The House of the Dead: Overkill Hands-on Preview

Ah, zombies and headshots! A classic combination that goes together like fish and chips – only with less batter and more brain matter. If you are a Wii owner who’s been itching to dish out some shotgun-based decapitations, you’ll no doubt be pleased about the forthcoming return of SEGA’s House of the Dead series, courtesy of British developer Headstrong Games.

Of course, Nintendo’s little console has already received a port of Houses 2 and 3, but Overkill marks the first time we’ve had a fresh instalment in the series. If you’ve seen the game’s excellent trailer then you’ll know all about the Grindhouse-style B-movie presentation – the deliberately scratchy graphics, funky background music and tongue-in-cheek cheesy dialogue. To be honest, it was probably this design more than anything else that caught our attention when we first saw the game in Leipzig earlier this year. It’s an interesting way to go about reinventing a franchise, so when we headed to our first hands-on last week we were curious to see how the action itself would play out.

We’ll cut straight to the chase: Headstrong haven’t decided to turn House of the Dead into a turn-based strategy game. What we have here is a straightforward on-rails lightgun shooter. Aim your targeting reticule with the remote, shoot the zombie in the head, rinse and repeat. Firing is mapped to the B trigger and you can switch weapons with the 1 and 2 buttons, while reloading is simply a matter of giving your controller a quick shake. Moving your cross-hair to the sides of the screen will allow you to pan your vision from side to side a bit, but otherwise this is very much traditional light gun fare – not that we can imagine this being a problem for fans of the series.

The most important thing is that Wii remote-based aiming works very well. Depending on whether you take control of Agent G or his partner Detective Washington, you’ll have access to a magnum and either a shotgun or a submachine gun. All three weapons have different sized crosshairs and power values, but whatever you’ll choose you’ll find dismembering the undead to be a total breeze. As your target zips about the screen it’ll leave a little light trail behind it, a smart touch which helps you to keep track of your aim when playing alongside a chum. If you managed to fire off several shots in a row without missing, you’ll start to fill up a meter at the top of the screen. Get this high enough, and you’ll reach one of three combo levels, as announced by the a gravelly-voiced commentator. Just in case you had any doubts about the game’s sense of humour, we can tell you that the highest of these levels is called “goregasm”. Yummy!

The demo we played carried us through the first half of Overkill’s second chapter, set inside a trashed hospital. While still a fairly early build, the 70’s trash-flick aesthetic was in full effect: the graphics had a scratchy, bleached look, with occasional ripples or tears in the game’s ‘film stock’. The sound design is equally retro, with background music that could only be described as “funktastic”, with lashing of slap-bass and boom chicka wah wah. If you’re thinking that this sounds as cheesy as a quattro formaggio, you’re right – but that’s the whole point. In between firefights, you’ll also be treated to some choice dialogue between the two heroes. “I ain’t getting in no f*ckin’ elevator!” screams Washington, to the dismay of his rather more sensible partner.

Such naughty language should reassure anyone who feared that the House of the Dead might be cleaned up for the Wii. This is a serious game for grown-ups, with lots of violence, swearing and boobies. Headstrong say that they’ve tried to include as much nasty content as possible, and while what we’ve seen so far was hardly nightmare inducing, it certainly indulged our puerile desire for gore. Your undead enemies will react differently depending on where you shoot them, and while there was something a bit odd about the way blood splattered about in neat circles, it was highly satisfying to blow off someone’s head with a well-aimed shotgun round. Most of our adversaries in the hospital were either “bitey” zombies, or traditional thrower-type villains who hurled knives at our face – knives that can be shot out of the air, naturally. Old skool is the order of the day, and don’t you forget it.

We’re told that the finished game will offer seven chapters, each with a length of around 15 to 20 minutes. There’s no choice of route within each stage, but completing the main campaign will unlock a harder “Director’s Cut”, with alternate paths through the levels. Credits will be limited in this second outing, so you’ll have to play like a poor kid with no pocket money at his local arcade – just like old times, eh? Two hours for the main campaign may not sound like long but as with all lightgun shooters, replayability will be the main factor in determining the game’s true lifespan. For that we’ll have to wait until next year. Oh well, at least we’ll have time to grow an afro. Boom chicka wah wah!

House of the Dead: Overkill will rise from the grave in the first quarter of next year