The House of the Dead: Overkill

[Nester the Lark]

Here is Kotaku's impressions of Headstrong's new House of the Dead game. It sounds an awful lot like Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, with having to shake the Remote to reload, and being able to pan the view around. Bu that's not a bad thing.

It's kind of ironic how Umbrella Chronicles was initially compared to The House of the Dead, and now the new House of the Dead is being compared to Umbrella Chronicles.

BTW, don't forget to check out the totally cool trailer that I posted in the announcements thread.

[Da Robot]

Well, the game has come out and has gotton pretty good reviews and promotion/ads as well.

Like the one below, which doesn't just advertise HotD:O but another upcoming mature Wii exclusive.

[Dances in Undergarments]

I was all set to pick up the Bang Bang Box for this bad boy when I went to grab Street Fighter IV but found my fundage was insufficient for both. This weekend I'll hopefully pick it up.

[TV Eye]

Hopefully they really went all out with the voices this time.

"Dogs of the AMS. It's time they made their move..."

[Nester the Lark]

I've been hearing lots of good things about Overkill, and I think it's selling pretty well to boot (good news).

X-Play gave it a 4 out of 5.

I almost thought of picking it up instead of Deadly Creatures, but I figured DC needed the sales more.

[Da Robot]

This has gotta be the funnest thing I'm heard this morning.


London, UK – 16 March, 2009 – Guinness World Records, the global authority on record-breaking, today announced that recently released The House of the Dead: OVERKILL (SEGA®, 2009) has broken into the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition for most swearing in a video game with a whopping 189 uses of the f-word.

Setting a record in this brand new category, the title recognizes The House of the Dead: OVERKILL as the most profane video game in history. During three hours of relatively limited dialogue, the campaign features 189 uses of the f-word, which equates to just over one per minute and three percent of all words spoken in the game.

Video Games Records Manager for Guinness World Records, Gaz Deaves, said: “This record category pre-existed for movies, music and television, but The House of the Dead: OVERKILL is the first video game to be awarded the title in the Gamer’s Edition. It’s a mark of the times.”

The new record will be shortlisted for inclusion in next year’s Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition. The 2009 Gamer’s Edition, which includes high scores and interesting facts from the world of video gaming, also dedicates a separate section to video game controversy; among the many nations listed in the chapter, Greece stands as the first country to ban all video games for an all-encompassing ban on electronic video gaming lasting two months during 2002. Mexico banned Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 in the state of Chihuahua because the state’s governor was offended by the game’s portrayal of the region and its people. The longest ban in gaming history is awarded New York City, whose mayor imposed a ban on pinball machines, which stood for 34 years from 1942.

Jonathan Burroughs, writer of The House of the Dead: OVERKILL, stated: “It is a dubious honour to receive such an accolade working in an industry where so often the fruits of your labours are derided and dismissed for being puerile or irresponsible, but in the case of The House of the Dead: OVERKILL a little puerility was the order of business. Parodying the profane excess of grindhouse cinema was Headstrong Games’ objective and I am flattered that this record acknowledges that we not only rose to that challenge, but entirely exceeded it.”

[BeamClaws]

YUS

I loved the HoTD series, been playing it since I was little.

Though I'm not particularly fond of shaking the wiimote to reload.

[nocturnal YL]

Mar 16, 2009 16:41:46 GMT -5 BeamClaws said:

I loved the HoTD series, been playing it since I was little.

I did have a chance to play this thing on Dreamcast years ago.

Most of my impressions about this series would be that it's immensely hard. Zombies crawl over your screen, and you can't do anything because of the low firing rate and the annoying reloading time.

Needless to say, a spinoff called the Typing of the Dead would be even more difficult. I had difficulty killing, like, the 3rd or 4th zombie onwards, and could never get past the first wave of enemies.

[BeamClaws]

Really? It was hard?

I played HoTD1, and always beat it.

I played HoTD2 and only got up to the second level, but I wouldn't call it "hard."

[Nester the Lark]

Dec 7, 2009 4:30:01 GMT -5 Saim said:

I say it's fairly good. Has anyone else played this game? It became pretty easy once I started playing co-op, and especially once I got the auto-shotgun (more powerful than the shotgun, and faster reload than the pistol...).

I liked the ending a lot. The story is very cliched (one character is a stereotypically useless women and another is an African American who is a stereotype Jive Turkey "Damn G, that shit aint right!") but at the ending one of the characters basically admits it, almost breaking down the fourth wall.

There's a lot of cheesy humour, but the only time I really laughed out loud was when Isaac Washington's (the Jive Turkey) car blew up for no reason.

Actually, I've been wanting to pick this up lately, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. There are a lot of Wii games from earlier this year that are in a nice budget price range now.

And for fun, here is GameRadar's list of Agent Washington's greatest f***ing quotes. (Obviously NSFW, but really funny stuff!)

[Saim]

Aug 21, 2008 18:03:17 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

Here is Kotaku's impressions of Headstrong's new House of the Dead game. It sounds an awful lot like Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, with having to shake the Remote to reload, and being able to pan the view around. Bu that's not a bad thing.

It's kind of ironic how Umbrella Chronicles was initially compared to The House of the Dead, and now the new House of the Dead is being compared to Umbrella Chronicles.

BTW, don't forget to check out the totally cool trailer that I posted in the announcements thread.

Shaking the controller to reload? Perhaps that's what SEGA was considering during early development, but I can confirm that in the released version of the game you reload with the A button (or with the B, or shoot, button if you're out of ammunition).

[Saim]

Yeah, I managed to get House of the Dead for $35AU. If the price was greater than that, I probably wouldn't have bought it.

[Nester the Lark]

Here is an interview with Headstrong's Bradley Crooks. I thought I'd post it since he's a little coy (not to mention vulgar) on the question of whether there will be a sequel to Overkill.

It's hard to gauge Sega's reaction. There are no solid sales figures, but after a year on the market, the game still has a higher sales rank on Amazon than other Wii shooters. Of course, it's also often the cheapest at this point. Sega has gone on record to say that they are both pleased with its sales, that it met expectations, and that it did better than MadWorld, but that they probably won't do any more "mature" games on the Wii.

I picked up the game myself a couple of months ago, and I thought it was excellent. It's kind of a shame that people got hung up on the profanity aspect, because I think it undermined the fact that the writing in the game really was very clever and witty, and very well done. I would love to see a sequel.

I got the impression that Sega was hoping to position House of the Dead as a Wii-exclusive series. Aside from the fact that the Wii is tailor-made for lightgun games, sales of HotD 2&3 were apparently extremely encouraging. With Overkill, they reinvented the series, created its first console-exclusive installment, and aimed it squarely at a market that they were convinced existed but remained untapped. It was a big gamble that certainly didn't pay off the way they hoped.

I can't help but think that Overkill, and even MadWorld, are games that would've been right at home on the Dreamcast. Not that they would've sold any better, but they'd certainly be more well regarded with a dedicated fan base constantly begging for sequels.