House of the Dead: Overkill came out for the Wii a few years back offering us grind house based shoot em up action using the Wii remote as a light gun. We loved it but is the PS3 port worth picking up?
If you own the Wii version we probably have to say no. Not because its a bad game but because it is a basic port. Sega have improved the graphics by giving us more polygons and a better resolution but this for us takes away from the game slightly. Grind House films have this grittiness to them which the Wii did naturally. The cleaned up PS3 version just doesn’t have the same feel to it, even if it is prettier.
The game seems to play slightly differently as well. Maybe its the frame rate or the graphics being clearer but it doesn’t feel the same, which to us is slightly disturbing. Not as disturbing as the zombies…sorry mutants but its like listening to a CD after hearing it on vinyl. Things you expect to happen don’t but people new to the series won’t notice that at all.
The game has also been gifted with a couple of added extras such as an extra level which is a very nice edition but everything else is pretty forgettable. Whilst we can’t recommend this to Wii owners, we can recommend it to new owners. If you’ve never owned the Wii version then make sure you pick this up. Its pretty cheap and the move controller works just as well as the Wii remote ever did.
The game is pretty identical to the Wii version which in our books is okay. Its a great light gun game, a genre we hope gets an even bigger lease of life with Move becoming more popular. The same frustrations that are in the Wii version are here too but they are few and far between. Between this, House of the Dead 3 and House of the Dead 4 coming out on PSN, your move controller will get a lot of use.
By the way, did you know House of The Dead 4 has never been released on consoles before? PS3 owners are in for a treat, expect a review once it’s released.