House of the Dead is the newest of Sega's arcade production teams in a long line of light gun shooters to come out. In both Japan and the western markets, previous shooters like Virtua Cop have been major hits, so it is only logical that Sega will aim to continue and boost their popularity. House of the Dead has a lot going for it, with AM1 producing the code and Model 2 technology at its heart.
The House of the Dead story is pretty straight forward. In a medical testing lab, something went wrong, and now a herd of crazed zombies is running wild through the countryside. You must try to save as many individuals as possible as a government agent and exterminate the zombies in the process. The plot is relatively shallow, but who cares!
This is a shooter-I'd play an RPG if I wanted to get a deep story.
Furthermore, these days, zombies seem to be the in-thing.
In HOTD the graphics look very dark and sinister. It reminds me of a lot of those classic horror movies that are seen at two in the morning on most channels. The buildings are old and spooky, and all the time the weather feels like it's going to pour. It is highly atmospheric. HOTD seems to have borrowed a lot from the Virtua Cop series in this department. The characters and backgrounds are fully 3D with accurate texture maps built-in. This works very well for the most part, but it is not flawless. Some of the characters are not as accurate as they may be and look from close up blocky. Besides this minor information, however, I can not complain. The frame rate is smooth, and all of this is in High Res. You are not going to have much time to enjoy the scenery anyway.
In House of the Dead, the sound FX is about average. The voice acting is decent but not much of it, the zombies all the time tend to groan and snarl. Even the music is decent, but not outstanding. With the background noise of the arcade, I couldn't hear it all that much, but it sounded okay.
House of the Dead is not an easy game. Right from the get-go, with barely enough time to aim and shoot before another one emerges, you're besieged by hellspawn. At first, Virtua Cop fans could find this game a little frustrating because the zombies don't go down as they do in VC on one shot. The enemies are coming fast and aggressive, and at times it can be a little disorienting. However, the fact that the game follows a set course with the introduction of zombies in the same location helps. You start learning the timing after a couple of tries, and then things get more relaxed.
So, on the final judgment now. I can honestly say House of the Dead is one of the most gratifying games that I've been playing in a while. At times it's intense and a little gory, but all of that adds to the fun.