The House of the Dead 2 Remake

Remakes are a dime a dozen nowadays. Before, they were quite reserved, but in the modern film and gaming landscape, they’re everywhere. With the definition taking on a couple of forms, be it a creatively different remake with the same heart and soul, or a rebuilding of the same game. The House of the Dead series has been long dead, and a couple of years ago, a remake of the first game came out. It wasn’t the best-loved, even though I enjoyed myself with it despite all the issues. Now, a remake of the sequel is here and …. Yeah, it likely should’ve stayed dead and buried.


The house … of the city of the dead

The House of the Dead 2 was a stellar on-rails shooter where players take on the roles of AMS agents James Taylor and Gary Stewart, who are called to Venice, Italy, when an outbreak of horrific undead monsters occurs. It is all related to Agent G's investigation of the Curien Mansion incident (the original game’s events), with many of the same elements and foes appearing once again. And behind the outbreak is a billionaire madman set to rid the world of humanity and start over …. Wow, that sounds kind of like something to happen nowadays!

It's up to James Taylor and Gary Stewart to deal with the zombies, save civilians, and stop the madman Goldman and his evil plans. It’s time for a lovely venture through Venice, shooting the undead and other nasty creatures that want to eat your face, while saving civilians, earning extra bonuses and dealing with awful, awful voice acting which sounds worse than the original.

The writing is not Shakespeare, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s about zombies, B-Movie style cheese, and this was an arcade game originally, so you wouldn’t want kids to stand about listening to endless dialogue while they could be shooting “S***ty Zombies” as Alan Patridge would describe it.

There was, however, plenty of charm, creativity, and all that sweet, sweet 1990s low-res gore we couldn’t get enough of as kids. The original game was rife with atmosphere, over-the-top weirdness, and delivered good, solid action that consumed all our pocket change. And the remake manages to fail at capturing what made the original game so endearing.

Like the previous remake, The House of the Dead 2 has been given a massive facelift, with plenty of shiny surfaces, smoother edges, and bloom effects that really shouldn’t be here. While the previous remake did have that weird gloss that made it look like a fake game trailer, it still had style, small details, and colour to add some depth and stylisation. 

My problems with The House of the Dead 2 remake are: the game is far too dark at times, with very little to no lighting in the world. The variety and character of locations are lost, with plenty of textures and colour schemes looking all too similar. In the original game, it was bright, colourful, and the environments felt and looked varied. The remake just presents lots of monotone greys and browns, lifeless and dull shiny Unreal-style surfaces and character designs. I would joke that it feels like something from a 2007 Xbox 360 game, but that would be a little too mean.

From the first level, which is just engulfed in bloom and brown, but looks okay, then from here the game just looks too dark for the night sections.

I do like the redesigns for some enemies and bosses, and the soundtrack, while a remix, does sound very good, if not better than the original. But I can’t get over how the gore has been altered, reducing that creepy, creative vibe in the original. When enemies died in the 1998 version, they would melt in a pool of slime or blood, which was a nice effect. Now they rag doll, and vaporise, which doesn’t have the same impact. I also don’t like the lack of weight the game has, from movement feeling floaty, the lack of small environmental details such as splashes, dust and other particle effects, to the poor sound design, which can be heard with the pistol itself. When you fired a gun in the original, it felt and sounded like a heavy-duty pistol, like a classic arcade bang (that didn’t sound right). Now, the gunfire and various sound effects all feel muted and remove any weight the game had.

Then there’s the voice acting …

Right, the original game had awful voice acting for sure, but again, it was weird and charming. In the remake… It’s generally just bad, and while funny bad at times, the sound mixing is either too low or the redubs sound worse than the original. And to top it off, they recorded Goldman’s voice work. The actor himself is doing a fine job, actually a good job. But Goldman’s original voice was the stuff of legend, and to completely remove that is a cardinal sin.

And aside from these problems, there are quite a few smaller, but noticeable ones. Such as the selector for Arcade and Classic mode, where the options aren’t centred and lean to the left of the screen. The menu still looks cheap and is quite clunky to navigate, or how unresponsive button inputs can be on the menus, where the HUD says press Y to continue, but you have to press X. And the same three hints playing over and over on loading screens … it’s not good.

I can’t rightly say The House of the Dead 2 remake looks or sounds the part, since the over-reliance on bloom, monotoned colour schemes, a lack of creative gore, the lack of light, and a lack of weight just make everything feel very off. I know the first remake had problems, but it did at least have some weight, proper lighting, and kept much of those small details from the original. There weren’t any performance issues, aside from long loading times and some floating objects, but everything ran smoothly for me overall.


Undead light-gun magic

The core gameplay for the House of the Dead games is incredibly basic, but feeds that primal instinct we all have, that being to shoot zombies in the face! Being able to point, shoot, and dismember lots of undead baddies.

If I’m being honest, I felt Time Crisis was a series that had better mechanics and evolved quickly with better features. But The House of the Dead 2 had some neat concepts which are still here. From multiple paths, saving civilians, special rewards, and cool bosses, which make it an enjoyable light-gun experience nonetheless. Everything from that list (aside from one big thing) is all here, thankfully, from the shooting, saving, all that additional loot and rewards, especially when it comes to the rewards.

I do give the developers respect for adding a lot of rewards and special items that can be used on different runs in the game. From modifiers, new weapons, and perks that will help you reach high scores, or make the game even more challenging. Like the last remake, you can unlock achievements, and this, in return, gives you new, powerful weapons and bonuses. I like this a lot, as it does give some decent replay value, especially when you and a buddy have grenade launchers to blast your way through the campaign.

There is still fun to be had thanks to the core gameplay of the original, and the small bonus additions are welcome. When it comes to the balancing, this is a tricky situation, but the game is made much easier and, in some areas, artificially harder.  Without a light gun, you can play this with a mouse or controller, which already makes things much easier. And with a quality-of-life addition of auto-reloading the gun, it just makes everything a cake walk for the lower difficulties. I appreciate the addition of a feature where you don’t have to manually reload, since you will be doing that a lot, but I wish the sound bite of “Reload” could also be turned off.  

However, I did notice some of the bosses still do have those blatant spots of invulnerability, just so they can get a hit on you, but there are some new ones now, too. Particularly when the camera is a little slow following the boss when they move incredibly fast, leaving you more open to attack when that shouldn’t be the case. And there is an apparent inconsistency with enemy HP, where some enemies take a beating in some sections, and others don’t.  It wasn’t a gripe for the most part, but on harder difficulties, it was a frustration I couldn’t let pass.


Overall?

I am unhappy to say that The House of the Dead 2 remake deserved better, and as someone who liked the previous remake despite its flaws, it’s a shame the lessons brought up there weren’t learnt. Now there is some fun to be had as the core gameplay loop is timeless and immensely enjoyable. But there’s a lot holding this remake back.

I do see there being potential to refine and make the remake a much better game overall with various tweaks, but a lot of damage has been done. From the mediocre visuals, poor sound design, lack of weight and impact from combat, and all the small, but glaring issues that shouldn’t be there, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for this remake. I do hope this can be resolved and that the flaws pointed out will leave the next remake to be a much better game. Otherwise, we should just get a Dreamcast or Wii and pick up the original for a better gaming experience.

++ Core gameplay loop is fun
+ Additional content and unlockable content are nice
+ Some nice little design upgrades here and there

-- Visually unleashing, too dark and too much bloom and sheen effects
-- The sound design is lacking
- Needed more quality-of-life changes
-  Balancing issues on harder difficulties

Forever Entertainment kindly provided a copy of The House of the Dead 2 remake for this review.