The House of the Dead: Overkill Review - 1970's blacksploitation mixed with grindhouse.

By Sam Coles:

It’s a long time since we’ve had a House of the Dead game and last game was an absolute gem in the form of Overkill. The House of the Dead Overkill was released on the Nintendo Wii in 2009 and it is a hilarious ride from start to finish as it pokes fun at 1970’s blacksploitation films and the grindhouse genre. Should you pick up and play it today? Absolutely!

The House of the Dead Overkill goes through various scenarios, with their own quirky introduction with an over the top narrator. You have your two protagonists Agent G a rookie agent who does things by the books and detective Isaac Washington and as the game quotes “Make him mad and he’ll rip your balls off”. The story is corny and stupid in the best possible way and it will have you grinning ear to ear through, with plenty of gore, profanity and a rocking soundtrack. If you don’t like liberal use of the word fuck then this is probably not the game for you as it is constantly dropped throughout.  

The gameplay is a rail shooter, well you probably know if you are familiar with the series. You go through each level gunning down waves upon waves of the undead until you get to a boss; the bosses are unique and can be rather grotesque. One boss was formed by a mad man who has an incestuous relations with his mother and yes this game was approved by Nintendo believe or not. There is not much else to discuss about the gameplay due its simplistic nature, sure there are time attack modes etc. but in general there is not much else which is standard of rail shooters as you’re supposed to play them multiple times for high scores etc.  

Considering that this was released on the underpowered Nintendo Wii the game looks really good, with excellent character models and great animations from the Zombies. Bear in mind that this console is a standard definition system and it did look rather blurry on my 50 inch 1080p television, but that can be remedied with a HDMI adaptor which up scales the image similar to the device I have for my PS2. Overall the presentation is great with film grain effects to emulate the 1970’s style of film although this can get a bit irritating which unlike Wet you can’t turn the film grain effects off.

The House of the Dead Overkill is a fun and stupid adventure you should playthrough as it doesn’t take itself seriously which is a rarity in today’s gaming climate. You can find this for super cheap on the Wii these days or if you have a PS3 with move controllers you can pick it up on that with updated graphics running at a silky 1080p resolution, so dust off your move controllers and blast the undead into chunks.