House of the Dead: Grindhouse Edition
Story
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The story takes place before the first House of the Dead, that's pretty much as serious as it gets. You play as Agent G and Isaac Washington, as they try to save the world from mutants, and going after Papa Caesar. This is as serious as it gets, as the story is pretty much so bad, that it's hilarious. It's having this gigantic grind house feeling over it, everything is over the top, the characters swear whenever they get the chance, there's a lot of jokes, one liners and some hilariously disgusting moments. This is defiantly a story not to be taken serious, but it's so hilarious, that it's just B-movie classic.
9.0
Gameplay
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Back in the good ol' arcade games, House of the Dead was a light gun game, things haven't changed here. This time however, you can buy a machine gun and a shot gun, besides your hand gun. Each gun is upgradeable and has unlimited ammo. The mutants here are almost your basic zombies, except they can throw with weapons and are a bit faster. There are no alternate paths to take, nothing special to be mentioned. The main point of the levels is to score the biggest high-score, by shooting mutants, golden brains and so on. The bosses in the game aren't frustrating, but their weak points are displayed easily, removing some challenge, but they still give a good challenge overall.
The game takes around an hour to complete, maybe even less because the game is so easy. If you die, you can continue by losing some of your high score. When the game is completed, you can play through directors cut with 3 lives, more monsters and in general extended levels, but they don't add much. There's not a lot of replay value, compared to Umbrella Chronicles, the only thing that'll keep the game alive is the high-scores, if you're even into such things.
On that note, the gameplay has some odd loading. Sometimes it loads for a 2 seconds just when you shoot, or wanna reload, it's very weird and happens a few times, that aside though, it's a fun game.
8.0
Graphics
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Graphically, the game isn't exactly cutting edge on the Wii, but it doesn't look bad, the environments looks good, the character and monster design looks from ok to hilarious. The game has a grainy look on it, which makes it look that much better. That said, there are frame-rate issues, and some cut-scenes may just look a bit weird, then again, it's not really worth noting, it looks hilariously good.
7.5
Sound
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The voice acting is over the top and hilarious, mainly thanks to the script, which (again) is over the top and hilarious. Granted there's a lot of swearing, so be prepared. The music is catchy, with some hilarious lyrics to it (imagine a song about a guy's love for his mom and how he wanna perform surgery on her to make her look better, it's that hilarious). During the game, it defiantly feels like some sounds are missing, which is a bit weird.
8.5
Overall
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House of the Dead: Overkill may be short, and have a replay value that depends if you're a high-score junkie, but it's also one of the best hardcore games on the Wii. What makes this game memorable is its grind house style and B-movie quality voice acting and script. It's a hilarious game.