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Product summary
The "dogs of the AMS" make their move to the Wii in this fun but brief port of the on-rails arcade shooters.
Specifications: ESRB: Mature ; Genre: Action ; Elements: Racing / driving - arcade ; See full specs
Price range: $21.99 - $29.99
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 03/28/2008
- Released on: 03/11/2008
The House of the Dead games are gleefully fun on-rails shooters that drop you knee-deep in the undead with a loaded weapon and encourage you to aim for the head. The series places a great deal of emphasis on throwing unconventional monsters at you--such as zombie mermen, zombie frogs, zombie bats, zombie plants, and zombie ninjas--while dazzling your intellect with so-bad-it's-good voice acting and a ridiculous story pretentiously in love with the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Although Sega has finally managed to perfect IR shooting on the Wii with this bundle of two of the series' games, House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return is ultimately a short, simple port of aging games that suffers from an inconsistent frame rate and isn't quite worth the asking price.
House of the Dead 2 picks up two years after the mysterious mansion incident from the first game, in which the mad Dr. Curien released an army of the undead. Once again you take the role of an agent of the AMS, a secret international agency that investigates paranormal activity, and you are dispatched to Venice, Italy, where fellow agent G has gone missing. Naturally, the undead are to blame, and you must shoot your way through wave after wave of zombies and the occasional boss to save the city, all while trying not to harm the innocent civilians. As with its predecessor, your actions will determine the path that you travel to your destination, and it will take multiple play-throughs to see everything.
This particular half of the collection offers a near-perfect port of the arcade edition and several extra game modes, including training missions, a Boss Battle mode, and Original Mode, which lets you augment yourself with items to increase your firepower, number of credits, and more. These are welcome additions, but they don't really add very much to this severely aging and extremely short zombie-disassembly line.
House of the Dead 3 takes place a full 19 years later, in a postapocalyptic world infested with the undead. This time, you'll play as G and Lisa Rogan as they battle their way through the research facility that served as ground zero for the outbreak that overwhelmed the planet. You're armed a bit more heavily (combat shotguns), and thankfully there are no civilians to rescue. Instead, you occasionally have to save your partner for the chance to earn bonus health. Other changes include the ability to select your next level, which alters the path that you travel, and a scoring system that awards you a letter grade based on your performance.
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