The House of the Dead III

"Falls short of my expectations"

I was really looking forward towards this game, I really enjoyed HotD2 (and Typing of the Dead even more), and I was hoping it could measure up to those games. Well, let's see how it measures up.

Graphics:

Very, very nice. The zombies look very realistic, the blood is very nice (the green blood looks better than the red, graphicalwise). The backdrops are very nicely made, and I can tell each zombie has a very large amount of polygons, but yet again, this game is incredibly short (more into this later), so they had more time to work on the graphics than usual.

Sound:

You can hear a zombie moan and groan..you hear a chainsaw..you turn around, and you see a zombie with a chainsaw about ready to kill you, and you, of course, shoot him dead. The sound really adds to the intensity of this game. While there is little to no music, you don't have time to worry about music, because this game is all about reflexes. The voice acting in this game certainly isn't incredibly, but it gets by.

Controls:

I found them awkward with the Xbox controller. This is probably different with a lite-gun, haven't tried this game with one (and I don't plan to). There is only a few buttons used - center your cursor, reload, shoot, speed up (never used it), and move your cursor. Pretty simple. You can also change the speed of your cursor (and the style of cursor, which is great in multiplay).

Gameplay:

Here we go. Now, my absolute favorite part of this game was the multiplayer. I played with my friend around 10 PM in his room in the dark, and it wasn't as scary as I thought it'd be, but it was great. You and your buddy play and you both have a cursor on the screen (a red cursor and a blue cursor) and you shoot the zombies before they get you. That simple. But the cursors can sometimes be hard to keep track of in multiplayer (not much in singleplayer though), and that's the only downside.

The actual gameplay is quite simple. You move your little cursor to the zombie and shoot before they get to you. You have to have excellent reflexes also. There are powerups throughout the level for extra time for time attack and lives for survival mode. Quite simple, like I said. The story to the game is even simpler. You and your dad's friend try to rescue your dad from a giant facility infested with zombies. And did I mention that you can complete this game very easily in half an hour? Yes, it's that short.

The only thing that really saves this game is House of the Dead 2 included. Beat HotD3, get HotD2. And there is multiplay in both games. HotD2 actually has more features than HotD3 though, strange.

Replay:

Just to beat your times and get more points, not much.

Rent..Buy?:

Rent it. Definantly rent it. No doubt in my mind. Just rent it.

+Multiplay
+House of the Dead 2
+Intense graphics
-It's short
-Cursors can be hard to keep track of
-Did I mention it's short?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/02, Updated 10/28/02