House of the Dead: OVERKILL Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 18th February 2009

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Gore galore on the Wii.

House of the Dead: OVERKILL Details:

Goto House of the Dead: OVERKILL Game Page

	Arcade
	Nintendo Wii
	Headstrong Games
	Sega

18+

Out Now

1-4

Warning due to the content of this article, readers under the age of 18 or those easily offended should navigate away from this page now!
Putting a warning like that at the beginning of this review, somehow seems appropriate given that Nintendo’s Wii is suppose to be the champion of family gaming, and this latest offering from SEGA is anything but family orientated.

House of the Dead: OVERKILL, is a very adult orientated, old school arcade style shooter that doesn’t do things by halves. In fact you may think that developer Headstrong Games read a manual on how to make a successful family friendly game throw it away and did the complete opposite, with overkill!

The story behind this gore filled zombie fest is shallow to say the least and has a very B-movie feel to it. Which is deliberate? Agent G (a clean cut secret agent who likes to do things by the book) teams up with Detective Isaac Washington (a rough and tough cop who likes to say the F-word and its derivatives a lot, make that a real lot) to get to the bottom of the zombie infestation. Expect lots of gratuitous gore, bad language, sexual innuendo, more bad language, toilet humour and even more bad language.

OVERKILL is nothing short of a demonstration of how not to make a family orientated game, which seems to have found a niche on Nintendo’s platform. In fact, the adult theme in House of the Dead: OVERKILL has been implemented in such a way that the game seems somewhat immature, but is it fun to play!

As mentioned above the game is an arcade style shooter, meaning it’s exactly like those shooting games in arcades that have you blasting every thing in sight with a gun! Sounds simple and it is, movement is automatic and all you do is point your crosshairs at any of the flesh eating zombies heading your way and fill them full of lead until they fall! The game is packed full of the walking dead and they just seem to keep coming from all directions, in fact you may say there are more zombies in OVERKILL, then you can shoot a gun at! Speaking of which weapons can be purchased and upgraded at the gun shop before each level and include Shotguns, Assault Rifle, Magnum and SMG. Upgrades include increasing the clip size, rate of fire, amount of damage and so on. The amount of money you have available is obviously determined by your score for each level, and there are a number of power-ups scattered throughout the levels such as Golden Brains that give you a point’s bonus, grenades, health packs and a Slow Mo-Fo power-up that slows down time allowing you to take out zombies with headshots.

OVERKILL may not sound like the most inspired game ever and to be fair its not, it’s a very old school style shooter and its mix of over the top gore and bad language won’t be to the taste of a lot of Wii gamers but it is highly enjoyable and despite it being very repetitive in nature, you simply won’t mind because you’ll be having too much fun! The game runs at a pace that is just right, many games in this genre move far too slow, however OVERKILL’s pace is perfect and keeps the action interesting. Sadly, though all fun things must come to an end, and in OVERKILL this comes far too soon, with only seven levels to play through. There’s the standard boss battle to get through at the end of each level which focus more on accuracy then how many bullets you can hit them with. Each boss has specific areas on their bodies highlighted and you must accurately hit these in order to deplete the sub health bar. Once this sub health bar has been expended then the boss losses a small amount of health and the process is repeated until obviously the boss is no more. Bosses themselves are pretty varied and gruesome to look at and really add to the retro feeling of the game, which is implemented brilliantly.

The games story mode is entirely playable by two players, giving the game massive replay value! To further flesh things out (sorry couldn’t resist that one), once you complete the story mode you can play through the Directors Cut of the game. This is an extended version of the story mode in all its gory… sorry I mean glory, it still features seven stages, however they all feature deleted scenes that extend the length. Not only that, there’s a hell of a lot more zombies to deal with, and to make it more challenging the pace has been significantly increased, meaning your reactions have to be spot on to deal with the undead.

As well as the Directors Cut OVERKILL also features three mini-games to play for up to fours players, these are all fairly simple and see you having to protect civilians from zombies whilst they try to escape through exits in Victim Support. In Stayin’ Alive you have to survive as long as you can against ever increasing waves of zombies. The final mini-games, is Money Shot II a shooting gallery, which is fairly challenging. The mini-games are pretty fun to play and add a nice bit of variety to the title.

OVERKILL is one of the better looking Wii games and is presented in a B-movie style, with grainy filters that really compliment the games theme. Levels are all themed and well varied! As mentioned above, the game is somewhat of a gore fest, and the games graphics engine allows you to shoot zombies apart limb by limb and then watch them fall into a squelching pile of red ooze, which can be fun. As good as the game looks though, it’s not perfect! The frame rate can be a bit irregular, especially in the Directors Cut and there seems to be some collision detection problems in the games AI.

The game features a great soundtrack, which is done in a rock style, it’s very catchy and probably one of the best I’ve heard on the Wii. Voice acting is performed well and plays on movie stereotypes, whilst general sound effects are all very fitting.

House of the Dead: OVERKILL breaths new life into a genre many considered to be dead, much like the games subject matter. Yes it’s over the top, yes in a sense it’s immature, but we love it!