Like a lot of games in my local arcade, The House of the Dead was turned down so low that I couldn’t really follow what passed for a story. I have a hunch, though, that it didn’t really matter. All I know is that two ‘agents’ (‘Rogan’ and ‘G’) have to fight their way in to a mansion, where they have to stop mad scientist Curien. This Curien fellow is apparently some kind of crazy biologist and he’s experimenting on people and other life forms, turning them into zombies, and creating other abominations.
You run through the courtyard and eventually through the lab(s) killing… er… re-killing everything that moves. You do this with your handy-dandy light gun.
The game is a rail-shooter, but with a bit of a twist. Depending on what you hit (i.e. how well your aim and reflexes are) you can go down different paths. Even though they all lead to the same end, they do give you a slightly different experience on your playthrough.
The only problem that I had is that my aim’s not that good. The game requires pinpoint accuracy, and I can only manage blunt pencil-point accuracy on a good day. But, like any good arcade game it can be beaten if you have enough credits. I’d say that this game was easily finishable if you had a fist full of quarters… and a pocket full… and a backup wagon full on standby.
Oh, and the incoherent story? I quit worrying about stories in video games making sense a real long time ago.
[...] original House of the Dead game was a pretty fun game. I mean, what could be better than shooting hordes of zombies in a [...]