If Mario, Princess Peach
and the rest of Nintendo’s
chirpy, family-friendly
characters got a glimpse
of the Wii blast-em-up
game House of the Dead:
Overkill, they’d probably be
committed to a Mushroom
Kingdom mental institution.
Overkill is one of the
rare adult-oriented games
for Nintendo’s wee white
console; hell, it
actually begins
with a scantily clad
stripper writhing
and licking a
Wii Remote like
a sex toy. From
start to finish it’s
an unapologetic
ride of guns,
gore and other
grotesquitudes,
not to mention
an entire Scorsese movie’s
worth of f-bombs in just
about every possible
linguistic permutation.
Pokemon this ain’t. And
that’s not such a bad thing.
If you’ve somehow never
played a House of the Dead
game in an arcade or on
a home console, Overkill
(technically the fifth game
in the 12-year-old series)
is what’s sometimes
dubbed a “rail shooter,”
because your character’s
movement is locked onto
a preset path through each
level, and all you control
is the aiming of his gun.
It may sound restricting,
but it can actually be quite
freeing. Because you have
one job and one job only:
Shoot everything until
it collapses into a pool
of twitching crimson.
Overkill owes a none-
too-subtle debt to the 2007
flick Grindhouse, Quentin
Tarantino and Robert
Rodriguez’s double feature
homage to sleazy, cheesy
B-movies of the ’70s. From
a scratched-film effect
to the overblown movie
trailer intros that kick off
each new level, it’s milking
every drop of sweaty, self-
referential fun that it can.
But hey, it works. Playing
as Agent G or his trash-
talking new partner Isaac
Washington, you’re tasked
with chasing down a crime
lord responsible for mutating
ordinary Louisiana folk into
murderous zombies. The
variety of the environments
you travel through
(there’s something
deeply satisfying
about shooting
psychotic clowns
in an amusement
park) and the
constant hordes of
bloodthirsty foes
keep the game
engaging from
start to finish.
Overkill is far
from perfect, though. The
biggest problems stem from
the Wii itself — the visuals
are frequently butt-ugly
and the game occasionally
hiccups with split-second
pauses when the action gets
intense, especially in the
two-player co-op mode.
But then it’s the Wii’s
trademark motion-sensing
controls that make point-
and-shoot games like Overkill
possible in the first place.
It definitely cries out to be
played with the Wii Zapper
lightgun accessory (they sell
for about $20 apiece), unless
you want to feel like you’re
facing off against hordes of
mutants with the world’s
most deadly TV clicker.
Despite its fairly plentiful
flaws, I enjoyed Overkill more
than any House of the Dead
game before it. Playing the
zombie-killing cliche for foul-
mouthed laughs instead of
the wooden earnestness of
the earlier titles is ingenious.
Yeah, the constant swearing
and unskippable, too-
Tarantino-for-their-own-
good monologues eventually
get grating, and sure, the
game is almost criminally
short — two players
working together will blow
through the main story
mode in four hours, tops.
Still, it’s one of those rare
games that offers a new
take on a long-running
series by coming at it
from a completely fresh,
slightly twisted angle.
Like the B-movies that
inspired it, House of
the Dead: Overkill is
gooey, fleeting fun.
3 1/2 stars
BottomLine
Although shockingly
short and burdened with
a host of small flaws,
House of the Dead:
Overkill has a kind
of blood-drenched,
foul-mouthed charm
that adds new life to
this classic game
series.
