The House of the Dead 2 (Wii) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
774A playthrough of Sega's light gun rail shooter for the Nintendo Wii, The House of the Dead 2, included as part of the 2008 compilation "The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return."
Played through the arcade on the default difficulty settings. I have red blood turn on and the crosshairs disabled.
The original The House of the Dead game was a pretty excellent light-gun shooter, and was a pretty revolutionary step-up for the genre with it's flowing "narrative", if you could call it that, along with its cutting edge 3D graphics. In 1996, it was seriously impressive. You can find my playthrough of the PC port of it here: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=M5zufecKEI0
In 1998 the long-awaited sequel was released, to even larger acclaim than the first game. The graphics again looked incredible - they represented a huge leap over the original game's chunky, pixelated models and textures. Seriously, these graphics were stunning for 1998. It featured more paths, several secrets that could be found by shooting certain enemies or background objects, and some of the worst voice acting known to mankind. It was, again, a massive success. It was ported for the Dreamcast launch in 1999, Windows in 2001, Xbox in 2003, and had a few spin-off titles (including The Typing of the Dead, English of the Dead, and Pinball of the Dead), all of which met with varying levels of success.
This time, Agent G is missing in Italy and the AMS goes to find him. When they arrive in Venice, everything quickly starts to resemble the incident at the Curien Mansion a couple of years prior (the story of the first HotD), and before you know it, all sorts of monsters and zombies are trying to eat you. It's not a storytelling masterwork, but then, it doesn't really need to be.
It's fast paced and often totally ludicrous. Eyeballs fly, mutant frogs, swampmen, suits of armor, and god-knows-what else are constantly closing in on you, and the only thing saving you from become their next meal is your reflexes and a six-shooter. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just nuke the city, or at least carry flame-throwers, but then realism is the last thing anyone would probably expect of this.
The thing in my mind that really makes the game is how utterly-awful the acting is. The dialogue is amazing - the English is just intelligible enough to understand what is being said, and so off on how it's phrased and delivered to make the most unexpected moments sheer comic gold. My favorite has to be the woman running from the zombie in the first stage. What does she scream as she's running for her life? "No, don't come-!" It's probably the most unnatural sounding thing you could imagine someone saying while a monster lurches about behind you, and the heavy, completely unintentional sexual innuendo had me laughing so hard I that I thought my sides might split. It's sheer genius.
And it's not just the writing - the acting itself is beyond belief. Sometimes people sound totally bored as someone gets eaten right next to them, and sometimes you are left wondering WTF? at just how some of these performances made it into the game: Goldman - I'm totally looking at you here. What does that actor think he is doing with his voice? Did someone really think that yelling while grunting and closing your throat makes threats more intimidating? Even if you wanted to say that it was because it's a Japanese production, you can't tell me that Japanese people believe that real, native English speakers actually sound like this.
Just to be clear, though, those aren't complaints. They aren't criticisms. These things end up becoming some of the true highlights, and HotD2 just wouldn't have the charm and appeal that it does without them. As great as the original was, this one was a serious improvement, and the Wii port is (for all intents and purposes) a perfect recreation of it.
If you have a Wii, you'd really be remiss in not picking up the collection. I bought it when it first came out for $30, and still feel like it's one of the best deals I ever got with a compilation for how much I played them both. Sega knows arcade shooters, and this package is proof positive that they know it.
___
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NintendoComplete/540091756006560
https://twitter.com/nes_complete