House of the Dead Overkill(Playstation 3) Review

I'm not that big of a rail/light gun shooter player, I've played a couple and I do enjoy them but they just feel like quick one and done kind of games, I do like Dead Space Extraction with that said. I played the House of the Dead remake that came out a few years ago and I didn't think much of it and I randomly saw House of the Dead Overkill on PS3 at a convention for a somewhat hefty asking price but I decided to buy it anyway.

With all that said, I didn't play HOTD Overkill with a Playstation Move controller which probably does hurt the enjoyment I could be getting from the game all though in all honesty the hard part playing the game with a PS3 controller are the bosses more so than the railing shooting enemy guanlets.

The gameplay is pretty fun, the AMS Magnum starting weapon felt pretty good to use, it sounded loud and powerful and killing enemies with it fely stimulating. I mainly used that and upgraded it since buying extra weapons felt like it had a steep asking price and it can be annoying watching characters hold different guns in a cutscene but you mainly used the AMS Magnum. That and it could be me playing on a PS3 controller but I could never find enough money in the levels to afford new guns or me moving the stick fast enough to pick up the random pieces of cash lying in the levels, the same can be said for getting health packs too.

I'm not even sure you can get a hard game over since I never got one and I was using analog stick aiming even when the bosses were really challenging with said analog stick aiming.

I'll talk about the bosses since the easiest one with analog stick aiming was the first and maybe the final boss, the latter is easy since you have a powerful chaingun that is more powerful than the Ars Magnum pistol and can do a lot of damage to the blue health bars.

This is where the challenge of many of the bosses past the first one comes from, with a Move, mouse or Wii Mote, this probably isn't too hard but with a controller, the hard part comes from depleting the blue boss attack health bar in time so you can damage them and prevent yourself from losing health. If you don't deplete this blue health bar in time, it regenerates, you lose health and you have to do the bosses patterns all over again and then the blue boss attack health bar pops up again. These parts are the hardest sections of the game with analog aiming. They are doable but if you are one of those people who want to play with a high score on the PS3 version without a Move controller, be warned.

Another small gripe is that my finger got tired a good number of times mashing the R1 button and the bosses does require you to have a fast trigger finger which can make the blue health bar depleting even more of an annoyance.

However, one thing about HOTD Overkill I do really like and this is surprising since I don't value it as much as some other people in the gaming community: the story. No, the story isn't going to be some deep thought provoking masterpiece, but it is really entertaining and fun to watch unfold. What carries much of it is the banter between Issac Washington and Agent G, the former is one of the funniest characters in a video game I have ever seen, if you ever watched the Boondocks animated series, Issac talks like one of the side characters from that series. His voice actor delivers his high strung profanity filled dialogue with absolute conviction and it's just super fun to watch him go crazy over the top and play off Agent G. The other characters besides Issac and Agent G are decent with Clement being a standout in how much of a crazy over the top seemingly Norman Bates inspired character he is. His voice actor also does a good enough job too.

The tone is also very over the top and doesn't take itself very seriously and I normally never use the "not taking itself seriously" as a get of a jail free card, but outside of the story shoving in a werid amount of incest subplots, the story just knows that it is stupid over the top stuff. It's clear from the start that the story is just insane absurdity.

Overall, HOTD Overkill is a solid time, and you might get even more enjoyment out of it with a mouse or motion controller. I do think the story is up there with Dead Space Extraction when it comes to be an engaging for an on rails shooter but for different reasons. The PS3 version of the game can be a little too steep for my tastes so definetely get the PC version which seems to be the easiest way to play the game.