About a month ago my counterpart here at Feedyourconsole.com, Matt, told me about House of the Dead: Overkill. I’m not too sure how I missed this one from the get go. I was a fan of the series back in the arcade days and am what you could call an avid Zombie junkie. He insisted that I should get this game because he knew about my love for all things zombie. I somehow forgot.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks and House of the Dead makes headlines because it was awarded a title of “Most Profane Game” by The Guinness Book of World Records. Being a potty mouth, I felt even more compelled to get this game and immediately rush out to pick it up. When I got it home my wife and I sat down and immediately I was pretty sure I would like this game.

The game and story is presented much like a 70s Grindhouse flick complete with missing sections, hisses and pops in he audio and over the top profanity and sexual innuendos. The base premise of the game pits you as series alum Agent G and his partner Washington as you traverse multiple locales in the relentless pursuit of the game’s antagonist Papa Cesar, the mad scientist responsible for the zombie outbreak.

The gameplay is your typical light gun fare. Point the wii-mote, aim shoot and collect points and items along to way to open up extras found in the main menu. There’s really nothing special to point out with regards to the gameplay outside of the combo system that racks up as you generate multiple kills without missing a shot. It’s quite hard to pull off while engaging in the 2 player action, which is still lots of fun.

The graphics are ok and rather blocky on the largely underpowered Wii system and the frame rate appears to be inconsistent but the presentation of the game kind of makes you forget about that.

By the end of the game, you’ll have laughed plenty (“can I have a lollipop?”), enjoyed a Grindhouse style story line, seen some awfully crazy story points, splattered plenty of brains on the ceiling and walls and heard a whole bunch of F-Bombs.

It’s really too bad that this game has done so poorly as of press time. I really think that Sega should look at it as a stepping stone to a re-launching of the series. If an arcade-y shoot ‘em up games is something you like and you really just want to brush up on your zombie killing skills in preparation of the zombie invasion, you’ll have fun with this game.

So go and get the F..K out of here and pick this title up. You’ll enjoy it.

Pros:

  • Game Presentation: Lines and dirt on the “game film” looked great
  • Sound: Voice actors were extremely cheeseball and I loved it
  • Accessibility: Anyone and I mean anyone can play this. My wife is a zombie killing machine

Cons:

  • Combo system: A little annoying to pull off when playing 2 player
  • Graphics: I wish the graphics were a little more polished looking as I am a graphics junkie.

Feed Your Console gives House of the Dead: Overkill 8.0 out of 10

Published by: SEGA
Developed by: Headstrong Games
ESRB: Mature