with class. This is tower defence done really well, with plenty of content and enough tweaks and innovations to give something new to seasoned tower defenders.

It's not a classic, with a few difficulty spikes, and too much of an over-reliance on retreading old ground, but Dead Stop is an awful lot of zombie-slaughtering fun nonetheless.