The House of the Dead 2: Remake Review

Originally released in 1998, The House of the Dead 2 is set in February 2000 where a city is overrun by the undead and other monstrosities. Two AMS agents, James Taylor and Gary Stewart, are sent to investigate and quickly realize there are similarities with the Curien Mansion incident from 1998.

The House of the Dead 2: Remake is an on-rail first person shooter; for those unfamiliar with the genre, your character moves automatically. All you have to do (or should I say can do) is aim and shoot. Considering this originated in the arcades, the levels are pretty short affair.

Depending on the difficulty chosen and how many times you die, a single level can take about 10 minutes. If you’re quick enough on the proverbial trigger, you can shoot boxes and barrel that will drop items like gold for points; but you also have to shoot the item to pick it up. Another important feature, which impacts your path, is you have to save civilians; but be careful, if you’re too quick on the trigger, you can also accidentally shoot them.

Once you’re done with the short story modes (Original and Arcade), you can tackle a Boss Rush mode, which is self-explanatory. Or there’s also a Training mode, which feels more like a Challenge mode more than anything. Both nice diversions if you want to keep the fun going. Also trying to beat your high score if you’re into that. The control scheme is well thoughtout; you can play with one hand; using the right joystick to move and the RT to shoot; which is nice.

The game looks fine. Again, this looks more like a remaster than a game rebuilt from the ground up as a remake. The environments look fine; nothing really special. Some areas does have a bit of Castlevania feel to it. There’s a nice variety of enemies, bosses; they are quite imposing, albeit not that fun to fight. They all have a single weakpoint to hit and you absolutely need to hit it to avoid damage. Soundtrack is fine; nothing out of the ordinary here. The voiceover feels like straight out of the most generic horror B-movie.

The main gripe I have here is why bring this genre back without a lightgun device? Playing an on-rail shooter with a controller feels incredibly weird and doesn’t offer the same lack of precision. Almost, your fingers will get a hell of a workout. With the pistol, you can’t just hold the shooting button to fire non-stop, so you’ll have to mash the A or RT mercilessly. The final boss’ movement is quite nauseating.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with The House of the Dead 2: Remake, I still question who wants this and why no one has ever decided to make a new light gun to enjoy these games. Using a controller for such precise movement feels clunky; but at least you can play with one hand. If you enjoyed the original back in the day, this is for you, but if you’ve never played it, especially in the arcade, this is a hard sell.