The House of the Dead

"Is this supposed to be the best arcade game ever??"

Never before have i dreamt of playing an arcade game this good. I still remember when i was 8 my uncle thought i would be interested in playing House of the Dead at the arcade by our beach house because i was into reading Goosebumps books. When he first showed it to me, i watched the demo screen and i was too scared to plunk down 50 cents into that machiene. I'm 15 now and i understand what it takes to make a game good and i feel fully confident to tell you that this is easily the greatest arcade game i have ever played. Here's why

GRAPHICS 10/10
How did Sega make these zombies so scary? This question still haunts me today. I have seen screenshots of the Saturn version and they look like a pixellated mess. The enviornments are also extremely detailed, which leads me to believe that there is no way that this game is running on a 32-bit processor. Also, there is enough detail in the house itself to scare the living daylights out of me. The first-person perspective gave me the feeling that I was actually walking around in the house holding the gun of justice, ready to be attacked by man eating zombies. WICKED AWESOME!!

SOUND 9/10
This being an arcade game, im sure all of you know that it is near impossible to hear ANY sound. Nonetheless, i strained my ears to hear for the purposes of this review and what i heard was utter bliss. The music thoroughly chilled me to the core and only added to the ridicuously scary effect. The voice acting, on the other hand, was choppy and felt forced. I would have hated any other game if it made this mistake but this is House of the Dead were talking about here, people!!! As previously stated, sound doesnt play too big a part in arcade games and this degraded the experience by only a hair.

REPLAY VALUE 10/10
House of the Dead isnt all about gore and fear inducing thrills (yes it is). There are tons of branching paths that lead to different routes of exploration and if your anything like me, you'll want to explore them all. It would be unwise to measure the amount of money i spent on this game in any denomination. There are also multiple endings and cheats that you can input onto the arcade machiene. Sega really outdid itself with this game.

It has become almost a tradition for me to play this game with my cousin every time we take a vacation down the shore. i hadnt gotten the courage to play it until i was 12. An arcade isnt good unless it had House of the Dead in it. I hope its sequels will be this good.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/03, Updated 06/07/03