Violent, vulgar and downright nasty. Hell yeah!
House of the Dead Overkill certainly warrants its ‘18’ rating. It’s outrageously crude and vulgar, full of expletives and littered with over-the-top bloody violence. In fact, it’s just what the doctor ordered if you, like us, have been holding out for a decent hardcore experience on Wii’s family friendly console! SEGA’s light-gun shooting franchise has been revamped for Wii and the Wii-mote or the Wii Zapper lends itself perfectly to the genre. From start to finish, House of The Dead Overkill is fast-paced, exciting, stylish, funny and totally extravagant with its bloody brutality and excessive cut-scenes. Hell yeah! It’s the most fun we’ve had on Wii for a long time.Some of the themes likely to upset parents, whose children may have managed to bag themselves a copy of House of The Dead Overkill, include partially nude zombies, urinating zombies and even a zombie that snogs his own mother (must've been a Z.I.L.F.) The script, which contains such delightful dialogue as. “I’m going to amputate your mother f**king head.” and I’m gonna rip your motherf**king balls off,” are some of the tamer verbal outbursts that you’ll hear throughout the game’s 10 levels and ‘B’ move-inspired trailers and cut-scenes that proceed each Zombie-slaughtering chapter.
The plot of House of The Dead Overkill transports us back to 1991 before the first House of the Dead. Special Agent G teams up with Detective Isaac Washington for an assignment in the Louisiana city of Bayou, where they’re tasked with hunting down the crime Lord, Papa Caesar and investigating a number of mysterious disappearances in the area. The tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top storyline is basically just an excuse to blast your way through hundreds of zombies across ten suitably grimy locations, including a blood-drenched hospital ward, complete with zombie nurses and surgeons, and a carnival where zombies dressed as clown lurk in the shadows ready to rip your throat out. Don't know about you, but clowns scare the S**T out of us.
Like previous House of The Dead games, Overkill is a rails shooter where you’re hoisted around each of the locations without ever really being able to explore them. Despite the limitations of this system though, there’s plenty of variety in each of the levels and the grisly array of zombie characters are entertaining and diverse enough to ensure that there’s never a dull moment. The scoring system adds to the excitement, encouraging you to rack up combos and get head shots with the reward of a higher violence rating and the chance to hear the gravelly-voiced commentator shout out the likes of “Goregasm” - that's if you have the skill to rack up a combo of approximately 30 zombies. Being able to use your points at the beginning of each level to purchase new weapons or upgrades, that improve the likes of your gun’s clip size or fire-rate, also encourages you to be as accurate as possible when killing zombies. The scoring system certainly encourages you to concentrate and therefore does a good job at getting you caught up and immersed in the action.
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