The House of the Dead: Overkill - Extended Cut

But then the trick is arguably the same from Operation Wolf to Time Crisis: toss in a quid, grab a plastic pistol and fire at the screen to survive. All but your aim and the pulling of the trigger is automated (hence "on-rail shooter", the term the genre squeezed into in the move from the arcades and into the living room) and as such is the shooter genre in its purest form.

Now that the majority of arcades are closed one can begin to talk about the loss of this once most exciting of genres. Sega, publisher of some of the most well-known light-gun titles in existence, has obviously sought to fill that loss with the re-release of House of the Dead Overkill, ported from the Wii original to PlayStation 3 and its Move controller. Renovation work in the platform exchange is such that only those with keen eyes will spot the differences.

Despite that, Overkill is deserved of some praise, mainly for the presentation that is both unique and appropriate.

From menus to the film roll filters, everything stinks of B-movie and Grindhouse / exploitation / sexploitation, the kind of parody Left 4 Dead touched on, but in this case is far more consistent. House of the Dead Overkill is thus clearly made to appear to be both distasteful and cheap.

The missions are presented via movie-style posters with distasteful names - Papa's Palace of Pain, Naked Terror, Ballistic Trauma, and the mission summary is dictated with a silly voice delivering silly lines ("This place looks like closing hours on a saturday night! "), both parodic in nature.

Even with the Move equipped, the basic gameplay is frighteningly simple, forcing you to aim, shoot, repeat. But the developer has done a good job in fattening up the game with optional choices such as dual wielding, classic and hardcore mode, plus some mini-games and challenges across the ten levels. The title's got drop-in co-op if a friend's eager to assist you in the massacre.

There's no doubt Overkill is somewhere in the middle of the scoring scale. As a Wii title it was a fun on-rails shooter for two people. Two years on and a format shift hasn't changed that fact. It'll offer you some fun and cheap thrills, and its hard not to recommend a title that holds the world record for the largest number of F-bombs dropped in a video game.