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The House of the Dead
Sega Saturn
Nostalgia Factor:
I've always been interested in playing The House of the Dead, but it is just one of those games that, for one reason or another, never came across my path. I never encountered the arcade unit out in the wild. My local Blockbuster didn't have the Saturn version available to rent. It wasn't at any video game stores to purchase either. It was like it didn't exist in my universe.
Well here we are in 2023, and I've finally discovered the means to play this game: through its rom on my PC. While I've always heard it is a poor port, I haven't played the arcade version, so I don't think that will sway my opinion of it. I'm willing to give it a shot to see if it can stand out on its own.
So did it? Continue reading for my full thoughts.
Story:
Nothing is really explained in the game's introduction sequences. This must be one of the game's you need to read the instruction manual in order to figure out what is going on. Well, I didn't have one, so I had no idea what was happening. It is fairly easy to figure out, though.
You play as a special agent, and you are dropped into a zombified area located outside a mansion. You have to rescue scientists and head inside the mansion. You shoot your way through several stages full of grotesque creatures until you get to the end of the game, where you encounter an evil scientist named Curien who is behind it all. Defeat his final creation, The Magician, and you've beaten the game.
Gameplay:
Before we go any further, I will say that I did not play this game with an actual light gun - the way the game was intended to be played. I had to use a standard controller. And I have no problems with that. Aside from Duck Hunt, I don't think I've ever played a home console light gun shooter using the light gun. It was always too expensive of an accessory for me as a kid growing up, so I became used to just using a controller. In fact, I think at this point of my life I actually prefer it.
Now, I knew coming in that this was a light-gun shooter, but even still, I was shocked at its similarities to Virtua Cop. The cursor moves the same, the controls are the same, the play mechanics are the same, the sound effects are the same, the little voice that says "reload!" is the same. This is essentially a Virtua Cop game but with a zombie skin over everything.
If you've played Virtua Cop, you should have no problems picking this up and getting the hang of it right away. An enemy pops up, you shoot them. You see an innocent civilian, you don't shoot them (or you lose a life). When you run out of bullets in your chamber, you reload. There are things in the background you can shoot as well, to give you things like extra lives. That's really all you need to know. If this kind of thing appeals to you, you'll probably like this game. If not, feel free to just go ahead and skip this, as you aren't really missing anything.
Of course, there is a little bit more to the gameplay that I haven't mentioned yet, most notably regarding the branching paths. The path you take to get to the end of the game vastly differs depending on how many scientists you save. Let's say you just save one in the first level. The game might take you a different route than if you'd saved five. Same as if you'd only saved two or three. This does add a lot of replay value to the game, checking out all the different branches you missed on your previous playthrough. Ultimately, the gameplay is so similar no matter which way you go that I didn't even bother checking out all possible routes. They all take you to the same place in the end, anyway. But it is a neat feature.
Each stage ends with a boss fight. On the surface these fights should be entertaining. In reality, they are more than a little annoying. For example there is one boss that has a weak point on his chest you have to shoot. I don't understand what is up with the hit detection, but sometimes I'll be hitting him in that spot dead-on and it won't register - and then I take unnecessary damage. Other times, it works fine. Not really sure of the rhyme or reason for this. It happens on pretty much all the bosses, too. Which leads to my biggest gripe about the game: its difficulty.
I've never had so much trouble completing a simple light gun game before. Normally I can beat them in one or two attempts. If I'm struggling, maybe three or four. Not this one. I tried to make my way through arcade mode a countless number of times, but I kept running out of lives and continues - mainly because the bosses did so much damage to me when my shots weren't registering. The stages themselves actually aren't too tough. It's the dang bosses that are annoying as hell.
I ended up turning the difficulty all the way down to easy, as well as upping the number of lives and continues I could use. Eventually I beat arcade mode and watched the credits roll. Woo hoo! But wait, now there was "Saturn mode" to tackle. What is Saturn mode? Annoying. That's what Saturn mode is.
It is basically the exact same thing as arcade mode, except now you can pick from multiple characters to play as. These characters all have some kind of handicap, though, which makes the game even tougher. The first person I picked only had three bars of health instead of five. WTF? I could barely beat the game on easy mode with five health bars and a shit ton of lives and continues. How did they expect me to beat the game with just three teeny health bars?
Another character used a different type of gun that I simply was not enjoying at all. I didn't even bother to complete Saturn mode or try any other characters. I was done with this game.
The Saturn port of House of the Dead mainly gets a bad rap because of its terrible graphics. Playing through this game, I didn't think its graphics were too bad. It looks like a Saturn game. Jagged edges, blocky pixels, surface textures that look like a freaking scrambled mess. I grew up with games that looked like this, so nothing in the game was off putting to me. I love it. The Saturn is the console that really, really tried - but couldn't. It sure tried, though.
As rough around the edges as this game is, its graphics don't make it unplayable. You can clearly tell where you are, where you are going, and where the enemies are. The ability to shoot things in the background gives each level a tiny little extra bit of depth.
I know a major complaint people have is that the zombies have green blood, as opposed to red, which is what the arcade has. It definitely changes the tone of the game. It gives it more of a cheesy, almost b-movie comical feel to it, as opposed to it feeling a bit more serious or gory. There is a cheat to turn the color of blood to red, and I had to try it out on one of my last playthroughs. I have to say I'm with the critics: I prefer the red blood!
I promised I wouldn't let the arcade game effect my opinion of this version, but just for shits and giggles I looked up the arcade version of the game on YouTube. Yeah. It looks much better. I can see why people weren't happy with this port. Judging this game's look on its own merits... it looks fine. I've seen worse. Putting it against the arcade game, it definitely does not look good.
Sound:
The music is pretty good, although I'm not sure it fits the tone of the game. It's very energetic and upbeat as opposed to scary. I still like it, though. If you've played Virtua Cop, the sound of the gun firing and the bullets ricocheting should be familiar to you. So should the "reload!" voice as well.
The voice acting is god awful. It's hard to hold it against the game, though. I think it's charming, and it fits the B-movie aesthetic perfectly.
Overall:
I want to like this game. I don't mind the bad graphics or the cheesy voice acting or any of that stuff. I find it charming. The gameplay is passable. Very reminiscent of Virtua Cop. The whole branching path aspect is pretty neat. The game does a lot of things correctly. But is it any fun?
That's where I'm struggling with things. I like Virtua Cop. I gave both games in that series respectable scores (B and B-). This game is a Virtua Cop clone. I should like it, right? Not really.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly where it is that the game misfires for me. The obnoxious boss battles? The bad hit detection? The lack of any kind of save feature? All of the above? Probably that last option.
Arcade mode is the better of the two single player modes here. I don't know why anyone would want to play Saturn mode, aside from completionist reasons, and to see all the different endings. I guess I get it. But to me the game is not fun enough to even bother with these things. I wanted to be done with it after beating arcade mode. My poor thumbs couldn't take anymore!
The game's insane difficulty was a bit of a turn off for me. I had to crank the number of lives and continues to maximum AND turn the difficulty down to easy in order to even have a chance of completing arcade mode. This absolutely should not be. Yeah, I know. "Get good!" Well, I am a fairly good gamer and I was having quite the difficult time playing through this game on its default settings. Maybe if the game had been more fun. I'd be willing to sink more time into it.
The tedium of having to restart the game multiple times from the beginning when I'd lose quickly made things turn from being "kinda fun" into very obnoxious. It's a shame, because as I said, I really wanted to like the game.
So I guess the critics were right. This is not a good game. I won't go out of my way to say it sucks, or anything like that, but I do think it ranks as a below average title. It's review score will accurately reflect that.
THE GRADE:
C-
All my other Saturn reviews so far:
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