Zombies Zombies everywhere so lets all grab a gun (House Of The Dead (PC))

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	House Of The Dead (PC)
Date:	16/10/01 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap thrills, wotks on most PCs

Disadvantages: Old now, blocky graphics

Got a fiver to spare?, then give it to me then, oh you want to spend it on yourself!, well have I got a reccomendation for you! Go into any hostelry of Computer Gaming worth its name in salt and you should be able to pick up a copy of the Sega produced arcade game House of the Dead ready and waiting for you to blast away some evil mutants all from the comforts of your very own home.

For those of you that don't know the premise of this game then let me attempt to explain - what you have is a first-person shooter without any of the complications, so you don't have to worry about positioning yourself in the perfect position to shoot without getting shot, you needn't lose any sleep over which is the perfect weapon and theres no limit to the amount of bullets you can shoot the only things you can do is position the crosshair, shoot and reload nothing more, nothing less.

But if its that simplistic then why is it that I love playing it so much?, now thats an easy question to answer - it is pure brainless fun, and its even more fun after you've just destroyed someone at one of your more thinking mans kind of game such as Civilization or Command and Conquer as it helps to wind you down from all that thinking (ouch!) that you've just done.

We do have a storyline (of sorts), apparently its December and theres some fishy business going on in the labs of the DBR Corporation which all revolves around the evil (well he couldn't be good could he?) Dr Curien, you play the special agent sent to investigate whats happening and upon arrival you see one of the lab technicians being attacked by a mutant, as you run in with your trusty pistol and save the lab-guy it becomes obvious that the House/Lab is over-run with these beings and its up to you to kill them all before being killed by them yourself, sounds confusing? well it isn't!

There are a total of 3 game-modes on the PC version, Original Mode, PC Mode and Boss Mode
- in PC Mode this is where you get to be a tiny bit tactical, you can choose between agent Rogan or agent G, depending on which one you choose you could have more health, bullets before reload or basic power of shots, after that though PC Mode and Original Mode are both the same, take your gun - and go shooting crazy, although not too crazy as there are innocent lab assistants around, every so often one of them will run onto screen being chased by one of the mutants, shoot the lab assistant and you'll lose a life, shoot the mutant before he gets to the lab assistant and you gain a life - shoot neither and nothing happens, along with this there are extra lives and lab assistants hidden away in the scenery just waiting to be discovered by yourself, so its worth shooting that pile of Skulls as you never know what might be lurking underneath them.

New Paragraph time, now then it isn't just mini-mutants you need to deal with there are also some uber-baddies that you need to be killing as well - these appear at different moments in the game and you get a quick note telling you where the weak-spot is, but unlike the other mutants they take a little bit longer to kill - fancy taking these on and nothing else? then thats where the boss mode comes into play, you get to take on all the uber-mutants without any of the other bits of the game to get in the way.

A warning for you here though - it does have the elspa reccomendation label on it that says you should be over 11 if you're going to play this game and it is quite qory for the youngster if I was being honest, I mean when I was a little younger I don't think I'd have liked playing a game where you shoot a mutants face off and it still comes after you (mind you I was a weiner as a kid), but then thats just me.

The last paragraph leads me onto my next point - in open play (i.e. not one of the boss characters), accuracy does get rewarded - shoot a mutant direct between the ey
es and watch how his head goes flying off in one direction as his body slumps to the ground, get a mutant running at you with a chainsaw then shoot his arms, and watch as the armless (but definitely not harmless) body runs at you and trys to give you a 'Glasgow Kiss' (also known as a head-butt to all you englishmen out there), its fun to try and discover which bodyparts do which damage!

Before you wonder if controlling this is going to be hard I can promise you they aren't - you move your mouse to position the cross-hair, click on the left mouse button to shoot and the right mouse button to re-load, if you're playing a 2-player game then its similar controls via the keypad on the right-hand side of your keyboard.

A 2-player game it has to be said is a barrel of fun, you get to argue over whos going to kill which mutant and then realise its too late as the mutants killed you and the only competitive thing about 2-player is who'll get the higher score.

Next onto the graphics of the game well for a game that was made in 1998 and only costs £4.99 now you'd expect them to be pretty poor but they're not, they aren't the best graphics you'll get on your PC but its got that arcadey feel to it and they work well, theres no slow-down as the screen gets filled and the mutants do lurch towards you in a menacing rather than humourous way.

Finally theres the sounds - which aren't too great, you get your standard Sega fare for background music but more often than not its over-ran by an annoying American accent telling you to re-load, but still they hold up enough to keep the game quality high.

All in all at £4.99 this is a game that you can't go wrong with - its easy enough to pick up and doesn't need a high-spec machine to play it, next time you're perousing Electronics Boutique why not put that copy of Quake 3 Arena down and buy this instead, you never know you might like it! <
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Minimum Spec

Desktop PC
Windows 95/98
P90 (or equivalent) processor
16MB Memory
256 colour resolution
4-speed CD rom drive.

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