Thoughts on House of the Dead: Overkill

Recently my wife and I went to see Zombieland. It's a lot of fun, campy, and they shoot a LOT of zombies in it. This reminded me that I had House of the Dead: Overkill at home waiting to be played.

In short, this game is an absolute riot to play. The whole thing is presented like it's a grindhouse style movie serial. The plot and dialog are so ridiculous as to be camp, and they manage to roll every stereotype possible into the characters in the game. The dialog gets special notice here as SEGA actually didn't use out of work carpet salesman this time. The acting is decent, and the script is, um, profane. This game is now in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most profanity ever in a game. If you don't know what that would sound like just imagine that every 4th word of this article includes "fuck" in some way. It's pretty funny too, and Betsy kept laughing from the couch as I was playing. It's NOT a game to play with the kids around.

It's pretty standard rail shooter, but you will need to use the Nunchuck controller for secondary weapons and such. The thing is that there is no challenge what so ever to finish the story mode of the game. You've got unlimited ammo, and by the second or third chapter you can get a machine gun. At that point you can just start mowing baddies down. There is a counterpoint to this though. While it is super easy to beat the story, it is really hard to do so with a good score. To really rack the points up you need to string together combos by not missing any shots. If you are using a machine gun you aren't going to be able to get combos, you will need to use the handgun to do that. When using the handgun the later levels get really hard, put one single bullet in the wrong place and your combo is gone. It is also really hard to hit the power ups and health packs. You often just seem them for a fraction of a second, so this does get easier with multiple plays.

I think what's happened here is that SEGA has inadvertently created an awesome crossover game for the casual and core players. Let's look at that reasoning:

1. It's on the Wii.

2. It's funny.

3. You can make it as hard or easy as you want.

4. You can play the whole thing in an afternoon, or just one chapter at a time.

5. ZOMBIES!!

So if you can get the non-gamer in your life to give it a try you might be surprised. You can both play along and enjoy the crazy story. The ability to spam a machine gun makes it non-frustrating for a casual gamer, while you can stick with a handgun and try to build combos. Fun for everyone involved, and isn't that why we are playing in the first place?

Entering the LD Gaming World

The same weekend I picked up the 360 Elite I also grabbed a NES.

My awesome local game shop, Player's Choice, refurbs units like this with a new 72-pin connector. The teeth are so tight that you don't need to press the cart down to play.

Growing up I was always the strange kid with the Sega Master System, so this is actually the first NES I've ever owned. As a result I only have one game for it so far, the boxed Zelda cart that Peter gave me a long time ago. It works just fine though.

If I get back into the store this weekend I'm going to pickup a Zapper and the SMB/Duck Hunt cart that was the bundle with the system.

Fun stuff.

Entering the HD Gaming World

With all the recent price cuts on the HD consoles I decided it was time to pick one up. I went with the 360 Elite.

Back before the Xmas season I had pretty much settled on a PS3 for the first HD console in the house, but that's changed as I thought about it more. The Xbox just has more games that I want to play right now, and it's not like this is a lifetime choice. I can pickup a PS3 any time I want as well. I will say that Sony's relentless feature strip of the PS3 is something that turned me off to them though. When I do get a PS3 I'm probably going to hunt for an older unit that has PS2 BC in it.

I really like the digital delivery option on the 360 and I really like that it's all integrated into xbox.com. I can browse around, pick what I like, and it shows up on my console. Having owned only a Wii this generation I really, really, REALLY like being able to grab game demos on the Xbox now.

I also like the option to install to the HD as I don't need to hear the optical drive spinning and games load faster. With Forza 3 coming on two DVDs I won't need to change disks either.

So far it's been a ton of fun. The only games I've picked up so far are Burnout Paradise and RE:5. I'm not letting myself start RE:5 though until I wrap up PDS on the Saturn. I plan on doing that this weekend if I can.

Conker's Bad Fur Day Arrives

I just wanted to give everyone a quick look at my eBay copy of BFD that showed up here at the house...

I know I could just get it for Xbox, but there is something much more fun about having it on N64. It's a typical Rare game for the N64 too, which means it is really great. It's sad to see the decline that Rare has suffered under MS.

eBay vs Flea Markets

I've been on the hunt for old game stuff these days. eBay is the natural place to turn for things now but it isn't always the best. My boxed Macintosh 128 came from a flea market for only $40 and I doubt I could find one on eBay for that ammount.

Classic gaming though has had an upturn in the last few years and the flea market folks know about this. So if you are looking for something specific you might not find a great deal.

Case in point: Conker's Bad Fur Day.

The very first game booth we walked into had a bare Conker's cart sitting in it for $50. This is a fairly rare game and it is a very sought after game by collectors. Taking a closer look at it though it had a torn label and the price tag was on the non-torn part as well. Since we live in a connected age I fired up the eBay app on my iPhone and realized that his was really overpriced. Continuing around the flew market it became apparent that all the game dealers were overpriced on games and hardware. The best bet you can have is to find game stuff at a non-gamer shop. That way they don't know what they are dealing with. Honestly I think a yardsale is the best place to find a great deal as there it's just a parent trying to get rid of "crap" that kids left behind.

I did end up getting my Conker cart, but it was a buy it now sale on eBay for a complete, in the box, set. I paid $39.99, no tax, free shipping. Beat that flea market!

Crusty Corner

Inspired by AVGN I dug out all my old consoles and set them up to create a crusty gamer's corner. I am missing a few things, but I think I can probably find them at my dad's house in the attic. Most worrying is that my copy of Lunar: The Silver Star for SEGA CD is missing.

Here is the whole corner.

The systems I have setup here. N64 and a full SEGA stack. All hooked up to a C64 display and some stereo speakers. I'll put a desk in here at some point and hook the Commodore-128 up.

Games organized in a bit of a strange way. They are roughly by system, generation, and alpha, but I put the optical stuff up high so the kids don't mess with it.

Up top is the SEGA CD, Genesis, and 32x stuff. Next down is Sega Master System, Colecovision, and NES. Not pictured, but below that are N64 and NDS games.

All the old Nintendo stuff I have. A very nice, complete NES Zelda set and my Game & Watch games. I was the weird kid with the SMS and not the NES growing up. All fine by me though as I had some awesome games that no other kid had and I could just ply NES at everyone else's house!

I'm going to start the collecting in ernest now and see what I can come up with. First on the list is a new SMS. I have the Power Base Converter for the Genesis somewhere, but that will be a pain with the 32x on there already.

I'll keep you posted.

Toad is a Bastard

We like Toad quite a bit around here. We came really close to dressing our little boy as Toad last year for Halloween last year.

Anyway, it turns out that Toad has been flipping us off for all these years.

Here is where he tells us, "Thanks, but no thanks.".

But if you look closer you will see he's giving you two fistfulls of bird.

That little punk!

Original credit for the images goes here.