The House of the Dead: Overkill originally arrived on the Wii back in 2009 as one of the precious few mature titles striving for an audience on Nintendo’s family friendly console. The kid-centric casual gamer stigma of the console aside, the Wii was arguably the perfect fit for a grindhouse-inspired lightgun game; Wiis sit dust-covered in darkened corners of living rooms everywhere like deserted and forgotten movie theatres, while the murky visuals of Nintendo’s console are certainly the current gen gaming equivalent of a well-worn flickering film projector. But two years on, SEGA have decided to give PS3 owners an excuse to dust off their Move controllers as they bring The House of the Dead: Overkill to HD gamers as a souped-up Extended Cut, with added content, 3D support and online leaderboards. Though the visuals might be sharper, this is still the same gruesome and gleefully gore-filled grindhouse romp it was on the Wii, only now with more stuff to shoot and with a tighter, more responsive system to play it on.
The grindhouse aesthetic is a tough tone to nail. Sure, it’s easy to put faux film grain scratches on something and call it a day, but the actual spirit of a grindhouse movie – the super-cheesy ‘so bad it’s good’ exploitation vibe – is a deceptively hard balance to strike with success. There’s a reason that so many films that try to intentionally recreate that B-movie aesthetic fall flat on their face and wind up being so bad they’re…well…terrible, and not in a fun ‘I can enjoy it ironically as I mock it over beer and a pizza’ kind of way. Surprisingly, Overkill does it perfectly, and what at first glance seems like a lazy gimmick turns out in practice to be a loving homage to the grindhouse spirit, even if it does owe all its tricks and trappings to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s retro opus Grindhouse.
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The story is delightfully nutty late night horror movie fodder filled with babes, exploded skulls and brash blaxploitation buddy movie banter (Afro-American supercop lead Detective Washington throws more “motherfuckers” into a sentence than a drunk, pissed-off Sam Jackson). Mismatched cops Washington and straight-laced Agent G are on the trail of psychotic crime lord Papa Caesar, who’s responsible for an outbreak of genetic abominations. Meanwhile, gun-toting stripper Varla Guns and her gal pal Candy Stryper are also on the hunt for Caesar, out for revenge for the death of Varla’s brother/Candy’s boyfriend, the wheelchair bound, robot-voiced scientist Jasper. While it’s a rarity that the story in a lightgun game is ever more than a flimsy distraction between bouts of shooting things in the cerebral cortex, the hilariously daft cut-scenes in Overkill offer just as much fun as the game itself, filled with wonderfully OTT grindhouse narration, ridiculously (and intentionally) dumb dialogue and a tonne of deliciously daft one-liners.
The game divides itself into nine separate chapters (two of which are new to PS3 and see you playing as Varla and Candy), each delivered as its own mini movie, with opening narration and distinctive exploitation flick set-up, title (like ‘Ballistic Trauma’, ‘Papa’s Palace of Pain’ and ‘Naked Terror’) and locale (a meat packing plant, a strip club, a carnival, a hospital, and more), with each one tying into the larger plot. The gameplay itself is as simple as they come: It’s a lightgun game in which you’ll shoot an endless parade of zombies before taking on the level’s bosses (which are pretty creative and distinct in their weirdness, whether you’re shooting a giant mutant cow in its udders or blasting a Ringu-inspired woman attempting to crawl out of the screen).
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It’s not especially deep or complex, but as on-rails lightgun fun goes, under the grindhouse aesthetics, House of the Dead: Overkill is as polished and entertaining as any in recent memory. While the Wii version of the game masked its greatness with some unfortunately laggy response times, the PlayStation Move corrects that issue instantly with perfectly precise motion controls. Visually the game looks much sharper and runs far smoother than it did on the Wii. The visuals aren’t exactly ground-breaking and character models during cut-scenes can look pretty dated even outside the Grindhouse motif, but during gameplay it looks great, and this is a game whose often clunky voice acting and rougher edges only work in its favour. The game throws a few fun touches to the mechanics, with the lightgun equivalent of quick-time events popping up occasionally; the game will launch into stylish slo-mo as targets sail through the air – hit them and you’ll dodge, duck and drop-kick your enemy.
Along the way, Overkill scatters an impressive array of collectibles for you to snag. If you’re quick on the draw, you can shoot special pick-ups dotted around the background of rooms as you blast your way through the undead masses, with grenades, health boosts, cash and ‘slo-mofo’ boosts which will temporarily slow time for you. Aside from the power-ups, there’s a wide selection of added extras to cap and collect, from comic pages which will allow you to read the complete Prelude to an Overkill graphic novel when you’ve found them all, to concept art, music and 3D models. Between levels you can spend your collected cash on an arsenal of weapons, with a variety of power, reload speed, recoil tweak upgrades and such for each. The Extended Cut also introduces 3D to the game, both stereoscopic and old-school cardboard anaglyph to compliment the drive-in horror movie vibe. While it’s debatable whether you’ll want to go back and scour every level for the extras, the bonus content adds some fun touches.
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The House of the Dead: Overkill – Extended Cut is nothing revolutionary, and the lack of variety amongst the majority of shambling zombie enemies is rarely anything but tiny and cosmetic outside of the creatively disgusting boss fights. But that’s par for the course for a lightgun game and while – even with the extra two levels – Overkill is a pretty short game that you’ll sail through in an afternoon, it’s a riotously fun experience from start to finish, especially if you have an extra Move controller and a buddy at your side. With a gloriously daft story and plenty of top-notch arcade gameplay, The House of the Dead: Overkill – Extended Cut is the most fun lightgun game this generation and a perfect reason to dust off your PlayStation Move and put your trigger finger to use.
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The House of the Dead: Overkill – Extended Cut is available to buy now exclusively on PS3.
Click here to buy it from Amazon.co.uk.