Sega’s The House of the Dead series has long been the unintentionally cheesy centrepiece of their arcade shooting family. For over ten years, gore seeking players have been subjected to some of the worst voice acting paired with hilariously bad dialogue (Suffer like G did?). For The House of the Dead: Overkill, Headstrong Games and Sega have decided to embrace the series’ cheesy B-Movie nature and pair it up with the grindhouse style presentation that was popular in the late 70s (and recently paid homage by the Death Proof and Planet Terror double feature) to produce a game. The result is a stylish shooter which isn’t afraid to joke about its own level of ridiculousness.

The House of the Dead: Overkill is set roughly five years before the Curien Mansion incident in the first game. Rookie AMS Special Agent G is teamed up with the loud, proud and foul-mouthed ladies’ man Isaac Washington, a local detective looking to avenge his father’s death. The pair is hot on the trail of Papa Caesar, a deranged crime lord who has been turning the citizens of Bayou City into mutants. Assisting them on their way is Varla Guns, a local stripper whose brother was exploited by Papa Caesar to help create the mutagen before he was killed.

Making funny games is extremely difficult, particularly when you’re taking something that’s unintentionally comedic and making it aware of its own absurdity, so Headstrong Games should be commended for their handling of The House of the Dead: Overkill’s story. They’ve created a lot of strong dialogue for their characters while managing to avoid making a bunch of lame jokes and one-liners when it comes to the absurd situations in the game. The strong script helps turn a bunch of otherwise unremarkable characters into memorable stars.

From a visual perspective, The House of the Dead: Overkill is one of the more impressive-looking games on the Wii. The game is heavily stylised, with use of film grain and scratching filters along with a washed out colour palette to give it a distinctly aged look. The game makes heavy use of motion blurring, and gives players a hearty serving of gore. The game can handle a reasonable amount of characters on screen at any one time, but can fall victim to the occasional bit of slowdown. The game’s sound is very intense but doesn’t manage to overshadow the game’s fantastic soundtrack, which provides a very jive mix of vintage tunes. Voice acting is pretty good, though there’s no doubt that the actor’s performances are boosted by the quality of the script.

As one would expect, The House of the Dead: Overkill sticks pretty closely to the series’ rail-shooter formula, but grants players the ability to slightly shift their perspective by moving their reticule to the extremities of the screen. This allows you the opportunity to discover extra power-ups like health-kits, grenades, the golden brain tokens and the slow-mo-fo mode, which slows time to a crawl, creating the opportunity for low-risk headshots and general brutality. The game can be a little bit picky on the hit detection when it comes to picking up these items – sometimes you may need to recalibrate your remote to ensure the reticule is accurate. Accurate shooting helps to build combos, which increase in ranks every five kills. The quality of your combos will greatly affect your end of level score.


Each of the game’s seven levels (complete with grindhouse-style intro and pun-addled title) visits a location fairly typical of the exploitative horror films of the 70’s, like hospitals and carnivals. You’ll blast your way through swarms of mutants while G and Isaac argue about the situation and insult each other. Every level is capped off with an encounter with an extremely large and freakish super mutant. The bosses have fairly distinct patterns, and weak points are pointed out before the fight begins, but they’re very intense battles.

The House of the Dead: Overkill provides a fairly mild level of challenge. Most players will inevitably die while on their initial playthrough (which seriously damages your end of level score), but once you’ve learned the enemy and boss patterns, the game isn’t too difficult. The vast majority of enemies in the game only take 2-3 shots to kill, and most health loss can be attributed to having to reload your weapon at inopportune times. A score and ranking system at the end of each level rewards players with points which can be used to purchase new weapons or upgrade your existing ones – a first for the series. Players can switch between two weapons at any time, with off-hand grenades available for when you need to clear the screen in a hurry

One of the challenges of home console rail shooters is offering enough fresh content to keep players interested in the long term (in this case, the story mode runs for about four hours), and Headstrong Games has risen to the challenge. Available from the start are three mini-games which support up to four players; Money Shot II, a carnival style shooting game, Stayin’ Alive, a survival mode, and Victim Support, where players must protect a group of civilians until they can escape. Other unlockables like concept art are attached to achievements, such as completing a level with a predetermined accuracy score. A Director’s Cut mode is unlocked after you beat the game, which adds “deleted scenes” back into each level, along with changing the number of enemies in a level, making them stronger, and limited your ability to continue. More powerful weapons and the ability to dual wield (i.e. play with two Wii Remotes in single player) can be unlocked by beating the Story and Director’s Cut modes. Gun upgrades aren’t shared between the two modes, which is a little annoying.

For an extra couple of dollars, Australian and UK players can pick up The House of the Dead: Overkill Bang Bang Box, which includes a special edition copy of the game (with a slipcase and prequel graphic novel) and two “hand cannons” - Wii Remote shells in the shape of a magnum. There are dozens of Wii Remote gun shells on the market, but the hand cannons blow them all away. These shells are sturdy, weighty and have arguably the best trigger mechanism of any shell on the market. The only problem with the hand cannons is that it can be a little difficult freeing the Wii Remote from the shell when you want to play another game.

The House of the Dead: Overkill initially seemed like a risky outing, given that Sega was not handling the project internally, as it had for the previous four games. Headstrong Games has really proved themselves to be more than up to task, breathing fresh new life into the rail shooter while crafting a game with amazing production values, a distinct sense of style and a cast of classic characters with just the right level of self-aware absurdity. The House of the Dead: Overkill is not perfect by any means – there are some distinct frame rate issues, and the game is a bit on the easy side – but it is easily among the best shooters on the Wii.