The House of the Dead 2

"Simple but addictive zombie blasting action."

House of the Dead 2

This quite a fun little point click shoot-em-up game from Sega. Just the thing if your in the mood for a game that tests your reflexes and accuracy and not so much your brain.

HoD2 was originally made a light gun for the arcade in 1998 and was latter ported over too the DC bundled with the DC light gun peripheral, and the PC, which makes use of the PC mouse rather than a light gun.

Though I imagine this game would be more fun to play with a light gun, it still works pretty well with the mouse controller, you move the targeted cross over a zombie or other undead creature, fire your gun with the left mouse button and reload with the right. The game is on rails, meaning you have no control over where your character go, but the game path does fork into routes depending how well you do in some stages.

Here's how HoD2 breaks up IMO.

Graphics 6/10

A bit of a mixed bag, while many of the zombies and undead monsters appear to be well modelled, animated and detailed much of the games graphics look dated by today's standards, that said this is a port of a 6 year old arcade game, so in that respect the graphics are relatively good. In any case the graphics more than do their job of conveying the action and atmosphere of the game.

Sound/music 5/10

The music camp and upbeat but is largely pretty much forgettable, the voice acting is dire (though at the same time pretty humorous) and the sound effects consist of the typical arcade assortment of bangs, explosions and zombie noises, the swamp monsters sound quite good though (quite swamp monsterish IMO) and the zombie owls make a satisfying screech when you shoot them down from the air.

Playability 7/10

Simple but addictive point and click arcade action, ideal for a short blast, though can get repetitive if played for a prolonged period. The zombies blast apart in a satisfying explosion of green gore on impact, particularly satisfying when you plug a couple of shots into their puss filled heads. There's more than just bog standard lumbering zombies to blast though, there are zombie axe men, chainsaw wielding lunatics, zombie ninjas, swamp monsters, flying creatures, killer fish and pretty much every type of undead monstrosity imaginably, some of the large end of stage bosses can be particularly impressive and/or grotesque.

On occasion you will come across people being set upon by zombie monsters. Saving these people is often well worth your while since on occasion they will yield life bonuses or open up new paths and short cuts for your character shooting a human will take a life away from you (though you are unlikely to do this for the most part, it is easy to tell the people apart from the undead).

Overall 6/10

Bear in mind I would give a 5 for an average game, so at a budget price this game is well worth getting if your looking for a game that will provide you with a quick few minutes of pure zombie blasting action when you have a few minutes to spare.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/03/04