Let me take you back in time to 1998, a time when Pope John Paul II went to Cuba and Roseanne filed for divorce from her third husband Ben Thomas. Rail shooters have their place in this world and in 1998 Sega graced us with a shooter classic aptly named “House of the Dead 2”, a few years later that very same game came out ported to the Dreamcast console in all of it’s hideous voice-acting glory. Now lets skip a few more years to our present day and you’ll find “House of the Dead 2&3” (but no one cares about 3) released for the Nintendo Wii trying to lead up to the inevitable release of a newer version but lets talk about the two-ports-in-one game combo!
Aside from the extra title screen this is an exact copy of the arcade version, there are no extra goodies at all added in the two games aside from maybe slight graphical tweaks. When I first loaded the game on my Nintendo Wii I figured out very quickly that the sensor bar would not sync up to where I was shooting on the screen despite doing the Nintendo Wii calibration, me relocating the bar, and then going into the Wii settings to tell it that it was below or above the TV at least 20 times. I would get 3 feet in front of the TV trying to shoot a zombie in the head and end up hitting the hostages instead which takes away from your precious life bar, which in this game is the equivalent of slamming a door on your finger. House of the dead 2&3 are hard games even on the easiest setting, keeping their original forms from the arcade! You play agents sent to destroy the evil flood of zombies in 2, and in 3 it’s the same thing with shotguns and a slight twist at the beginning. So if you’re drunk you still know what you’re supposed to do just shoot the screen which I’ll admit is still mindless fun.
Running around a parking lot full of zombies is great fun and all but the only way you’ll make it past the 4th and 5th level on either of the games is if you’ve played it before and know exactly what to expect around every corner, if you die enough times to get your lives to it’s max capacity, or if you’ve turned the sound completely off. The voice acting is very distracting though this applies mostly to the 2nd House of the Dead, it’s so bad it will have you rolling on the floor laughing for hours.
With all of that said “House of the Dead 2&3” are still fun to play as long as you have selected a target icon from the options menu so you know where you’re shooting so rent it, but not fun enough to recommend a buy due to the fact that the two games have virtually no additional features to offer.
