House of the Dead: Overkill

February 19,2009 - Sega originally brought the House of the Dead series to the Wii last spring with the compilation of House of the Dead 2 & 3, which is an odd combination to not include the first game, as well. Sega conveniently avoids the first game once again with House of the Dead: Overkill, which is a prequel to the first game that features an interesting grindhouse spin on the way the series has been done before. Does Overkill’s new sense of style add enough to the gameplay to make it one of the best light gun shooters on the Wii?

To take advantage of its grindhouse-style presentation, House of the Dead: Overkill’s seven chapters are presented as a unique film, similar to how Left 4 Dead’s campaign are handled. Each film features cheesy narration, music, and voice acting to complete the grindhouse rather nicely. The story itself is about two agents, Isaac Washington and Agent G, who are after the crime lord Papa Caesar, who is believed to be behind the disappearance in this Louisiana town and the sudden appearance of zombies. They eventually meet Varla Guns, whose brother worked for Papa Caesar before being turned into a zombie monster himself. Besides the cheesy presentation done right, Isaac Washington is essentially a Samuel L. Jackson knock-off, complete with an immense amount of constant cursing during cutscenes and the action to make this mature-rated game even more apparent that it’s nothing you should want to show to younger kids.

Overkill’s gameplay doesn’t change much compared to any other light-gun shooter you’ve played before on the Wii. The shooting works well with a few minor bouts of framerate drops and some weird reactions by zombies to being shot that bring some occasional confusion in the heat of battle. Power-ups are thrown into the mix with health kits, grenade pick-ups, and slowdown icons littered throughout the levels for you to shoot and collect them for help. There are also ten brains per level stashes around for you to collect and normal citizens needing some help to escape that add some replay value to playing levels over and over again. Though that ignores the obvious means for replay really comes from co-op play with friends over and over again.

To add a significant amount of value to a game whose genre stereotypically is a brief experience, Overkill offers a Director’s Cut mode that adds a few scenes and ups the difficulty a bit so that you have more of a challenge versus the normal story mode that’s offered. The story mode isn’t without its own means of upping difficulty in the form of the option to add extra zombies for the chance to earn more money to buy more guns or upgrade the ones you own. Add in the few multiplayer games that play to the light-gun gameplay very well and you have a rare light-gun game that has quite a bit of value to it that most releases on the Wii rarely offer.

Overkill’s grindhouse style definitely gives it a unique presentation that most on-rail shooters have to offer. Not only is there the worn film look with lots of static or lines on the screen to add to the 70’s movie vibe that the game has. Gore is not turned down one bit as you’ll find a lot of blood and limbs around that has come to be expected from this series. It’s unfortunate that the graphics aren’t really all that stellar to live up to the visual style that it has, so zombies can be a little bland while cutscenes show a bit of a lack in detail for Agent G and Isaac Washington. The music and voice acting are fairly well done for what they were attempting to emulate, though cutscenes show some Godzilla-style dubbing at times, but it’s not a constant issue for most of the game.

House of the Dead: Overkill offers an impressive package of content that most light-gun games on the Wii fail to provide, especially with two campaigns to play through by yourself or with a friend. The short episodes in the main story mode offers about a two or three hour campaign while the Director’s Cut mode adds a good hour or so of new content to keep it a bit more fresh. If you’re hankering for a gore-filled light-gun shooter for your Wii, you’re not going to do much wrong by picking this up for the full $50 price tag.

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