When I was a teenager, I was somewhat of a gun game nut. I used to buy any gun game on the market as we didn’t have many arcades in my town. This meant I have a large collection of obsolete gun peripherals ranging from the Zapper, the blue revolver used on the Megadrive all the way up to the G-con 2. Now that I’m a little older, wiser and still enjoying shooting games as much as the next guy, I’m glad that Sega are porting some old arcade shooter classics, minus the stupidly coloured light gun peripheral (unless you count the Wii Zapper!).

House of the Dead is one of the said games making their way to the Wii but it slaps both 2^nd and 3^rd games into one package to make House of the Dead 2 & 3 Returns. The likely hood of you ever playing a HOTD game is pretty high, even my small humble town had a HOTD2 arcade machine and iterations of the series have been on the Saturn, Dreamcast and Xbox, not counting the Typing of the Dead games on the PC and soon to be on DS. If however you are one of the few who haven’t played any HOTD games, let me fill you in with the story.

HOTD tells the tale of the AMS agents and their fight against the experiments of Dr Curien, a insane genius (isn’t it always the way?) who unleashes said experiments onto mankind. Luckily the AMS manage to contain the outbreak of zombies and creatures in Dr Curien’s Mansion and escape with their lives. The sequels then continue the tale a few years on with AMS agents finding that Dr Curien’s work has continued. In honesty the story was never great, but for an arcade shooter that isn’t overly important, what much much more important is the game play.

If my memory serves me well HOTD was mindless damn good fun and nothing has changed this time around, Sega haven’t messed with the winning formula that has kept HOTD going all this time. Take 2 guns, 2 players and slap an army of zombies and other creatures in front of them to kill along with a few bosses here and there. Thats the entire game play and for fans of the series, thats all you’ll probably need.

Graphically, the game doesn’t exactly shine. Not much has been done to the 2 games which together are nearly 20 years old. Having said that i know of worse looking Wii games out there. Audio is unfortunately not brilliant either, with some tracks that haven’t aged well and some almost laughable dialog that makes me cringe. HOTD2 in particular has some of the worst dialog since the original Resident Evil on the Playstation, with time gaps and ‘Engrish’ which will make anyone laugh or cry, while HOTD3 has better dialog (not a great deal better mind) but it also suffers from the same badly aged music.

Unfortunately, the sound and graphics aren’t the only things to be left alone here, HOTD 2 & 3 Returns uses IR functions for shooting, they both have the option to use the Wii Zapper (although I wouldn’t recommend it) and the biggest addition is the inclusion of a ‘Extreme’ mode which makes the game harder, But thats it. All these functions don’t really add a lot of extra value to the 2 games that have been out for so long now, not to mention the only real extra ‘Extreme’ mode is only available in HOTD3 and it isn’t available at the start of the game.

Closing Comments
Before you read my closing comments you probably know if you will pick this game up already or leave it be, if you’re a fan of the series and don’t mind parting with 30 sterling for it you’ll probably grab a copy. For those who aren’t big into old arcade shooters or are looking for a game to jump into the genre, I wouldn’t recommend this. The games are fun and have a certain old quirkiness that makes me happy to play them, but for the rather hefty £30 price tag I would recommend Ghost Squad over this. its longer, has 4 player multiplayer and at a lower price point leaves HOTD dead and buried. come on Sega, you can do a better job than this.

Overall Score – 6.0

+ Fun game play
+ Two full length games
+ Precise IR functions
+ Additional Extreme difficulty

- Extreme only in HOTD3
- Two games aren’t overly long
- Why not 4 player!?
- No more additional content?
- High price tag for 2 old games