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By | mollipen |
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| Filed Under | A, Japan, Light Gun Shooter, Nintendo Wii, Review, Video Games | ||
| Tags | agent g, horror, house of the dead, sega, zombies |
House of the Dead: Overkill is, for me, Sega’s most daring project since Jet Set Radio back in the days of the Dreamcast.
I never expected it to be. I’ve owned and enjoyed past games in the House of the Dead franchise, but I’ve got to be honest; lately, it has felt to me like a series whose time had come and gone. I love zombies, I love blowing zombies to hell with a plastic light gun, but even the best of things in life can feel a little stale after a while.
Somebody at Sega was obviously feeling the same way, because projects like Overkill don’t happen unless you’re feeling like your product is in need of a fresh infusion of blood. (Notice I avoided making any “infected blood” jokes there. I could have, you know.) I’ll also be brutally honest on another point: I half wondered if Sega’s announcement to push the House of the Dead series in a new “Grindhouse-inspired” direction was going to result in a game that would try desperately to come off as “hip” and “fresh”, but instead fall flat on its face. I’m living in a world where, as I write this, a particular corporation famous for making men’s facial care products has just announced a new razor tailored specifically towards gamers; after a while, you stop having faith in companies when they try to make their offerings more relevant to today’s youth.
However, something quite nice happened—House of the Dead: Overkill worked. Not only does it work, but it works ridiculously and amazingly well. This is exactly what the House of the Dead series always needed, it just took us until now to fully realize that fact. Overkill is a game that unashamedly flaunts its new attitude of bloody, sexy, over-the-top violence, and does so in a way that you’ll wonder how the series ever existed in any form other than this. No joking; I’m not sure I can ever go back to the older chapters of the series anymore, as I now expect more from them than they can give me.
Probably the most notable element of the style found in Overkill is its graphics, which not only are quite impressive considering the hardware that’s pushing this game, but which also make heavy use of classic “old film”-esque visual effects. The degree to which the game uses those effects may be a divisive point, however, because they can at times shift the balance more towards style over substance in terms of gameplay. Indeed, there were moments where it was hard to see exactly what was going on, due either to how dark the overall location was, or because of the “skipping” the game does to replicate the feel of an old movie reel inside a worn-out projector. Yet, surprisingly enough, these moments never bothered me; instead, for me they became a natural part of the game, something not to criticize but instead enjoy as part of the overall experience.
The music, as well, is top-notch stuff. At times I found myself just letting the game sit at the mode select screen, so that I could listen to the musical track that had randomly queue up to play in the background. Being the kind of person who often just ignores soundtracks that don’t particularly catch my interest, that said a lot.
It isn’t just the thematic change that makes House of the Dead: Overkill what it is, let’s be clear; this is a game that also plays better than previous chapters. Due in part to the freedom to go nuts with ridiculous situations, each of Overkill‘s stages feel unique from one another, and provide enough variety in what you see and do to keep things from feeling too repetitive–an unfortunate traps that far too many other light gun games fall into. You can also help keep things mixed up a bit by either upping the zombie count in the main storyline mode, or, after beating the game, by playing the “Director’s Cut” of Overkill, where stages are longer and present tweaked versions of events and scenarios.
Ah yes, the storyline mode, where we are given our two heroes, Agent G and Detective Washington. The old lovable-but-cheezy cinemas from the earlier House of the Dead titles have been turned in for ridiculous, over-the-top B-grade buddy-cop moments scattered throughout the game, and provide not only a genuine interest in the characters and what’s happening to them, but also some actual laugh-out-loud moments. There is a warning I should give: I’m not sure I’ve ever heard as many drops of the F-bomb as I did while playing Overkill. Detective Washington’s language is, well, excessive. Given what Headstrong Games and Sega were trying to accomplish here, the language served a clear and focused purpose; so, I’m not exactly listing this off as a complaint. I’m just saying that, well, you might not want to play this game with your family during a Sunday trip to Grandma’s.
Simply put, House of the Dead: Overkill was an honest surprise to me, and has gotten me to care about a genre of gaming that I haven’t even given a second thought to for a long time now. Just, whatever you do, do yourself (and the game) a favor by picking up a proper gun shell for your Wii Remote before bringing swift justice down on the undead.
Rating: A
This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 3:07 am and is filed under A, Japan, Light Gun Shooter, Nintendo Wii, Review, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
