Release: February 10th 2009
Developer: Headstrong Games
Publisher: SEGA
Genre: Light Gun
Rating: Mature (ESRB)
What was once reserved for the dimly lit, back corner of arcades around the globe has jumped directly into your living room. You will battle the forces of evil, oddness, and zombie halitosis from hell as you fight your way to freedom, one bullet at a time. So put the kids to bed, turn the lights down low, and start pulling the trigger to your heart’s content. House of the Dead: OVERKILL takes everything that is great about light gun games and combines it into a single, franticly energetic, multiplayer gore-fest.
When you think back to the classic arcade light gun games of old, one thing always stands out, the strong gameplay. However, while thought to be flawless by immature teenage boys wielding plastic firearms, they usually lacked rather significantly in the story department. Most of these games didn’t have any plot at all, unless you counted the startup screen that showed images of the enemies that you should shoot and the allies that you should avoid. Thank goodness the team over at Headstrong games decided to remedy this problem, injecting some much needed plot into the formula.
Creating a story that follows the thematic elements of 1970’s exploitation flicks, OVERKILL chronicles the story of two law enforcement officers that are brought together by a common thread of revenge. Both of the lead characters, Agent G and Detective Isaac Washington, are essentially stereotypes of the most generic kind, using well established models from classic films. Agent G is the highly trained rookie with good skills, but lacking experience in the field. Washington, on the other hand, oozes confidence in every expletive laced sentence that he speaks. He has a nasty habit of dropping f-bombs at a pace that would even make Samuel L. Jackson blush, but more about that later.
The dastardly duo joins forces in an effort to bring the end to Papa Caesar’s reign of terror, which has resulted in the “zombificaiton” of countless thousands. Players will be forced to fight their way through these massive hordes of mindless creatures, as they recklessly lay waste to everything in their path. As the story progresses, several other characters come to the picture, but none will modify the ultimate goal of the game: shoot everything that enters your crosshairs.
Like other light gun games of old, House of the Dead: OVERKILL is purely an on-rails experience. At no point does the player have any effect on the path that is followed. It is very much a heavily scripted experience, which relies on the players suspending their disbelief and focusing on the task at hand, defending themselves. Enemies truly live up to their billing as mindless creatures, normally running full bore into the line of fire, with no regard for their own life or what is left of it. Fortunately, in later levels the opposition learns how to throw objects, but that still is not enough to break the steady masses that seem to want to kiss the end of your shotgun.
Boss encounters in the game are normally buffered by some sort of a cutscene that is supposed to explain the contorted mass of flesh that you are tasked with putting out of its misery. As with the rest of the enemies in the game, each colossal beast has a key point of weakness that the player is expected to exploit ad nauseam. After the conflict is complete, there is another cutscene and the level is completed.
That is where the game actually hits its stride. Each mission is setup as if it were an episode in a miniseries. This allows for the mission structure to be very self contained for the casual observer, while still providing a single, ridiculously outlandish, overarching storyline for those that are in it for the long haul. The gameplay is geared towards a more drop-in, drop-out multiplayer experience where the Wiimote is being passed between onlookers. A Wiimote offers the straightforward control mechanism that consists of simply pulling the trigger and watching the enemies drop, which contributes to the visceral satisfaction of the actions taking place on screen.
As amusing as the overall experience is the one major factor that hurts the game is the dialog. Granted, in a game of this theme the interaction between the lead characters is very limited, but when it does take place it seems very forced and unnecessarily offensive. Sure the game has a mature rating, but that is not a free license to drop four letter words every ten seconds. It was so extreme that the menu screen, before the game even starts, swears on six different occasions. Is that really necessary? As mature as the language is, its use is very juvenile. That must be where the OVERKILL in the name comes from.
At the end of the day, House of the Dead: OVERKILL is a mindless romp down memory lane that offers a glimpse into what made the genre great. If the kids are tucked into bed or out of the house for the weekend, this is the perfect game to waste an evening away. Considering all of the extras content and unlockables that are included on the game disk, this should keep you occupied for quite some time.
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