The House of the Dead

Review by Ofisil

"Some games need to remain in the Arcades"

The House Of The Dead is a Rail Shooter developed and released by SEGA. Being a very successful game in the Arcades SEGA has decided to create a PC port too. Of course no console can much the processing power of an Arcade system, but if the gameplay I good it doesn't really matter. But does this game fit into that category?

Story: 5/10

A very typical story that serves only as background and doesn't affect the actual gameplay. You are an agent of a secret organization or something and discover that a friends of yours, (female of course), is held captive in a mansion full of undead stuff that are obviously very hostile. Don't expect something special, you shoot stuff, meet the guy who has created all this monsters, kill him and go on with your life, nothing spectacular.

Graphics: 4.8/10

I've got to admit that this game looks very bad even for an old game. I didn't expect it to be similar to the Arcade version of course, but a little better graphic quality would be great. First of all everything look very… rectangular! Arms, legs, heads, not a single curve on something, making monsters look more like toys instead of monsters. Also very bad texturing and use of colors making everything look very dull. Finally though it is fun to see through a bullet hole in a zombie's head its very bad seeing holes where they don't belong, or disjoint limbs.

Sound: 5.5/10

There are two problems concerning the sound of HOTD. First of all, all House Of The Dead games are famous for the extremely bad quality of the voice acting and this is no exception. All characters sound as if they are bored with their lives, show no feeling and say extremely cheesy stuff like, “Say hello to my masterpiece” and things like that which sound ridiculous, but at least there isn't much talking like the next two games. Secondly there is little sound effect variety. Monsters have ok sounds, although a bit odd and weapons sound powerful enough, the problem is that after hearing the same gunfire or monster moaning for the thousandth time, things start to get a bit boring. Apart from all that music themes are very simple and fit to the action although they don't have anything special about them that creates a horror atmosphere.

Gameplay: 6/10

You automatically follow a predetermined path in first person's view and shoot stuff that suddenly appear in front of you. Reload and repeat, don't worry, you have infinite ammo. This basically is the gameplay of this game. In the Arcade you would use a light gun to shoot the ghouls of the game but here you can only use a keyboard\joystick\mouse. Of course if you aren't close to madness you're surely use the mouse. The mouse has only one good thing, faster reloading time. In the Arcade you'd have to shoot outside the screen in order to reload but here you can do this with a single right mouse click. Although this sounds great it isn't because it doesn't have that something of the Light Gun and this is probably the major problem with the PC version of the game. Forget the bad graphics and the horrible voice acting, the game just isn't the same with a mouse. It was meant to be played with a Light Gun!

Another bad thing is the difficulty of the game and by that I don't mean that is too hard. Imagine this, you are ready to shoot everything that pops in front of you, you shoot, shoot, shoot, you are invincible, nothing can touch you and there when you are so happy for yourself a monster appears from nowhere one step ahead of you and before you can say, WTH he has taken one of your lives. The next time you'll play the game, since you'll now know when he will appear, you'll be ready to kill him at your comfort and that's exactly the challenge of this game, play, loose, memorize, repeat, kill and keep on playing until you meet the next unfair placement of an enemy.

An addition to the PC mode is the Console Mode, (if I remember the name correctly), which instead of playing with the main character, you can choose between some more that have great differences concerning their characteristics. Something quite good is the branching system the game uses considering your movement in the mansion. For example, you are fighting some zombies and behind them you see a door, if you shoot its lock you will open it and go on through the door, if you don't you'll follow the default path. There are many “branches” in the game that although they don't offer something special add a bit to the replay value of the game.

Positives:
-Characters with different stats

Negatives:
-Poor graphic quality
-Nominated for worse voice acting, (and the winner is HOTD 3!!!)
-Depends too much in trial-error
-Nothing near the Arcade experience due to the use of the Mouse instead of a Light Gun

Also Play:
The House Of The Dead 2-3 (Arcade & PC)
Virtua Cop 2 (Arcade & PC)
Virtua Cop 3 (Arcade)

Overall: 5.3/10

Even if it had better graphics and sound it would still be a mediocre game and that only because of the control. The game is very good but only in the place where it became famous. So grab some money and off you go… TO THE ARCADES!!!