House of the Dead: Overkill

09 Mar 2009 at 14:55:31 by
Systems used to review this title: (WII)

House of the Dead: Overkill (HotDO) sees the return of Sega’s cheesy rail shooter, but this time you have the luxury of playing the game on your Wii.  Made all the more fun with the unique control system the Wii utilises, as well as the goriness the game offers, HotDO makes you feel you’re playing an arcade shooter at home.

The game’s most significant achievement is its art-style, a style that cleverly masks the limitations of the Wii.  HotDO is delivered in a B-movie fashion, with grainy-film effect out-takes and over-the-top dialogue and narration.  Couple this with B-style horror film locations you’d expect to find – everything from the carnival to swamps, you’ll find a respect for the game that would be lost if it were set on any other platform.  Headstrong told us that this was an important aspect of the game, and that a lot of inspiration was taken from the B-movies, and the game nods to countless films spanning numerous decades.

Set in 1991, and the prequel to the first HotD game, you follow the story of detective Isaac Washington and Agent “G” who are investigating mysterious disappearances and strange happenings in small-town Louisiana.  Teamed with saucy stripper, Varla Guns, you set off to find a Papa Caeser, the man seemingly responsible for the mishaps of late, and the deaths of Washington’s father and Guns’ brother.

There are seven episodes across seven locations where you shoot through waves of zombies to get to the boss battle at the end.  Although you are on rails, you can look around your peripherals and doing so can reward you with in-game bonuses, such as slow-motion and grenades.

You get points by killing zombies.  Simple enough.  When you die, the price for you to continue is half of the points you’ve made.  The more points you have, the more money you get, hence the better your chances of upgrading your weapon or buying a new one.  In the Story mode you’ll be granted limitless continues, but the longer, more hardcore Director’s Cut mode (unlocked once the Story mode is complete) will only give you three lives.  And if you’re playing co-op, three lives between you.

Although you start with a pistol there are a range of weapons you can unlock, spanning from the shotgun to an assault rifle.  Each weapon can be upgraded too and you can carry two weapons in each level, giving some much needed depth and replay functionality to the game.  That is until you learn that some weapons can play havoc with your combo score.  And it’s the combo system, and not the weapons, that you’ll find yourself coming back to this game time and time again.  So when something messes it up, it’s not very helpful.

The rather effective, addictive and yet uncomplicated, combo system is the thread which holds the whole game together.  This little combo system becomes the focus of your game once you’ve realised you’re not going to get any more pleasure from just watching exploding, rotting, zombified carcasses.  Making sure you avoid being hit and maintaining your combo will exponentially increase your points.  Keep them up long enough and you’ll find yourself on the “goregasm” multipliers, an achievement in itself.

Plus, you can play the whole thing through with someone else.  Drop-in/drop-out co-op comes in both the Story mode and the Director’s Cut mode, while there are three more multiplayer mini-games for up to four players.  Because it’s a rail shooter, one of the most appealing things about the multiplayer, or co-op, is that there’s, thankfully, no split-screen.

There are, of course, issues with the game, the major one being the boss battles at the end of each level.  Although the enemies are a fun idea, the actual game-play leaves a lot to be desired.  Each boss battle is as boring and as repetitive as the last, and the final boss battle is the most disappointing of them all. After all, you are playing a rail-shooter, so you could argue that the whole game is boring and repetitive, but that’s not the point.

Although you can walk through the Story mode in about three hours, there’s no denying the game is fun, amusing, and thoughtfully produced.  This is a game that demands attention exactly because it’s fun, amusing and thoughtfully produced.  It’s a game which falls into a different league than anything else on the Wii.  This is a Wii game, and that’s what you have to remember when playing this game.

And as a Wii game it’s tastefully tailored for the Wii’s specifications, tapping into an audience that has lain dormant for as long as the Wii has been about.  It’s inviting and social, and most definitely for adults.

What Headstrong have done with HotDO is no small achievement.  It’s revitalised the franchise and made a game that is perfectly acceptable for the Wii.  It’s hard to be too critical of this game because it is brave, bold and new, and all of the niggles it has are, as a result, easily forgotten.

With a great soundtrack and an art-style you’ll have to love this game.  It’s mindless, gruesome and slightly disturbing, all the best things about rail-shooter videogames.

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