House of the Dead: Overkill - Out Now.

Agent47 wrote:Have they removed the grainy filter, or is it just removed for those screens? I was liking the excellent filter as it gave the game even more character!

Oh, Wii, how you've widened the avenue for a reemergence of arcade-style shooters with your not-quite-a-lightgun infrared pointer. Sure, Link's Crossbow Training with the gimmicky Zapper attachment. And yes, special on-rails modes in first-person shooters like Medal of Honors Heroes 2. But most of all, the reappearance of the classics -- the games first housed in a cabinet and not a console, from Ghost Squad to House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return. They may not control identically now that you're shooting enemies with a Wii remote, but they remain as fun as ever. The wait for a ground-up new installment in one of SEGA's acclaimed franchises has seemed to go on forever, but House of the Dead: Overkill is finally here and now that we've spent ample time with the brief, but convincing demo, it won't hit retail shelves soon enough.

To call this game a sequel isn't true. Actually, it's a prequel. You take on the role of Special Agent G fresh out of the AMS Academy and years before his starring roles in later House of the Dead games. G finds himself teamed with the unlikeliest of partners, the down and dirty Detective Washington, a character who -- and seasoned fans will know this -- doesn't appear in any of the other incarnations. Might he meet his demise somewhere in Overkill's Louisiana-based Bayou City? We couldn't say, but with so many flesh-hungry zombies roaming the structures and streets, that's a real possibility.

Overkill adopts a full-blown grindhouse-inspired presentation that's evident from the moment the game boots. Expect lots of cheesy dialog and graphics layered with a stylish cult-movie film grain. The demo opens to a mysterious bearded man in a suit who walks with the aid of a cane. He's talking on an oversized cell phone. "Washington and his associate are on their way," he says, walking past a water tank which encapsulates a grotesque dreadlocked zombie, its white eyes staring forward.


"Tonight, you have been admitted to Bayou County General," an over-the-top voice announces from nowhere. This is the same voice that you will find dubbing the official trailers of the game and it's there for ambience and humor.

"I have a plan that will eliminate both of them and any evidence of our work here," says the man with a limp. In the background, you can see two blood-soaked nurses operating on a mutilated zombie with syringes and scalpels.

The announcer cuts in again. "Your symptoms: Cold sweats. Irregular heartbeat. Anxiety. The diagnosis: Bleeding horror that cuts like a scalpel to the heart. There is only one cure: a white-hot bullet to the brain."

The view closes in on the nurses, who glance up, inadvertently revealing that they are zombies, too. Just then, Agent G in sunglasses and a suit and Detective Washington in a more casual yellow T-shirt and jeans kick open the doors and start blasting.

This opening seems disconnected from the rest of the demo, which begins outside of the hospital. It's clear that this is still very much a work in progress. In the cinematic -- the only one in the all-too-brief demo -- the characters animate a little stiffly and some of the camera transitions seem a little unrefined. But the zombie designs look fantastic. Not only are they gruesome, but they sport decidedly crisp skinning. The game runs in 480p / 16:9 modes with a fluidity that hovers around 30 frames per second. Meanwhile, you'd have to be as cold and dead as the zombies you blow holes through to ignore the ridiculously over-baked, hammy comedic elements, which work very well within this universe. 


Cut to the gameplay sequences. "If there is one thing I hate more than hospitals, it's hospitals full of mutants," says Detective Washington, not even trying to mask his disgust. The perspective changes to the first-person. You pull out your weapon. And the hordes of zombies start at you.

Overkill is played singularly with the Wii remote or the Wii remote and nunchuk. We prefer the former setup because as far as we can tell, the nunchuk isn't used for anything except for weapon reloads via a quick flick. So forget about being able to manually turn around while your character maneuvers on-rails-style through the dark and menacing environments. You can, however, point at the corners of the screen with the Wii remote for very slight turns, which works very well. The remaining controls are equally easy to pick up. Merely aim with the Wii remote, shoot with the B-trigger and reload either by shaking the the controller or by tapping the A button. This all feels great because the on-screen reticule is zippy and highly sensitive to your manipulation. The only control misstep is developer Kuju Entertainment's (hopefully temporary) assigning of the weapon cycle to the 1 button -- a choice that makes no sense considering the minus button isn't even being utilized. Bear in mind that the title is still early on -- so early, in fact, that SEGA forbid us from taking direct-feed footage of our own because it feels the current build isn't quite ready for prime time. That being true, we have to think that last control choice is going to change before release.

There are a few other control notables to speak of. If you bring up the pause menu, you can go into the controls section and make a few elegant customizations. You're able to toggle between Wii remote or Wii remote + nunchuk controls. Wii View mode let's you toggle screen turning on and off. You can set right or left-handed control. You can turn the crosshair off. And you can calibrate your aim. The good news is that if you're a Ghost Squad-mastering die-hard who wants to play through Overkill minus the crosshair, you can calibrate your aim well enough to do that.

There's no denying the fact that Overkill is still a little rough around the edges, but from what we've played so far, there's a lot of potential and that's because the core game is good fun. As you run through the hospital environment, zombies pop into frame from all directions -- crashing through windows, leaping from hospital beds, even attacking from behind you. The demo only features two weapons, a handgun and a shotgun, and both feel very tight, responsive, and good. When you shoot, you get a little blowback that slightly pushes your crosshair up and also temporarily nudges the viewpoint in the same direction. There is a variety of enemy types, from lumbering fat men who lack limbs to mask-wearing psychos, hospital patients, security guards and nurses. And of course, every shot is a chance for a gruesome display of gore.

The developer really wanted to push the game where the subject matter is concerned and we're already spotted signs of that in the demo. While G remains cool and calm, Washington drops F-bombs whenever he gets the chance ("I'm deaf! That bitch is made me fu$#!in' deaf!"), as do some of the civilians you encounter. And with well-placed shots, you can rip apart torsos, blow out legs, pop off arms and even decapitate the undead in rivers of chunks and blood. This, however, is still an area that we're hoping will be taken to the next level, or even one comparable to some previous House of the Dead titles. Sure, you can make regular head shots and target some individual body parts, but the deformation model is not nearly as complex as that powering, say, House of the Dead 2, which enabled you to obliterate multiple sections of a single body part, if you remember. The other area we'd like to see made more dynamic is that of level interaction. From what we've seen and played so far, you can't shoot out too many background objects -- some glass here and there, the occasional desk item, but not much else, and it certainly doesn't appear as if interactivity is being used as a worthwhile gameplay mechanic.

In Overkill, you will find DNA strand icons strewn about levels that, when shot, will temporarily slow time, effectively creating a bullet-time mode. Here, you can really turn killing zombies into an art form. Not only do your shots inflict more damage, but everything takes on a bloom-like glow and cinematically slows so that you can ogle as limbs and blood fly through the air.

The demo of the title ends as you make it outside and a helicopter falls from the sky, crashing into a nearby building. It's all over within the span of five minutes, but we've gone through it now close to 10 times in order to evaluate it in great detail and it's fun every time. We think that House of the Dead fans will be pleased with Kuju's results, although we hope a few tweaks will be made in the comings months in order to bring everything together. As a final note, we rebooted House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return after playing through Overkill and once noticed that SEGA's previous titles move at a faster pace all around than this title. We don't know if later levels in Overkill will be sped up or not -- we presume we've only been given a taste of the challenges to come -- but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

"This is like something out of a VIDEOGAME!" screams the brilliant B-movie box art for House of the Dead: Overkill, SEGA's Wii-bound revisit of its classic lightgun series. Only the irony is layered deeper than that, because the first thing you'll think when you see it is, "this is like something out of a MOVIE!" One specific movie (or two if you're picky, and European): Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's trash pastiche, Grindhouse.

In fact, it's one specific bit of that one specific movie that developer Headstrong Games used as a style guide, Rodriguez's spoof Machete trailer. Which, as it happens, is now being made into an actual film, so is no longer a spoof. Such are the tangled webs woven by self-referential, cross-media, post-ironic genre culture.

It's not just the trailers' gravelly narration, or the stripper cavorting with a Wii remote in grainy 16mm film under the credits. Even during gameplay, House of the Dead: Overkill is smothered in overlays that give it the pops and scratches of a battered, ancient touring film print. The colours are bled out, replacing arcade-machine brio with pale, washed-out 1970s colour processing. The two lead characters, Detective Washington and series stalwart Agent G, exchange dry, filthy quips instead of earnest exclamations. Incongruously polite elevator funk percolates on the soundtrack. There's even an excuse for all this retro conceit - this is a prequel, a flashback to G's first case in the steamy Bayou City, Louisiana.

No-one - least of all SEGA or Headstrong (formerly Kuju London, a GameCube/Wii specialist which made the decent Battalion Wars games for Nintendo) - is pretending this is anything more than funny and fashionable set-dressing for traditional House of the Dead action. There may be marginally more gore - this is an absolute splatterhouse of a game - and the hospital setting of the level we played really could have been lifted directly from Planet Terror, but you're still aiming your gun (remote) at the screen and shooting things. Lots of things. Around 500 things per level.

Naturally the game plays perfectly with a Wii Zapper, although SEGA also had some pistol-grip third-party alternatives on hand that, since no nunchuk input is required, we very much enjoyed using. The controls couldn't be simpler: B to fire, + and - to switch between your two weapons (we had a machine pistol and shotgun), and A to reload, although it's easier, quicker and infinitely more satisfying to reload by flicking the remote upward instead. Other than that, sit back and enjoy the on-rails ride.

It's not quite as rigid a set-up as previous House of the Dead games, however. One of Overkill's additions is to add a tiny amount of camera freedom - the view can be adjusted slightly left, right, up or down by moving your cursor to the edge of the screen, similar to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Cursor conflicts make this practically unusable in the excellent two-player co-op mode, however. Even in single-player, the sensitivity feels off and it's hard to see the virtue in changing the viewpoint when it slows down your aiming so much - although we're sure that Headstrong will seed plenty of scoring opportunities and pick-ups just off-camera for you to find.

It's details like this that will be essential if Headstrong is going to make a success of the first House of the Dead custom-designed for the home. A couple of runs through the demo - level two of the game proper - show that the arcade-game design is strong enough: highlighted civilian rescue scenarios for extra points, a "slow-mofo" pickup for extravagant, bullet-time explosions of dismemberment and gore, and a smart and easy-to-follow combo system. Combos are built up simply through successive hits, tracked on a six-shooter cylinder graphic, and each cylinder gains you a rank with scoring and performance bonsues, up to the heady Goregasm. We also loved the bold, cartoony ammo readout on the left side of the screen.

Length is one thing, but it's really a combination of densely-packed opportunities for score-attack improvement in the level design, and a broad range of unlocks and options, that will make Overkill a worthwhile investment for the home. The signs are good; the level we played was very busy, and layering combo multipliers over judicious use of pickups over timely weapon-switching over pattern-learning over simple reflexes gives plenty of headroom for score improvement.

As far as options and unlocks are concerned, Overkill is naturally still an unknown quantity. Headstrong is promising a weapon reward and customisation system that will allow you to expand and improve your arsenal considerably as you replay the game - and, theoretically at least, push that score-ceiling even higher.

All the customisation in the world would be worthless if Overkill's guns didn't have the right feel; there is nothing to do in House of the Dead but shoot, and shooting, more so even than in an FPS, needs to be a deep, visceral, addictive thrill in itself. On this score we have no concerns at all. Even pistols fire with meaty, explosive force and a kick of rumble in your hand. There's also a quick buzz from the remote whenever your crosshairs successfully target an enemy, a lovely touch that provides both helpful information and an extra jolt of tactile satisfaction, another accelerator to the feedback-loop of adrenaline.

Combined with the amusingly shameless presentation and some superb graphical effects - Headstrong has taken advantage of the game's linearity to add the kind of depth-of-field and motion-blur effects developers usually reserve for more powerful hardware - House of the Dead: Overkill is already a remarkably confident blaster. Whether it provide any deeper involvement and satisfaction than a funny, throwaway parody of a B-movie trailer is something it - and for that matter, the Machete movie itself - will have to prove next year.

House of the Dead: Overkill developer Headstrong games has said its "not at all" worried about the censorship it could face for making the gore in its Wii shooter "as extreme as possible".

Speaking to CVG in a recent interview, producer Neil McEwen said he didn't see a reason for any controversy.

"We're not brutalising any minorities. It's good fun, tongue in cheek - nothing you wouldn't see in a movie," he said. "We've really not restrained ourselves in any way. We want to go all guns blazing and make it as extreme as possible almost.

"Sometimes we've gone 'ooh, we shouldn't really do that', but then we've gone 'no, hell yes we should'. There's no reason we shouldn't do this stuff, it's not exploiting anyone."

Fellow Sega gore-fest MadWorld recently stirred up a bit of controversy in UK newspapers, and one watchdog even called for it to be banned. McEwen thinks the minor outcry was unnecessary.

"I think it's just a story for the tabloids," he said. "Nothing we're doing in our game hasn't been done in a movie before. It's undoubtedly an 18 certificate game. We've put censorship badges and warnings all over it. It's not the sort of game I'd give to my Gran..."