The houses of the dead games are gleeful shooter that drops you knee-deep in a pile of undead with a loaded weapon. The series is famed for swarming you with monsters such as zombie mermen, zombie plants, zombie frogs and zombie ninjas. Sega has finally managed to perfect IR shooting on the Wii with this two of a series games.
House of the Dead 2 picks up two years after the mysterious mansion in which Dr.Curien released an army of undead. You don the role of an AMS agent, who is tasked with investigating paranormal activities. The protagonist is sent to Venice, where fellow agent G has gone missing. Unsurprisingly, the zombies are to blame, and you must shoot through wave after wave of zombies to save the city. As with the previous game, your actions determine the path you traverse to your destination and it will require multiple play-through to see the whole game. This particular half offers a near perfect port of the arcade edition and several extra game modes, which includes a Boss Battle, training mode and training missions. These are no doubt welcome additions but they don’t really save this severely outdated and annoyingly short zombie disassembly line.
House of the Dead 3 takes place 19 years later, in a postapocalyptic world that is infected with the undead. This time you’ll be playing as G and Lisa Rogan as they fight their way through the research facility that served as ground zero for an outbreak. You’re armed a bit more heavily this time and you don’t have civilians to refuse. Instead you get to save your partner for a chance to earn bonus health. Other abilities include the ability to select your next level, alter the path of travel and a scoring system that awards you a letter grade. The only extra for the House of the Dead 3 is the Time Attack mode, in which your health is replaced with a countdown timer that increases with zombie kills. Though the graphic improvement from House of the Dead 2 is pretty drastic, it still feels outdated and in addition suffers from jerky frame rate issues that eat into the feel of the game by bringing the action to a temporary standstill. Staying true to their arcade character, both the games are extremely difficult, with the bosses requiring near pin point accuracy to be taken down. Luckily, Sega has included a calibration system into the Wii Remote’s IR pointing ability which renders it a lot of accuracy. The best option would be to play use a gun attachment, but using the remote alone is perfectly fine option. Sega has limited the number of credits, this can be terribly frustrating. On numerous occasions, you’ll find yourself just about to defeat a boss but you are unable to continue. Infinite continues would have certainly harmed the game, but Sega could have included an option of starting with more credits or health in the beginning. More than a decade later, the games still continue to be fun, especially when played with a friend. However, the asking price of $30 is a bit difficult justify.
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