The House of the Dead: Overkill

A mysterious secret agent, Agent G, and a vengeful playboy cop, Isaac Washington. They met as enemies, but a monster has made them allies. Together they must track down the man who is responsible for turning half a county into mindless mutants (note, not zombies...the game makes that perfectly clear). Sounds like something from a video game huh? Well, that's because it's The House of the Dead: Overkill a brilliant revival of the series with a few minor tweaks as British developers Headstrong Games takes a whack at the classic light-gun shooter exclusively for the Wii. The game is a prequel to the original The House of the Dead released in arcades and the game plays homage to it in a few subtle ways.


Presentation:



Whereas other The House of the Dead games seem to take themselves seriously, this game does everything it can to make you laugh as well as perhaps puke (in a good way).

The overall graphical presentation of the game is just a notch below excellent. The cutscenes often seem to be a bit lower quality than the actual gameplay and in the later levels there are graphical glitches where zombie models will still be present for a second after they are killed, which can ruin combo chains.

The in-game graphics however are pretty good. A variety of blood-stained enemies with excellent textures, motion blurs for reloading, and great lighting effects from fires and gunshots. Some of the environments are pretty generic, but often times the developers throw in some genuinely unique aspects of the levels layouts that you can't help but feel a little awe in how polished that certain part looks.

Bosses also take gruesome forms. Like take a look at a boss called Nigel and Sebastian:



Overall though, the game is too dark. Often it's very hard to see what's coming at you. While the developers have solved any areas where enemies are almost impossible to see by adding a fire that let's the mutants emerge from the shadows like so many zombie films we've all seen, there are too often parts of the game where you need to fire a few shots to illuminate the area just to see what needs to die.

The game seems to draw many influences from grindhouse style B-movies. The entire game is run through a filter which gives it the appearance of an old grainy movie and dialogue seems to be all but F-bombs and one liners that fit perfectly in with the flow of the game(for the record, this game now holds the Guinness Book of World Records for must F-words in a video game, a whopping 128 times). There are even little quirks where someone may be wearing glasses who is slapped across the face, sending the glasses across the room only for them to appear back on the guy's face and then disappear in the next scene. Simply put, many intentional flaws to add to the humor of the game which is much appreciated.

The game's sounds and music are all range from alright to great. The voice acting is all fantastic throughout all cutscenes and gameplay with hilarious dialogue which mainly consists of bantering between Agent G and Washington. However the music of the game is only decent at best. The game never presents itself as a horror game, and the music never seems to actually fit the mood but seems to be there to lighten the mood instead.


Gameplay:

Gameplay plays out like a standard lightgun shooter with some new features. The first noticeable difference is that use of the "danger cam" which allows the players too look outside the parameters of the screen extending their range of view. The second is the gun shop, allowing players to buy new weapons or upgrading their older ones with money earned through points after each level. Other than that, aim, press B button to shoot, 1 and 2 to switch between your first and second weapons, and shake the wii remote to reload. Unfortunately, no weapons can be obtains throughout the level but because of the variety of mutants, there is some strategy to picking your weapons for each level. Well, there are grenades that can picked up by shooting them...but they are so scarce and rarely needed that you'll probably barely noticed them.


For the most part, the levels are pretty static. They mainly consist of going through some realistic looking environments through hordes of mutants and then ending with a boss fight.

Boss fights are not as unique in combat as they are in design, but still interesting enough to make you pay close attention to the screen. Bosses will often summon more mutants to distract you or fling pieces of the level at you that must be shot out of the air. They all have designated weak points but they are most vulnerable when they are charging up an attack, designated by a large red circle around their weak spot. As the levels progress, the bosses do gain faster attacks, so shooting their weak spot when you need to because an increasing challenge.



There are four kinds of pick ups in the game. Health boxes that restore health, brains that unlock extras, grenades that, well, give your grenades, and a small green symbol that initiates "mo-fo" mode. The "mo-fo" mode temporarily slows down time, music, dialogue, and everything else, allowing you take more accurate shots. However, they are always in the same place throughout each play through of the level and can not be stored, it starts when shot.

The best part of the game however is the co-op. Like any rail shooter, a second player can jump in before each level and has access to all of the weapons you have unlocked. The game however does not amp the difficulty for having two players so any challenging levels in the single player game become much easier when you add another person.

The game's story is broken into two parts. The normal story and the director's cut. The director's cut follows the same plot, but adds some extra cutscenes, new areas within the levels, a larger selection of weapons to buy, and, my personal favorite, duel wielding mode. Duel wielding mode adds an extra challenge to the single player game where you use two Wii remotes and each hand holds your either your primary or secondary weapon, making switching impossible. The difference between this and co-op is that now instead of dividing your attention between you and another player, you have a much wider scope to focus on and using both weapons effectively definitely requires your full attention.

After each level, your score is recorded and you (and your partner if you had one) get to rank to see how far you rank up. Points are determined by how many zombies you shoot, how many you can get in a row without missing, how many times you don't die, and how many of the hopelessly stupid civilians you can save. There is kind of an incentive to do well in the game other than just trying to get through it, but with no online ranking system the incentive to become a perfect sharpshooter is low.

Extras:

Throughout the game, there are brains you can shoot to a plethora of extra goodies. These range from songs from the game, movies (with a Madworld trailer), concept arts, and finally 3-d models of enemies and characters. While nothing to outstanding, the brains are bright pink and glow green...so they are kind of addicting to shoot at, but overall, no much reason.

There are also some target test minigames that can be played with up to four players. While they are pretty challenging most people won't give them much thought. I really only played one of them where you have to shoot red and blue targets to earn points while shooting bombs subtracts points. While the end of the game was pretty nutty with a mix of targets and bombs began flying everywhere, I would rather take turns playing through the levels if I had four people over trying to compete for the high score.

Conclusion:

I think people should at least rent this game for a good laugh. It was definitely worth my money but it's not a game I'm playing in front of my little sister or my friends little brother. There were parts where I felt like even I was too young for the game. The House of the Dead: Overkill is a fun rail shooter that really sets a benchmark for others out there like Dead Space: Extraction and Resident Evil: Dark Chronicles.