Game Review: House of the Dead 2

Today I will review House of the Dead 2 (a zombie shooter). It will be the first game I review, and one of the few I will ever do. I'm not so much of a gamer, myself, you see. I just happened to play House of the Dead 2 when I was at a friends, and I thought, well, let's review it.

So, the variant I have played was House of the Dead 2 for the Wii. Originally, it's an arcade game made in 1998. It came out for the pc, the Sega Dreamcast, for the Xbox and finally – together with House of the Dead 3 for the Wii, where they guaranteed easy gameplay.

Graphics

For a game made in 1998, the graphics are quite good. For current standards, it's not that beautiful. However, they tried to keep it as close as possible to the original arcade game, and with that, they did a pretty good job. So while the graphics aren't that beautiful for modern days high standard, they certainly do their job: give you a good overview of the game.

Gameplay

Now let's move on to the game itself.

The thing that immediately bothers me is the voice acting. When you rescue someone from the hands from a zombie, of course they say “thank you for saving my life”, which is quite polite, however, they do that on the same intonation that you would have while ordering a pizza. Which is the exact same intonation that someone who seems to be in panic (graphic-wise), says “My friends are in there. Save them, please.”

Not very inspiring voice acting, that is. It is almost as if they have hired a bunch of boring news readers to do their voice acting. Or actually, the voices. There isn't a lot of acting in it.

Now, the graphics. For a game that is a few years old, and could be played on quite old consoles and computers, the graphics are quite good. Of course the graphics could be somewhat enhanced during it's age, but in general, it looks quite good.

The game play is quite fascinating, especially for someone who doesn't play zombie shooters that often (like me ^_^). It is quite easy to learn, because of the very intuitive interface: aiming towards the screen is aiming, pulling the trigger is shooting. Some times, though, the aiming could be a bit difficult, because if your pointer is off screen, it might be a little difficult to find it back. That could cause you to miss some rounds, and with that, points. Usual moments where that happens, is right after a cut scene (there are quite a few throughout the game). Those are the moments where an indicator at your screen, saying 'your pointer is in this direction' would come in very handy.

It isn't very difficult to hit the zombies, because you have an indicator of where you are aiming at. So you can very easily aim for the head and shoot, because you actually know where you are going to hit.

When you get hit, you'll lose 1 'hitpoint', when you are out of hitpoints you lose a life (actually called credits – a leftover from the time it was still an arcade game). The further you get in playing, the more hitpoints and credits you have when you play it next time. Unfortunately, when you are out of credits, you aren't able to add any more, like you used to be able to at the old arcade games.

If you have two Wiimotes and a friend/sibling/other generic family member, you can play it with two people at a time. This makes it easier to do. Although the monsters will be harder, they will not be twice as hard – except for the bosses. For instance, at a place where you would usually get two zombies, you will get three if you play together. When playing with two people, you share the number of credits (lives), but you do not share the hitpoints.

The game has a boss at the end of every level, and at the end level, you get all the old bosses back again. The bosses have certain weak points, where you can hit them, usually only enabled during a short amount of time. Those areas are not that big, so it is quite difficult to actually hit them, before they attack you. The third boss is quite difficult, seeing as it has 5 different weak spots, and you'll have to figure out which of those five is currently vulnerable to an attack. And you'll have to decide that within a split second, or actually .. before it attacks you.

Controls

Let's go through the controls now.

Shooting:

Shooting is done by pulling the 'b' button on the Wiimote. However, the friend that I played House of the Dead 2 with, had just received special 'guns' for the game. You would click the Wiimote in, and when you pull the trigger, the 'gun' would press the 'b' button for you. Only downside to those guns is that the trigger is really hard to pull, so after two rounds of bullets, you would already get a cramped index finger. But it looks cool nonetheless.

Aiming:

There's not a lot to say about aiming... How would you aim on the Wii, other then pointing the gun in the correct direction? It was a good thing that there was an option to calibrate the aim, so that you could aim better.

Reloading:

It took us a while to figure out how to reload, actually. The game doesn't really mention it, so for starters, it can be quite a hassle reloading. But it actually is very simple. Just aim the pointer off the screen. On the Wii, that is very easy to do: simply shake your hand downwards, and point it back up to the screen. You'll hear a 'chk-chk' and you are ready to fire six bullets more.

Walking:

A little disappointment here. The game walks for you. When you are finished with shooting the zombies you will see motion, and your character will “move” for you. This is also a left over from the old arcade game. You could have different routes, though, by shooting – or actually missing – certain targets. For example, at a certain point, there is someone in a boat, and a few zombies attack him. If you save his life, he will open up a gate for you, giving you an alternative route to do it. Do note that all of the routes are equally difficult.

Basically, that's all there is for the controls. Of course there is scrolling in the menu, and pausing the game, but that is very self-explaining.

Story

The story isn't all that great. The game is a zombie shooter, located in Venice, Italy, during the year 2000. The evil one in House of the Dead 2 is Goldman, an insane doctor who found ways to ressurect the dead, only then they would turn into zombies. The AMS (note: the game doesn't mention what AMS stands for) is battling against his evil plot to take over the world. Nothing special there.

Final Verdict

The voice acting couldn't be worse. Take the one person you know with the least feeling in it's voice, and use even less feeling, then you have the voice acting in House of the Dead 2. But other than that, it's a good zombie shooter. It isn't hard to learn, and you'll be able to shoot your way through at least 3 of the (I think) 6 levels quite quickly. One small negative point about the game – other then the voice acting – is that the story line is only interesting the first time, after that, you won't get the feeling of “wow, this is a really innovative, new and interesting storyline”, because it is not.

House of the Dead 2 is not only available as a zombie shooter, but also as a zombie typer. How does that work? Well, you have “Typing of the Dead”. It is a typing course, with the same story (and horrible voice acting) as House of the Dead 2. Only instead of taking a gun and blasting the zombie's brains out, you have a keyboard and you'll have to type the words that you get correctly, in order to 'blast their brains out'. It is quite an interesting concept, but when you have played your way through House of the Dead 2, there is nothing surprising about Typing of the Dead, except for the words that you have to type. About those, I must say, they did quite an interesting job on that. The words are often centered along themes, and at a certain boss (not really sure which one it was, but it was one of the latter ones), they form a complete short story. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to type that fast, so I shall never know how that story finishes.

That's it for the review of House of the Dead 2. I hope you all enjoyed reading it, because I enjoyed playing the game and writing this.

Written By: Elanthiel
Edited By: Mageman
Coded By: Donut Juice