YMMV / Dead Effect

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In the second room of the game, right after descending the elevator after awakening from your cryopod, there's an incongruous patch of Meat Moss on the wall to your left, and either a deformed arm or some kind of fleshy tentacle briefly flails at you through a hole in it accompanied by the sound of snarling before vanishing. This never happens again, you never see the Meat Moss anywhere else in the game and you never see any more Body Horror on this level anywhere else either. It's completely inexplicable, assuming it's not just a totally random Shout-Out to Dead Space.
• Demonic Spiders: The grenade zombies. They take a lot to bring down (about as much as a Securitas zombie), and wear helmets, allwing them to No-Sell headshots. Add their impeccable throwing aim with One-Hit Kill grenades that are nearly invisible against the game's dark environments and make absolutely no sound to indicate they've been thrown until they detonate and you have a recipe for gamer rage. They were considerably nerfed in the sequel, with the grenades no longer detonating on impact and instead beeping for several seconds before exploding, giving you ample time to get clear.
• Narm: The voice acting is... colorful, particularly in the second game.
  • Jane Frey is in dire need of acting lessons, and Dr. Bielik's heavy Russian accent will have player's thankful for the existent of subtitles.
  • Dr. Wagner sounds like he's trying to do a stereotypical Herr Doktor Mad Scientist voice, but it ends up sounding more like The Ahnold.
• So Bad, It's Good: Despite being an obvious Mockbuster and (or because of) hilariously bad voice acting, the game can be fun at times and the gore is pretty good. It doesn't help that the games are available either as an ad-supported free to play game on the mobile or the paid-for Steam version which is not only cheap, but removes the ads and microtransactions (also rebalance the game).
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Dead Effect wasn't trying to be anything other than a campy, simplistic zombie-blasting game, as evidenced by the fact that it was originally made for mobile devices. You shot the zombies until there were no more zombies to shoot and you reached the end of the level, occasionally pressing buttons on the way; it was not an ambitious game. Dead Effect 2, on the other hand, was a very, very ambitious game by the standards of what it was following, upgrading to a full-blown FPS/RPG, with an in-depth loot drop and upgrade system, experience levels, character customisation, and a much more complicated ability system. It was also much longer, had a more-involved and deeper plot featuring multiple allied NPCs, a massively wider variety of enemies to fight (compared to the first game's "zombies, more zombies, even more zombies, slightly different zombies and Elite Zombies), quests and missions to complete, and also included multiple different game modes and online multiplayer (both PvP and co-op). It's an entirely different game, and if it wasn't for sharing mostly the same aesthetic and being a direct plot continuation you'd barely be able to guess the two games are even part of the same series; aside from the graphics being roughly on par it's almost like comparing Warcraft: Orcs and Humans to Warcraft III. It's actually possible this much greater ambition is the reason it actually has a lower Metacritic score than the first one, as now the game is so much more ambitious it's being judged much more harshly against other games in its new genre like Borderlands which, despite the developers' best efforts, is a much higher bar to clear.
• That One Achievement:
  • The two optional achievements for the Cargo Bay are particularly annoying. "Cargo Bay - I don't like healing" requires you to beat the mission without using a healing terminal (or using the optional regeneration suit upgrade, or dying and respawning), which is particularly frustrating because of the preponderance of grenade-throwing zombies who will One-Hit Kill you with a direct hit and do considerable damage even with a near miss, with every encounter featuring at least one. But "Cargo Bay - Shoot 'em down" is even worse, because it requires you to beat the mission using ONLY your secondary weapon- meaning not only are you prohibited from using your primary weapon, but your grenades, Devastator or -worst of all- your stungun either. And the problem with trying to beat it using only your sidearm is that, no matter how upgraded it is, the level is rather short on pistol ammo. If you try to be clever and use the chainsaw instead (which doesn't need ammo), the multiple grenade zombies will make your life a misery again, as will the single chainsaw zombie. Making matters worse, you can't even just dodge past the enemies because you have to kill them all to proceed at several points. And worst of all, the Game-Breaking Bug at the cargo elevator can completely sink your attempt half-way through.
  • "Zombie Champion" (kill 5000 zombies) and "Zombie Overseer" (kill 10,000 zombies). There simply aren't even a fraction that many zombies in the entire game. Even multiple complete playthroughs won't be enough to reach the first one, let alone the second.
• That One Level: The Cargo Bay. Not only does it contain two instances of That One Achievement (due to a very high concentration of grenade-chuckers), it also contains a recurring and never fixed Game-Breaking Bug where the cargo elevator will inexplicably refuse to activate even after you turn the power for it back on.