The plot of this game closely follows that of The House of the Dead 2 (1999). On February 26, 2000, several AMS agents have been dispatched to investigate a zombie outbreak in Venice, Italy.The plot of this game closely follows that of The House of the Dead 2 (1999). On February 26, 2000, several AMS agents have been dispatched to investigate a zombie outbreak in Venice, Italy.The plot of this game closely follows that of The House of the Dead 2 (1999). On February 26, 2000, several AMS agents have been dispatched to investigate a zombie outbreak in Venice, Italy.
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- TriviaOne of three humorous ending sequences can occur, depending on the answers given to the questions asked to defeat the final boss of the game, "the Emperor."
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Know's Top 10s: Top 10 Dreamcast Games (2009)
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High marks for ingenuity and originality... but the game is still disappointing
This is interesting; Sega, the creators of countless highly entertaining games and the undisputed king of arcade gaming, who have led this series from the beginning(from back when the first The House of the Dead was just a machine in the arcades) either felt that they needed to add something new to the franchise... or had a crazy thought, and decided to run with it. In any event, this is the result. For anyone who is unaware, this game is The House of the Dead 2, with your computer's keyboard in place of guns. That's right. Instead of firing a weapon at the zombies charging at you, you type words that appear across them. The idea sounds quite bizarre, but it works fairly well, and you quickly get into the typing. As you get further in the game, longer words, even sentences, appear on the zombies. You type every letter and symbol, and you are neither required to take care of spacing between words or capitalizing letters. You can only type on one zombie at a time, so you need to estimate which will reach you first and/or which makes the more dangerous foe to leave standing while you deal with the others, and if you start typing on the wrong one, you can simply press Escape(which will erase all your typing on that zombie) to switch back to being able to choose which to type on(which you do by pressing the first letter of that enemy). While all that may sound appealing(hence my acquiring the game in the first place, which I certainly don't regret) in theory, and the concept certainly is new, unfortunately, the reality is something else. You tire of the typing much sooner than the firing your gun of the previous games. There is virtually no sense of danger for most of the game... most of the zombies, including several of the bosses, dance around threateningly(not unlike faceless, nameless hand-to-hand fighting adversaries who are still waiting to get beaten up by the main character in some martial arts films), waiting for you to type out the words. The difficulty is wildly uneven; taking down the zombies is typically outrageously easy, no matter how little effort you put into it, whereas saving the hostages is frustratingly hard. Also, some of the bosses are far too easy, while others are nearly impossible(and this doesn't even always relate to how far in the game you are). Taking different paths in the game seems to have been removed entirely, in spite of it being the main provider of re-playability value for the last two games, along with high scores(which are driven to the extreme here... I honestly don't think it's an exaggeration to say that you can hardly lift a finger in the game without it insisting on telling you how many points you scored and how high you rank compared to the last hundred players(!)). The keyboard you use must either be British or American in nature, so all us Europeans are out of luck(since there will be symbols that the game simply doesn't accept our way of typing in). Lastly, you *really* miss aiming while playing. Now that all that's been said, do know that the game isn't all bad. It's just that the main draw is the originality and the potentially groundbreaking feature that it adds, the new ingredient in the world of gaming. They did a good job of preserving the ability to shoot barrels and crates for items, from the two previous games. Also, the creativity reaches a new high, and not just for arcade gaming. Imagine, for example, fighting Tower(anyone who's played the second game will know what I mean, and anyone else shouldn't know until they play either that or this) in the vein of a trivia game... you are asked a question, and each head has an answer. Type the right one before time runs out, or the head with the right answer will bite you. The words or sentences will often have a humorous touch to them... I dare any fan of verbal comedy to play through this game and not at least crack a smile. The game also has tutorials, to help improve your typing for playing... you will simply be instructed on how to best type flawlessly and quickly. This game(and those tutorials) is where I learned to touch-type, and found out what those little raised points on the F and J keys are for. Then there are the drills, which are good for training your typing for when you play the game itself. As usual, there's arcade mode, which is the regular game, and original mode. I haven't played the latter much, but from what I can tell, you can pick up items(like in the second game), only now, you use them in that same game, instead of storing them for later use. There's no point in commenting on story, voice acting, graphics or anything similar, since all of it is lifted straight from the second game... including the cut-scenes, though the agents' guns are now replaced with a keyboard strapped on in front of them, and what I thought was a regular PlayStation, but on closer inspection proves to be the short-lived Sega Dreamcast on their back(apparently with a large battery strapped on top... but that may simply be part of the design, I'm not that familiar with the console). All in all, this is really just an experiment of mixed results. The retooled version of the original game just doesn't reach the same level, though I applaud them for trying, and doing so many things right, and I hope that people continue experimenting with games. Videogaming is one of the most versatile and open medias, and it would be a shame not to utilize its full potential. I recommend this to any fan of the series and anyone to whom the idea appeals. Try it. If absolutely nothing else, you'll almost certainly improve your typing skills. 7/10
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- TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews
- Nov 7, 2006
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