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Latest News Review - House of the Dead 2&3 Return | Review - House of the Dead 2&3 Return |
| Written by Tyler Roberts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, 12 April 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 The House of the Dead series made its name as an arcade shooter back in 1996 when Sega let it loose in the UK. Four versions were developed for Arcades (and some for the Saturn) making it one of the longest running light gun shooters in arcade history. Naturally, a Wii port was on the cards as soon as the Wii was announced. The Wii’s IR on the remote acts as a light gun perfectly, and if you have a Zapper (or even better, a Perfect Shot) then this will feel as close to the original series as possible. Why they took 2 & 3 and skipped 1 & 4 we’ll never know, but let’s hope it was because they were the best 2! The story starts in February 2000. Goldman, the villain behind the Curien case from the first in the series, is back to wreak havoc on mankind. He believes that humanity shows a lack of responsibility toward its assigned task – whatever that may be – and that they must be punished. He initially attacks Venice, while his ‘Emperor Project’ develops. Nice place to set a Zombie game eh? You play as an agent called Gary, and on two player there’s also an agent called James along for the ride. You’re called into a ‘small town’ and told to stabilize the area. It all gets a bit strange after that. Gary and James are confronted by something I can only describe as a pink bat that has a higher voice than Joe Pasquale, who tells them that he’s taken care of ‘G’ – an agent who featured in the original – and warns you that he’s powerful. From here on you embark on a journey through time and space- sorry, through the town trying to eliminate all of the creatures lurking around. It works like most standard on rails shooters. To shoot you aim at the screen and press the B button, and to reload you aim off screen. You can’t move or look around. The only thing you take control of is the reticule which can be boring for some but satisfying for others. You can take it one of two ways: Seriously trying to beat your high score or progress as far as possible in the arcade mode, or just relax and treat it as a bit of fun. The latter is often the best choice, as the default difficulty – even with two players – is hard. The difficulty can’t have been tweaked that much, because it must have been designed this way to steal more money off addicted kids. 
In our experience we can tell you that it’s much more fun playing with a friend. We died countless times on our own, and stood there frustrated and stressed, but with a friend it livens it up and makes dying not such a big deal. So there’s a little bit of advice. Mode-wise there’s only a handful. You have the standard arcade mode, which is whipped straight from the original, the original mode, which is basically the arcade mode but you can pick up items, and the extreme mode which is a harder mode. All 3 modes are very similar, and there isn’t really one we suggest. We often opted for arcade mode, but original mode was just as good. One of the only significant changes to the formula was the way you earn credits. Originally it was just a case of how spoilt you were, and how much money you could nag out of your parents’ pockets, but with the Wii’s absence of a money slot Sega had to rethink. You don’t literally ‘earn’ credits in real time, after each play session you are awarded with a token giving you’re the opportunity to raise the starting credits to a higher level. Every time a player dies one of these credits is sacrificed, and you can carry on playing until these credits run out.  IThe argument comes down to one main point.Too many developers are sticking an old game on a disc with a new control method (not the case with this one) and selling it at a discount price. With a couple of improvements, like better graphics, more levels, better guns, anything like that and this could have been a great revisit to an arcade classic. Unless you see yourself running down to your local arcade to play this most days then there isn’t much point in buying this, but as it stands, for a discount price it isn’t that bad of a deal. Score: 5/10
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