Review - House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return
posted 13 March 2008, Thursday
$30
1-2 Players
Variable Difficulty
Undoubtedly House of the Dead is one of the greatest lightgun franchises to ever grace an arcade cabinet, and while it's been released on a few consoles in the past it hasn't had much exposure in the home arena. Thankfully, Sega has seen the big sales of their other Wii lightgun game and have decided to bring us a two game compilation featuring both House of the dead 2 and 3. This is a day I've been eagerly anticipating for a long, long time.
HOTD 2 and 3 are classic games that stand on their own merit so this is more a review of the compilation and the porting process, and unfortunately there isn't much to talk about. Both of these games are pretty much straight ports of the previous console versions with no extra features except Wiimote support and a new, harder mode in HOTD3. It's as basic as it gets, but like I said earlier these games are classics and if you like them lack of extra content is hardly an issue.
Control-wise this compilation improves on what Sega started with their other Wii game Ghost Squad. It features a similar calibration, but this time it's a whole lot better. No longer are you forced to calibrate and play from a ridiculous 10 feet away. Now you can do it from about 5 feet out and play from there too. It's still not perfect, but it's much improved and very close to a traditional lightgun experience. If Sega can continue to improve their Wiimote calibration methods we may even see true 1:1 lightgun games in the future.
The games appear true to the arcade originals (I can't remember the last time I played one of these in an arcade), and there are no bugs to speak of. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of configurable controls - AGAIN - and the inability to use the A button to shoot. I don't like the B button to shoot when using the wiimote and Sega should have given us that option. At least they give us the ability to use the Z button as a trigger when using the Zapper, but they force us to hold down the B button to do it which doesn't make any sense.
Simply put this is a cut and dry port of two classic House of the Dead games. There's a tiny bit of extra content and enough attention to detail to make things look acceptable, but these are classic games that don't need anything to be great. There is no doubt that Sega could have and should have put more effort into it, but we should be happy that we are getting these games at all considering they haven't been on home consoles that often, and for all intents and purposes were dead.
I GIVE HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2&3 RETURN AN 8/10 [GREAT]
Franchise Bias +
Genre Bias +
Genre Bias +
PROS:
- Extra mode for HOTD3
- Much improved Wiimote calibration
- Don't have to be 10ft away to play with Zapper
- Z trigger
CONS:
- Cut and dry port
- No button configuration options
- Have to hold down B to use Z as the trigger
VALUE:
- These games are pretty rare on consoles with gun attachments so I'm fine paying $30. These are fun arcade games that already have a few different modes so you can play these forever.
