Writing yesterday’s article about horror-themed “light gun” games reminded me of the “The House Of The Dead” games 🙂

And, although I was able to find my copy of the first game, it refuses to run on my current computer 😦 However, I was also able to find my old budget CD-ROM copy of the 2001 PC port of “The House Of The Dead 2” (1998) 🙂

Although the game box has long since been lost to the mists of time and the disc is probably the best part of two decades old, it was still able to run on my Windows 10 PC without issue 🙂

I should probably point out that, although I almost certainly completed the game back in the day, I only got up to the final boss battle when re-playing it before this review. This was mostly due to the fact that, after two attempts at the game, I was beginning to wonder whether I’d get carpal tunnel syndrome or a worn-out computer mouse first. Since I didn’t want either, I decided to leave it there.

I should probably also warn you that this review will contain unrealistic GRUESOME IMAGES.

Anyway, let’s take a look at “The House Of The Dead 2”:

Set in Venice, you play as James – a special agent working for an organisation called AMS alongside his colleagues Amy and Harry – who has been tasked with dealing with an infestation of zombies and monsters that have overrun the city following several experiments by an evil scientist called Goldman. Seriously, if you’re expecting a detailed well-written story, read a novel instead. This is a 1990s arcade game…

One of the first things that I will say about this game is that it’s a hilariously cheesy and frantically fun piece of arcade history.

If you just want to mindlessly blast away some zombies and have a laugh, then you could do a lot worse than this retro “rail shooter” game. The PC port does a decent job of re-creating (and enhancing) what I remember of the original arcade game, albeit with a mouse cursor taking the place of an actual light gun.

As for this game’s horror elements, they consist of zombie/monster horror and gory horror. This is a game that uses horror elements for the sake of edginess, cool-ness and melodrama rather than to actually frighten the player.

Even so, there is a frantic suspenseful pacing to the gameplay – especially when you’ve got no continues left. Plus, although the blood colour seems to be set to green by default, the game’s hyper-gruesomeness adds immediate dramatic feedback to every shot and helps to add a bit of “weight” to the fast-paced gameplay too.

The gameplay itself is pretty much what you’d expect. The game handles movement for you, allowing you to focus on shooting at all of the zombies and monsters. To prevent things getting too monotonous, there are several “weak spot” boss battles, civilians that can be saved, bonus items to be found and also several points in the game where the path you take branches depending on decisions that you make.

For example, saving or not saving civilians can have an effect on what path James takes. Though – ironically – the game actually rewards you with much cooler paths if you fail to save certain civilians. This system also sometimes rewards precision aiming too – with James taking a different path through one area if you shoot a small key lying on the ground. When you get a “game over”, the game will show you the path you took and the one you didn’t, which adds extra replay value to the game.

Another interesting quirk of the gameplay is the fact that James’ gun isn’t a revolver… but still only has six shots. Although the PC port allows you to reload by quickly right-clicking (as opposed to firing away from the screen in the arcade version), this low-capacity weapon adds a surprising amount of difficulty to the gameplay.

You will probably fall into a rhythm of left and right-clicking after a while, but there will be numerous situations where you need more than six shots to deal with everything on screen within the few seconds before it attacks you. These frequent reloads sit somewhere between “enjoyably suspenseful and challenging” and “pointlessly frustrating“.

This game also prevents the constant combat from getting monotonous thanks to a seriously impressive variety of monsters which sometimes require different strategies to defeat.

In addition to standard zombies, there are also zombies with axes (that they can not only shield themselves with, but also throw at you too), flying enemies (including zombie owls! Yes, seriously!), fast-moving crawling monsters, partially-armoured monsters, tougher zombies, cyborgs and several creatively-designed bosses (including a really fun call-back to the first game too) who are named after tarot cards. Virtually all of these have a weak point, and the game actually gives you a fighting chance by telling you what it is most of the time.

Some interesting additions to the PC port include things like difficulty settings and the ability to adjust the amount of lives and continues you start the game with in “arcade mode”. There are also a couple of extra gameplay modes too. I mostly stuck to “arcade mode” but the game also includes “original mode” (where you can choose several bonuses to start the game with), a “boss mode” and a mini-game challenge “training mode” too. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be anything like “The Typing Of The Dead” in this version though 😦 Mavis Beacon would be very disappointed….

As for graphics, this game is surprisingly good. Not only does the PC port look as good as what I remember of the arcade version but the graphics have aged surprisingly well too. It could just be the fast pacing of the game or it’s dramatic Venetian setting, but it still looks… relatively…. good over two decades later. When you are actually playing it, and focusing on the gameplay, the graphics will seem timeless. Seriously, when I first played the arcade version of this game back in the day, it must have been at least a couple of years old and it still looked “modern” back then.

I should probably also talk about the writing and voice-acting in this game. It is an unintentional comedy masterpiece that is “so bad that it’s good” enough that it even makes the corny dialogue in the original 1996 version of “Resident Evil” take on the gravitas and eloquence of the Royal Shakespeare Company by comparison.

Not only does this game have a badly-translated script, but the designers then seem to have  picked the most low-budget voice-actors they could find and ensured that they were bored to the point of catatonic listlessness before recording their lines. All of this results in some absolute comedy gold that will probably have you laughing out loud throughout the game. It’s “so bad that it’s good”.

In terms of length, this is an old-school “light gun” arcade game. It took me less than twenty-five minutes to reach the final boss battle on my second attempt. However, the intense “no filler” gameplay, the difficulty of the game (even on “easy”, it can still kick your ass…), the extra game modes in the PC port and all of the branching paths that the player can take really help to add a bit of length and replay value to this game. It’s a very short game, but you can still get a surprising amount out of it.

All in all, this is a really fun horror-infused retro arcade game 🙂 Yes, it’s difficult and occasionally frustrating, but it is just pure intense mindless fun – not to mention that the voice-acting is absolute comedy gold too.

If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get four and a half.