The hardcore you've been waiting for!

In my previous post I linked to some videos for upcoming "hardcore" games for the Wii and by "hardcore" I mean mature games that don't end in the letter "Z" or are mini game collections. This week saw a release of one of these "hardcore" games, House of the Dead: Overkill, an all new, all original Wii exclusive based on the original arcade shooters. In this day and age, an on-rails light gun shooter might seem a little dated, but with the Wii's IR Wiimote, it makes blowing apart zombies pretty sweet.

HOTD: Overkill came out this past Tuesday, but I just picked it up today (Thursday) from Toys'R'Us. Overkill is given a grind house style from everything to the b-movie storyline, the crackling audio, video with scratches/lint, the music and in game menus. The story is broken into seven chapters and is surprisingly good and the interactions between the two main characters, Agent G and Detective Issac Washington is pretty funny. This one is definitely not for the kiddies. Forget about the bloody and gore, I'm talking about the language! Every third word out of Detective Washington's mouth is "mother fucker" and I'm not exaggerating. Each chapter has a distinct location like a prison, hospital, or carnival and each chapter has it's own types of zombies like the carnival has zombie clowns!

As you blast your way through the chapters you can pick up health packs, grenades, golden brains which increase your points, and a slow mo-fo mode which when shot sends the game into slow motion for a short period of time. You start the game with a basic magnum pistol, but as you get money for finishing the chapters you can level up your gun or buy new guns like a shotgun, assault rifle, auto shotgun, and machine pistol. As you kill your way through the game you can collect combos of hits/kills that culminate in the "Goregasm" of 1000 points per kill, but miss a shot once and the combo is ended. As soon as you hit Goregasm a little American flag starts waving in the corner of the screen by your score. USA! USA! USA!

Once you finish Story Mode the game unlocks a Director's Cut of the game with new material, an increased difficulty and limited continues. The main games can be played by two players and there are three mini games for up to four players. Once you finish the Director's Cut it will unlock a dual wield mode allowing you to dual wield two Wiimotes to blow away zombies twice as fast. I think this would just confuse the hell out of me though.

I do have one complaint and that is that sometimes the frame rate will take a hit and freeze which can result in missing power ups or missing shooting at a enemy and ending a combo. Still there is nothing more satisfying than a shotgun blast to the chest of a zombie and having all his limbs and head fly off leaving a torso laying on the ground.

Despite that, it's fun with a great sense of style from the look of the game, to the music, even the non-stop cursing. When the game ends it hints at a sequel which will probably happen if the game sells well. I hope they just add even more zombies and fix the frame rate and it'll be instant gold. Check out the official website from Sega where you can make your own zombie poster and check out the zombie sound board. Let me know what the zombie sound board is and does because I can't get it work for some reason.