I've...already...taken ...care...of....G..... (The House Of The Dead: Overkill (Wii))

Member Name: badhandshakes

Product:	The House Of The Dead: Overkill (Wii)
Date:	20/02/09 (301 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Edgy cut-scenes, fast-paced enjoyable gameplay, stylish.

Disadvantages: Not challenging enough, very different from original series, jerky rails style

House of the Dead Overkill takes a radical swerve from the original Sega House Of The Dead arcade series, with a wii-only prequel following hardcore Agent G and ladies-man Detective Issaac Washington as they battle through a city infested by a mutant-zombie outbreak, and a succession of hideously deformed boss battles.

You'll know House of The Dead for it's strange Japanese-translated wooden dialogue ("How could anyone DO this?" *straight face"), surreal green-mohawked zombie creatures, and fast-paced rails shooting-action, a game series that's had me spend too much time and money in arcades, getting RSI from shaking heavyweight plastic machine-guns to reload, then leaving me with that sense of dejection as I walk home empty pocketed after getting slaughtered by an unexpected zombie-toad and running out of pound coins...
If you're expecting Overkill to continue in a similar vein, you'll feel slightly bemused. For a start, Overkill was developed by a UK games company, and is set in the USA, and has firmly taken leave of its Japanese roots: and with that, the stilted dialogue, lovably ridiculous "serious" plotline, and overly dramatic panning cut-scenes have been replaced by a game full of blackest humour, a tastless, sick, plot, and a level of self-aware violence that makes it drift casually into the self-parody genre. Overkill takes the atmosphere of a cheesy 70s horror film, mixes it up with some very x-rated plot points, and chucks in enough zombie aracde action to pull it altogether into an explosion of flesh-giblets that would NEVER see arcade release.

Plotwise, it's the kind of game that will appeal specifically to a certain type of sick individual- it involves a lot of swearing, a lot of sex, and some particularly disgusting twists that will leave you recoiling from the "dude, seriously....ewwww" factor- steer clear if you're even slightly easily offended, because this game is emphatically non-PC. If the thought of shooting a mutated quadriplegic in the face makes you wince, it's not for you.
Loosely, you follow the antics of a twisted crime lord you believe responsible for an outbreak of creepy deformed aggressive mutant-zombies, as you shoot your way through a circus, a hospital, a swamp, prison, and laboratory. So while zombie-leeches, monkeys and frogs are sorely missing, you can expect zombie-nurses, zombie-clowns, and zombie-police. And for a wii game, they all look surprisingly pretty, as lovingly rendered gore explodes out of the back of one of those mutant faces.

Although Overkill is a "horror" game in the ridiculous-level-of-violence sort of way- it's not designed to keep you up at night with psychological horror. It's a fun shooter, not Silent Hill, so it's not scary, but the pure level of violence is sometimes quite shocking, and makes the previous HOTD games look like like Cooking Mama in comparison. The game's stylish, pulling influence from B-movies and glam-horror, and has a bit of a Rob Zombie-ish vibe. (It's clearly getting silly when you notice you can turn all the game music up to "11" in the settings).

Now, I'll be honest- I don't particularly like the wii- I'm old-school in my gaming habits, and I find the whole motion-sensor thing a bit gimmicky and detractive from decent gameplay. (Or perhaps I'm just bitter because I suck at wii sports?) Saying that, even I would admit this was one instance in which a light-gun is the ONLY way to play, for the sake of being authentic to the arcade experience. Even as a wiimote cynic, it didn't take me long to slip into feeling like I was playing with a proper light-gun (albeit a stupidly sensitive one), so even the most casual of gamer could take a stab at Overkill, there's a learning curve of about four seconds.
This is where Overkill stays faithful to its aracade routes- the gameplay is fun, and engaging, and distinctly casual, it's designed for multi-player, to drop in-and-out of: and you can complete the set of levels (including cut-scenes) in about two hours of solid play. You're on rails, in a completely linear route, so you don't even have to move or make any decisions, you're just shooting and reloading, no pesky puzzle-solving to block you from an increasing path of carnage. The closest you'll come to morality is occasionally having to NOT shoot a survivor, but you'll only be docked a few points if you accidentally DO.
Although today's sophisticated gamer might find the rails style limiting and not particularly immersive, you have to appreciate it for what it is- it does mindless violence well, and for that you have to admire it. What it ISN'T is a deep profound RPG, but you knew that already.

Here's where my main criticism comes in- the gameplay is just way too easy. There are two game-modes, the standard, and the Director's Cut, which has a few added scenes and is supposed to rack up the challenge slightly. Me and my boyfriend did both with only two *continues* (which we used in the very last level) between us, which strikes me as slightly strange, considering that a) you have unlimited continues on the oridinary gameplay mode anyway, and b) any aracade game worth its salt wouldn't let you get that far without knocking you about a bit. We bombed through it effortlessly, enjoying it definitely, but feeling bemused that however fancy the bosses looked, the boss battles lasted about twenty seconds before we'd massacred them, while feeling absolutely zero level of threat. Perhaps I've been playing too much Left 4 Dead, but I like my fast-paced zombie games with a little more in the way of intensity. By the end, the zombies clawing at our faces had lost any danger-value, and my boyfriend was playing with one hand in his pocket, and I was eating an apple in between reloads. In a way, you can see the appeal, because you're not going to get stuck or held back, you can just rock through the zombies, perhaps dragging the game out at a zombie-themed party at 3am when everyone's had a bit to drink, and not feel all that handicapped. At the same time, I really think there should be an option to make the main game considerably harder, just to add another dimension. Even playing on your own doesn't make it much harder.

Ironically, what saps the game's challenge is also one of the coolest things about it- after each level you can spend your points in the gun shop, buying new weapons and levelling up the ones you own (putting stat points in things like efficiency, recoil, cip size, etc). The problem is, with the two of us playing, we could afford the auto-shotgun after the first level, and that thing is insanely powerful- and also can boast the most satisfying headshots I've ever found in any game. It just made killing swarms and swarms of zombies a piece of cake. Spoon-fed to you.
Because actual survival isn't an issue, most of the game's enjoyment and challenge comes from racking up combos- each set of 5 direct kills ups your "violence" rating: from ultra- to psychotic, (increasing your score bonuses accordingly) finally culminating in the much-coveted "goregasm" (a term, which i think quite accurately sums up how ridiculously awesome this game is). However, because of the emphasis on not missing any hits, here's where you'll find the on-rails style of gameplay a real pain in the neck- you'll have lined up your perfect headshot to continue your 64-second goregasm for maximum score, when suddenly the camera angle will jerk or veer wildly in another direction, but it's too late- you've shot- and there goes your accuracy combo. Poo. Cue gratuitious swearing all round.


My final criticism would be that when two people are playing (and really, that's the only way to play, surely) it's sometimes a little difficult to tell whose crosshair is whose. In the original HOTD games, player A had a red crosshair (to match their red gun), player B had a blue one. Makes sense. In this, one player has a circle, the other has two circles inside each other. Easy to get confused in the fog of zombie slaughter.

When you've exhausted all the enjoyment you can out of the main story, there are a set of mini-games you can slaughter for giggles afterward- which are, if anything, even more casual. They're your standard survival-style how-many-zombies-can-you-kill type games, but with one hideously unfair glitch- if a zombie is attacking you when you level up, it'll keep attacking you through the level up screen (where you can't shoot), therefore sometimes depleting your entire health- a fact which caused, again, much swearing. Still, they're gory and loads of fun.

All in all a unexpectedly unusual and witty little shooter, great as a party game, ideal for the trigger happy!

Summary: Short but sweet arcade action.