The House of the Dead 2

"Pretty much the same as it's prequel."

I'm skipping the introduction part as everybody probably knows what these games are about. This is a FPS game where you wander around various locations shooting zombies and mutated beasts which in turn do their best to assault you.

Graphics: 8 / 10
Well, seen better but the GFX are still great. Human characters have really been done well here, but some of the effects such as the water splashes were kinda not looking like what they should've. The zombies look like what they are supposed to, as if they've been dead for a while. The animation is really smooth and there's great looking backgrounds too. The last few levels are a bit dull, IMHO. Your regular hitech-type surrounding. The bosses are kinda plain tho. Not complaining about the graphics which are excellent, but they just aren't quite original.

Sounds: 8 / 10
Each and every crash and bang sounds like it's supposed to. I don't see why the zombies growl like dogs but it sounds ok. The screams and other human sounds not really categorizable as voice acting are ok. I can't think of a single song I could remember from the game, but none of the music annoyed me anyway. They pretty much did their job of keeping silence away. What more can you ask for in this kind of a game?

Voice acting: 2 / 10
Something has gone horribly wrong here, Game Arts ought to make a patch for the game with the voices completely redone! I'm pretty sure these are the same voices they have in the Japanese version too, and that they are either all done by Japanese high school students or a voice synth.
''My god'' sounds pretty much the same as ''Maybe I should've taken a ham sandwich instead..'', there's whatsoever no emphasis or emotion present here. If there's any credit to be given here it's for the Hangedman-boss sounding not human as he is not one. Too bad he sounds like crap anyway.
The agents themselves sound completely inhuman and the bad guy in the end, Mr. Goldman has severe problems with his articulation.

Story: 2 / 10
Completely predictable, no real twists or turns anywhere.
Does it matter in a game like this? 70% of the games in the world include ''saving the world'' somewhere in the plot, and these people aren't even trying to make it anymore interesting. Kill, kill, kill. In a game of this kind I could hardly consider this fact decreasing the game's overall ranking. It just plain doesn't matter.

Gameplay: 9 / 10
I don't have a light gun for the PC so I'm probably missing most of the fun and the difficulty factor is lowered noticeably, as playing with the mouse is accurate and easy. Nothing wrong with the controls. All you do in the game is just point your gun at different things and pull the trigger. Simple but fun as hell. With a real light gun you would need to shoot outside of the screen to reload the gun, with the mouse you just hit the rightmost button. This game is a bit more difficult than it's prequel, which is good thing considering replay. Also there's a load bonuses compared to real arcade machine, such as the training mode and the ''original'' mode where you get to choose different equipment. More of these pieces of equipment can be earned in the actual game itself and will be available the next time you start an ''original'' mode game. I dunno what makes it original, I thought the arcade was out first so that makes it the original.

As a sequel: 6 / 10
Better graphics, more of everything. Has anything been really improved or redone...well, not quite. It's a regular ''make some more money out of it''-improvement for a pretty popular game.

Overall: 8 / 10
Even thought there's a lot to complain about, this game IS fun. There's also some replayability in the form of the bonus modes which of course the arcade version doesn't have. Get this if you liked the first one. Wouldn't pay the full price for it, luckily it had a -50% label on it, so I only had to pay 20€.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/02, Updated 08/05/02