Who lives in a house like this? (House Of The Dead (PC))

Member Name: kylecoare

Product:	House Of The Dead (PC)
Date:	15/07/03 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast paced action, simple to start, different routes through game

Disadvantages: too easy, gets a teenie bit boring!, Over too quick!

HOUSE OF THE DEAD. This game was released in 1998 by sega it was a fairly straight conversion of the same hit arcade game from 1996.
Its a one or two player on the rails shooter, you dont actually control the characture just the gun.

The game begins with a cutscene, your looking at a desk and a telephone goes off, its your girlfriend, she screams "help! everyones getting killed."
So instead of doing the sensible thing, ie phoning the police/ army/ A-Team, you decide to get down there in your car with you tiny handgun! Clever bloke!

-------
OPTIONS
-------

Before you start the game you might want to play around with the options, so id better tell you a bit about them.
Firstly you can change the difficulty, its probably best to whack this up to hard.
You can change the colour of the blood in the game, so if your squemish or just dont like the colour red then you can give your enemies a different shade of blood.
You can also change the amount of lives and continues that yu start the game with.
If you cant be bothered to reload once your gun runs out (This will happen a lot!) you can change this to auto reload.

Other than the main options, There are also three different styles of play:-
---------------------------------------------- -
ARCADE MODE
This is basically the arcade version, converted without changing anything.

PC MODE
This is a pc only version, this hasnt been seen on any other consoles or arcades, it isnt very different from the original mode, basically it gives you a choice of character to play the game with, each character has different stats for amount of bullets, damage caused, reload time and hit points. This adds a bit of variety to the original. There are also a few more enemies in the background but these are the only real differences that i can tell about it.

BOSS MODE
Does exactly as it says on the tin, gives you a chance to shoot up
all the bosses in the game, simple!
---------------------------------------------- --

--------
GAMEPLAY
--------

This game is fairly simple to get into, basically all you have to do is shoot at things on the screen, kind of like a shooting gallery.
The game is view through your charactures eyes and you control some crosshairs on the screen, you dont actually control the characture he walks around on his own, although sometimes you will take a different path through a level if you kill a certain person or shoot a switch, this adds to the replayability as you want to see every area.

The game has four levels which arnt to long and can be completed very quickly, this is one of the main problems with arcade conversions like this and virtua cop, there just isnt enough added to the gameplay. When played in the arcades you get a sense of achievement when you get furthur into the game, whilst its still nice to get furthur you dont get quite the same feel.

obviously this game wouldnt be very hard without enemies, and some of these can be quite nasty, there are a lot of different baddies such as bats, zombies, guys with chainsaws and lots more. Some of these move slowly and dont do a lot of damage but the further you get the harder and faster they get, they will be jumping all around the screen making it fairly difficult to get a good shot in. Most enemies will be killed instantly by shooting at their heads, but if you hit them anywhere else it still does some damage, if you shoot a zombie in the arm it will blow the arm off making the zombie less able to hurt you.

Also on each level there are a lot of civilian researchers, these should really be saved from the zombies, they sometimes help in the game or give different routes through the house. If you shoot one of these civilians you will lose a life point.

Littered around the house are lots of shootable items, such as boxes and crates, these sometimes have h
idden items inside such as lives, continues and ammo.

At the end of each level there is a boss enemy, these bosses need to be shot a certain number of times in a specific area, the game tells you where to hit these which kinda makes it feel a bit spoon fed, id much prefer to have to find out where to hit them without any help.

The game can be fairly scary, some of the enemies will jump out when your really not expecting it. But once you've played through it you'll know where all the baddies are as they always come up in the same place.


-------
CONTROL
-------

The options for controls are mouse, keyboard, joystick and lightgun, now I dont own a lightgun so I cant comment on how good this is, but it was originally meant to use one so it would be quite nice, though you might look a bit silly pointing a gun at your computer montitor!
I find its best controlled with a mouse, you can move around quick enough to pick off all of the enemies.
You fire with the left button and reload with the right.
The keyboard is a little harder to use but is still responsive.


------------------
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
------------------

The graphics are very good for a game from 1998, but they dont need to much hardware making the game playable on older machines like mine!
As anyone would know if theve read my previous reviews, i own a very poor computer, its main goal in life is too laugh at me and make me feel silly and ashamed, After that it sulks for a while and crashes out! But even with this ancient calculator that i call a Pc, this game runs like a dream, a very scary dream but a dream nonetheless.
They are not a straight conversion from the arcade as they were a bit more lifelike, but they are still passable.
Sound, pretty good, does what its supposed to, nice enough music and effects but nothing to shout about.
The game can be very gory, with limbs flying off all over t
he place, so it is recomended to try before letting your children play this.


------------
EASE OF PLAY
------------

This is one of the downfalls of this game and lots of other conversions like this one, its just too easy. You will probably finish this on your first days play.
As the arcade was meant to be played in short bursts, it seemed harder on them, whereas on the pc you can just keep playing as often as you'd like without breaking your bank account.


-------
OVERALL
-------

This game should only cost about 5 pounds and is good value for it. Although its fairly easy its great for a half hour blast and it has enough replayability to keep you going for a while even after completion. For another fiver you could pick up its sequal HOTD2, this is just more of the same with better graphics.

Thanks for reading.
Kyle

Summary: