House of the Dead 3

At the end of each level your performance is rated

The House of the Dead 3 is the latest in the celebrated range of light gun based blasters. House of the Dead 3 is the first Xbox title to support light guns although they are being sold separately by third party peripheral manufacturers such as Blaze. The initial release of Sega's on-rails first person shooter was back in 1996, when it went up against Namco's "Time Crisis" game. Time Crisis became the more mainstream shooter when it came to the PlayStation, while the HOTD series always has been an attraction to Sega's console efforts.

The first game appeared on the Saturn and the second on the Dreamcast. The first game revolved around the "Curien Mansion incident", where a "mad scientist" was creating a zombie army. Your mission was to destroy the zombies and put an end to the plot. In the second game, someone had revived the work of the scientist of the first game and the zombies had escaped. Your mission here was to save the city and get to the bottom of the plot.

In this third instalment of the series, the first outing on the Xbox, the son of the mastermind behind the "Curien Mansion Incident" has picked up the work of his father. One of the special agents investigating this has gone missing. Your mission this time around is to kill the zombies, rescue the agent and get to the bottom of the plot.

Just trying to justify the slaughter

The plot is advanced with in game and pre-rendered cut-scenes

The plot is pretty unimportant. It is advanced by some short, pre-rendered, cut scenes and some in game narrative. The voice acting is pretty poor, no emotion is conveyed by the voice actors and the script is cheesy. The story only really exists to try and make the destruction of endless zombie hoards almost meaningful. The rest of the audio department in the game is well realised - explosions sound meaty and the moans of the zombies are very believable. The sound track is delivered in Dolby 5.1 although almost all of the sound effects are in front of you so it may as well be stereo. This is only to be expected as the game draws the player forwards on rails.

Lock and Load

The controller shows a crosshair on screen allowing for improved accuracy.

What's important in a game like this is the atmosphere, which has been very well implemented by Sega. The poor acting in the cut scenes aside, the game creates a very appropriate mood. The lighting and scenery work and the zombies are well animated and really look the part. Their destruction is well handled, too, with arms being shot off, holes appearing in them and heads being sliced in half with a well placed bullet. There's no better way of immersing the player in this sort of game than giving them a gun and a first person view. Fortunately the light gun made by third party hardware manufacturers, Blaze, is well suited. Although a bit ugly, it feels good and shoots pretty straight.

Controlling the beast

At certain points in the game you have to help out the other in game character. Helping them gets you an extra life point.

Whilst the light gun is how this game was meant to be played, the standard Xbox controller is, of course, also supported. This works surprisingly well, allowing for great accuracy and a fine level of control. The left analogue stick is used to move the crosshair around the screen with a definable speed. This accuracy does give it an advantage over the gun, which, although accurate enough, does seem to be a bit twitchy. This makes getting a clear headshot rather more difficult than with the controller.

Overall, though, you can't beat the gun for immersion in the game. The in game weapon is limited to a shotgun. This is a powerful weapon and the damage inflicted on the zombies reflects this. The gun does auto-reload although this feels like a long time when the zombies are closing in. Shooting off the screen or pressing a controller button can also manually recharge it.

The zombies keep coming

You'll quickly get to the final boss but beating him will take a bit of practice.

This type of game has always worked best in the arcades where gamers will keep playing until they finish the game or run out of money. At home you have to strike a balance between the length of the game, the difficulty and the number of save points. HOTD3 does not allow any saving during the game. This has resulted in the developers dropping some of the length of it and making the difficulty level configurable. The trouble is that it's just too short. Once you've got the hang of it, it can be completed in under half an hour. In total it would probably take most people around 5 hours to finish it. Whilst it is great fun, and this is enough to keep you coming back to beat it again and again, once completed a full version of House of the Dead 2 is also unlocked.

This obviously extends the game life quite significantly. HOTD2, however, is not as good as number 3. The graphics are lower quality and so is the sound. That's because it's a direct port of the Dreamcast version. After you've battled your way through HOTD3, HOTD2 just feels like a low quality way of keeping gamers playing. It would have been nice to see HOTD2 revamped using the graphics and sound of HOTD3.

Horses for courses

There's only one point where you can influence the path through the level.

A feature of previous HOTD games has been branching story lines. In HOTD2, for example, the path you take through the level is based on which civilians you save from the marauding zombies. In HOTD3 this is all but absent. At the start of the second level you have to choose which path to take to the elevator. Both paths start by crossing the car park. The actual split covers a very short distance in the level. Once in the elevator you have the choice of three different floors. The order in which you choose to do the levels makes little difference to the path through the level.

Instead of saving civilians in HOTD3 you have to save your partner. In the one player game the second character will occasionally get trapped by the zombies and request your help. If you manage to save them you get an extra life point. If you fail you continue anyway. In the two-player game the character in trouble alternates. It would have been nice to see more route branching in HOTD3 and this would have extended the replay value quite considerably.

Mindless fun

The zombies can be shot to pieces. Some can have holes shot right through them

This game stands as a fine example of the light gun genre. It is well animated, immersive and great fun for short bursts. I think that playing it for extended periods will cause it to become too repetitive. If you like your games gory and mindless but good looking then go for this. The light gun is definitely worth the extra expense for that extra immersive feel.