The House of the Dead 2

Written by Thomas Harding  on June 22, 2000

Review: No, there is no hidden Greatful Dead mansion.

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A few years ago, Sega released The House of the Dead, a remarkable light-gun shooter with the basic play mechanics of Virtua Cop, but with a Resident Evil-esque storyline. As you can guess, I and other gun-loving gamers fell in love with the game. It had a real storyline, it had cool monsters, and it gave you the ability to save dudes in white suits from zombies. Unfortunately, the Saturn conversion was by far subpar and didn't include the red blood of the arcade. While it's sequel's Dreamcast conversion doesn't include red-blooded zombies either, HOTD2 for DC far surpasses its conversion cousin for Saturn. Being a port from the arcade hit, the visuals look near perfect.

Second only to Namco at times, Sega is my choice for best arcade converters. HOTD2 has sweet textures straight from the NAOMI based arcade game, and detailed zombie kills right down to the sweet decapitation. Other than that, most of the zombie designs are even more creative than some of the Resident Evil designs. You've got weird alligator creatures, those chainsaw-wielding "Bubba"-looking guys, and above all, the most kick ass bosses in any zombie game I've ever seen. All creates can be controled and killed off with the use of a light-gun accessory. However, the controller works just fine too, but I wouldn't recommend using the analog stick since reacts extremely slow. Using the digital pad instead is a must. It's also easy to reload and shoot quickly, and there is usually more than one way to do things.

If there's one thing to whine about, it's the audo. While the music is excellent and can inspire your zombie-killing rampage, most of the voice acting is poor, especially the agent that says: "We...have...to...stop...him." I mean, add some speed and excitement to the thing buddy! It isn't that hard to sound like you've got to save a town!

On the whole, I was satisfied with what HOTD2 presented. I'm a big fan of shooting games, and there is plenty to be impressed about. It controls great either way, it has beautiful graphics and character designs, and overall, it is just a good game. Even if shooters aren't your cup of tea, I recommend a rent. There can be a lot of replay found in this game that you won't see in other games of the shooter genre. There are many multiple paths, one easy and one hard. You start out on the easy one, and determined on if you save a victim or not, you go to the hard path or the easy path. My advice, save the victims. Other than that, there are tons of training missions with multiple levels, and another mode where you get to pick a special supply before the game begins.