We played a spooky(ish) game for the spooky month of October! Last month's polled chose The House of the Dead Remake, released for damn near every console back in April 2022. This game is a full-blown remake of the 1997 original, with special controls for Switch that allow you to use the Joy-Con as a gun or a new control scheme for modern controllers. SPOOKY INDEED.
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Steve: When The House Of The Dead came to arcades, it was pretty similar to other light gun games of the time, shoot things, don't shoot civilians, shoot away to reload- there were a ton of these. Where this game stood out was its presentation. It looked and sounded like a hokey horror movie with terrible acting (and translation) to match. Not a surprise that it'd become a hit over time.
I'm not super familiar with Forever Entertainment's output, but a remake of a game like this is just something I question the purpose of. I guess this is what a remake of this game is supposed to look like- It's not outright unappealing, but the charm is lost, the acting is better, but the lines are unchanged, but most egregious there's no gun. I get this is a product of the time more than anything else, but wrestling with gyro controls to simulate it and still have it be terrible just isn't the same, and dragging a cursor around to shoot is really not it. At the routine $2 sale price I'd say have a look, but not too closely (and certainly not on original Switch hardware).
Tony: I somehow have even less to say about the House of the Dead Remake than I did that dreadful Kriss Kross game we had to play in September. At its core HotD:R is basically a 1:1 remake of the original arcade game, but updated graphics and added physics. The game is as short as you’d expect, taking maybe 40 minutes of your time to complete from start to finish. I played it on PC and was able to quickly mow down all of the enemies by just rapidly pressing both mouse buttons. I think the only part that gave me any kind of trouble was the final boss fight, which to the developers credit was just as tedious as it was in the arcades. As mentioned they updated the graphics to look more realistic and not only does it strip away all of the personality the original had, it also makes the game incredibly ugly to look at. I bought it on Steam for just a few bucks and I still felt kind of ripped off, I would’ve much rather have played Typing of the Dead: Overkill instead.
Aaron: I didn't hate my time with House of the Dead Remake, but I didn't really enjoy it either. It's great that we have an easily playable version of this game on modern hardware with controls that make sense and everything, but I'd honestly prefer to play the original. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't bad by any means - it's aggressively okay. After shooting so many zombies and then dying repeatedly to each boss, I was yawning so much. I wish they'd added way more to the game, like additional levels, secret paths to different rooms, cool limited-use upgrades, hidden bosses, or really anything other than just a prettier 1:1 remake of the original. I bet the co-op is cool, but I don't really want to play through it again.
Thrak: The House of the Dead Remake is an interesting affair. Developed by Forever Entertainment, they did the Panzer Dragoon remake from awhile back and that was......not great. Expectations for this weren't high, but it's not like House of the Dead is this revered, serious franchise or anything. That said, this is a fairly decent remake. Better than the Panzer Dragoon one, this keeps with the cornball aesthetic and making a fairly decent version of this Sega classic. I played this on Xbox Series X with a controller and it felt alright. There are various other control methods you can use on various consoles and PC, but if all you got is the standard controller, you'll do ok. The game is very short, only 4 levels long which makes sense given it's an arcade game at heart. The charm isn't quite there like in the original release or the Saturn port, it does a fairly decent job at replicating what the original game was and if you can get it for $5 or less, it's worth picking up.
