What's that coming over the hill?
Gameplay is relentless and the zombies attack thick and fast. Despite some zombie clones rearing their ugly heads from time to time, there’s a nice variety of grisly animations to look forward to as well as an assortment of zombie types, including zombie clowns, zombie nurses and surgeons, zombies on fire and zombies wielding baseball bats. Some amble slowly toward you, while others dash at you like rabid lunatics and all impressively spray with blood and explode whenever you pepper them with bullets from the likes of the SMG, assault rifle or powerful automatic shotgun.The Wii-mote works very well. You point it at the screen and move the aiming reticule over a zombie body part and blast away with the B button. Reload swiftly by shaking the Nunchuck and switch quickly through your weapon with the 1 and 2 buttons. You can also drag the aiming reticule to the side of the screen to take a look around and keep an eye out for health packs, grenades and power-ups, including the “Slow Mo-Fo,2 which slows down the action temporarily allowing you to dispatch zombies with ease.
House of The Dead Overkill isn’t without its irritations. There's a bit of slowdown here and there, especially when the screen becomes cluttered with enemies, which can also sometimes, annoyingly so, prevent you from picking up ammo. In two player co-op mode the problem is noticeably worse. There are also some repetitive animations and cloned zombie character models, alongside the occasional glitch and weak boss battle, but in general it’s a blast, and the intense gameplay and graphical style lays down an excellent foundation for future iterations of the series.
The story-mode is really short, we completed it in less than 3 hours, but there’s further replay value in the Director's Cut that you can unlock, which opens up new areas and gets more difficult, throwing even more zombies into the mix. There’s also the chance to dual wield Wii-motes if you can blast your way through the hordes of undead.
House of the Dead Overkill may just be about shooting zombies and simply putting your finger on the trigger, aiming and shooting, but SEGA has done it with so much style that it’s hard not to get caught up in its over-the-top violence and frantic gameplay. It’s not perfect by any means, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any other adult-themed game on Wii that manages to sustain your interest for this long.
Click for larger imagePros
Great pacing, frantic and engaging.
Stylish over-the-top gore and funny script
Perfect game for the Wii-mote, point and shoot.
Finally, a hardcore Wii game!
Cons
Some slowdown Some weak boss battles
Any fan of rail shooters would be foolish to miss this violent and vulgar zombie-slaying fest.
HEXUS Awards
House of The Dead Overkill (8/10)
