The House of the Dead is a series near and dear to my heart. I've played it in arcades some growing up, but my real love for it developed when I originally played The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return and Overkill on Wii. I have always thought that console/PC games needed more on-rails shooters, as it is a genre that has slowly died out with the fall of arcades. So, when seeing the announcement for this game, a remake of the original House of the Dead, I was pretty damn hyped. Does this game live up to the hype tho? Well, I am a bit mixed, but overall find the game enjoyable and a good time as a fan of this series.
Let's start with the positives. I really enjoy the visual style that they went with here. Everything looks pretty damn good imo. Zombies, humans, and the environments all look fantastic and faithful to the original game. The music and sound design are also very well done here. Its spooky, but also full of B-movie level voice acting and vibes.
The thing I have seen complained about the most is the way the game controls. You basically have two options: use the gyro controls on the joycons/pro controller, or use the left/right stick to aim. Many have been wanting to use gyro controls in order to full get that light gun experience. Unfortunately, THOTD Remake has some pretty wonky gyro controls. It always feels just a bit off, even when tampering with it in the settings. Curiously enough, unless I completely missed it, there doesn't seem to be a way to reset the gyro either. This is a baffling decision to me, as pretty much every game that I have played on Switch that features gyro controls has a simple way to reset them. Instead, you have to opt for dual aiming with the gyro and the left stick, and use the left stick to sort of manually reset it. This is very cumbersome to the point where I opted to just use the left stick to aim. While this sort of defeats the purpose of a light-gun game, I still found it to be fun overall to control the game this way. But this does not mean that I was not disappointed to relive the light-gun arcade, or even the Wii Zapper days here with this game.
The game's performance has also been called into question. In my experience, after turning on Performance Mode, things operated perfectly fine. There were some long load times and the occasional stutter in a cutscene, but I never had the performance affect the way I played or cost me a life.
There is also some neat little features added here, such as a horde mode and model viewer. I would have liked to have seen a bit more here though in this remake. For example, I would have loved to have seen some concept art from the original game, some videos detailing the history of the series, or some more unlockables other than achievements.
With all that being said, I do really enjoy this remake. I am surely going to play it a ton in order to get all the endings, discover all of the paths throughout the game, and play co-op with my girlfriend and friends. But I do wish that a bit more went into this game, especially on the controls side. Even with that said, this is a game that captures the feeling of old-school on-rails shooters pretty damn well. Just patch in a way to reset gyro, and this game could be one of the best HOTD games out there. As it stands now though, this is a good time for fans of the series, but probably won't win over anyone else.
If I would let my love of the series cloud my judgement, I would give this a 7/10. However, turning my fanboy off, the game is def closer to a 6/10.
EDIT: I bought the PC version and my god, what an improvement. The game runs a lot better, looks great, and sounds better too. I'd love to get a PC lightgun controller so that I can get the full experience. But even with just using a mouse and keyboard, the PC version of THOTDR is much, much better. I'd say this is now around a 7.5/10 for me. If you are going to get this game, the PC version is the way to go.
Let's start with the positives. I really enjoy the visual style that they went with here. Everything looks pretty damn good imo. Zombies, humans, and the environments all look fantastic and faithful to the original game. The music and sound design are also very well done here. Its spooky, but also full of B-movie level voice acting and vibes.
The thing I have seen complained about the most is the way the game controls. You basically have two options: use the gyro controls on the joycons/pro controller, or use the left/right stick to aim. Many have been wanting to use gyro controls in order to full get that light gun experience. Unfortunately, THOTD Remake has some pretty wonky gyro controls. It always feels just a bit off, even when tampering with it in the settings. Curiously enough, unless I completely missed it, there doesn't seem to be a way to reset the gyro either. This is a baffling decision to me, as pretty much every game that I have played on Switch that features gyro controls has a simple way to reset them. Instead, you have to opt for dual aiming with the gyro and the left stick, and use the left stick to sort of manually reset it. This is very cumbersome to the point where I opted to just use the left stick to aim. While this sort of defeats the purpose of a light-gun game, I still found it to be fun overall to control the game this way. But this does not mean that I was not disappointed to relive the light-gun arcade, or even the Wii Zapper days here with this game.
The game's performance has also been called into question. In my experience, after turning on Performance Mode, things operated perfectly fine. There were some long load times and the occasional stutter in a cutscene, but I never had the performance affect the way I played or cost me a life.
There is also some neat little features added here, such as a horde mode and model viewer. I would have liked to have seen a bit more here though in this remake. For example, I would have loved to have seen some concept art from the original game, some videos detailing the history of the series, or some more unlockables other than achievements.
With all that being said, I do really enjoy this remake. I am surely going to play it a ton in order to get all the endings, discover all of the paths throughout the game, and play co-op with my girlfriend and friends. But I do wish that a bit more went into this game, especially on the controls side. Even with that said, this is a game that captures the feeling of old-school on-rails shooters pretty damn well. Just patch in a way to reset gyro, and this game could be one of the best HOTD games out there. As it stands now though, this is a good time for fans of the series, but probably won't win over anyone else.
If I would let my love of the series cloud my judgement, I would give this a 7/10. However, turning my fanboy off, the game is def closer to a 6/10.
EDIT: I bought the PC version and my god, what an improvement. The game runs a lot better, looks great, and sounds better too. I'd love to get a PC lightgun controller so that I can get the full experience. But even with just using a mouse and keyboard, the PC version of THOTDR is much, much better. I'd say this is now around a 7.5/10 for me. If you are going to get this game, the PC version is the way to go.