The House of the Dead: Overkill

After playing 'House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return', I expected Overkill to be very similar but with updated graphics. However, the whole game has had a major overall. The graphics have a dark, almost Resident Evil feel to them, plus an added film grain effect to look like an old horror film (although it would have been nice to have an option to turn this off).

The game's sound takes a different approach though with an over-dramatic narrator, good voice acting (despite the cheesy script) and varied game soundtrack. It's also funny with the running joke about G not specifying what his real name is.

Overkill is a prequel to the very first game (which isn't released on the Wii) and sees Agent G teaming up with Isaac Washington who is a foul mouthed cop. The amount of swearing he comes out with is insane - which at the time was a World Record. Even though the previous game was a 15 rated, there wasn't much reason for it, but with this games' new direction; it definitely isn't suitable for children.

G and Isaac track down Papa Caesar who seems responsible for the outbreak of zombie mutants. In the end, they track down the real guy in charge who is a serious controversial character who seems to like his mother a bit too much!

The 7 levels are set in different locations which keeps things fresher than the previous game and you now start off with unlimited continues and have a health bar taking 10 hits. The main game-play mechanic of being an on rails shooter is the same, but instead of mindlessly gunning, the game tries to make you focus on accuracy by rewarding you with a scoring system with a combo bonus based on consecutive accurate shots.

Achieving a better score usually earns you more money which can be spent on different guns and upgrades for these guns. You choose two weapons and switch between them on the fly and the variety of guns encourages repeated plays. There's also lots of collectables around the levels with health, collectible brains, and a slow motion power up.

Once you complete the game, you get the Director's Cut which features extra parts and limits the amount of continues you have. There's an unlockables section which has art, character models, music. There are some mini games thrown in too.

One thing I noticed is that the game does run a bit sluggish at times and rarely the animations can glitch, with zombies going from standing to grounded in a split second.

In short, it is a great improvement on the previous game, although seems a lot easier in terms of difficulty (I completed the game on my first play through dying about 4 times). You can complete the game in one sitting if you desire, but the game does save between chapters so you can return at any time.

The attempt to cash in on the Tarantino craze is blatant, with a curse word count that I'm pretty sure actually made the Guiness Book of World Records ahead of one of the Mafia titles. The shooting is fun enough, with visceral effects and crazy setpiece design elevating it above just another lightgun game, but technical shortcomings of the Wii hold it back quite a bit, even as the grindhouse experience gets more demented.