It's not like there's a multitude of sins hiding under the clever overlays, either. ![]() And the music is fabulous, surely a soundtrack of the year candidate note-perfect parodies of vintage funk and rockabilly, with thumping, dirty electro remixes for the boss battles. The scratched-up film effects all over the screen, the lurid colour scheme, the pop and crackle in the speakers mesh perfectly with the seedy subject matter. There's a sprinkling of smart quotes from elsewhere in genre cinema too, notably The Birds and Ring.īesides, the idea was surely to capture Grindhouse's visual and aural mood - specifically that of Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror - and it's an inspired one. But the enthusiasm can't be faulted, and the best gag - a variation on the "missing reel" tease that tops Tarantino's in Death Proof - is wisely saved for the end. Sadly, as the game's conveyor belt of zombie extermination rolls on, the writing gets more self-indulgent and the scenes of aimless swearing and buddy-cop banter start to drag. The pastiche is at its best at the start, when neckerchiefed, coiffed villain Papa Caesar is introduced in the deliberately and hilariously awful trailer jump-cuts of Papa's Palace of Pain. Also by being a zombie, and a bit fat.Įach of the game's seven episodes - running at twenty minutes to half an hour each - is framed as a B-movie feature, interspersed with hammy cut-scenes. A promising quaterback career ended by ballistic amputation. If Headstrong was after the world record for cussing in games, well, it'll have to get someone else to count, but it has probably claimed it. Framed as a prequel, it trades in ripe cliché, turning Agent G into a stuck-up white boy and teaming him, inevitably, with a hot-tempered Samuel L Jackson type with an excessive fondness for the Oedipal adjective. Pimping the pulp angle as hard as it can, Overkill transplants House of the Dead to a timeless trash-fiction freakshow, equal parts fifties horror, seventies exploitation and knowing nineties cool. At first, you'll just be swept up in the game's stylistic twist and stunning production values. Because Overkill is that rarest of things, a brilliant "light-gun" game for the home. And we will.Īnd despite the fact that Overkill isn't quite as funny as it thinks it is - and falls a few points short of entering its name on the scoreboard of arcade perfection - you will laugh along with them, and happily blast the cannonade of rotting flesh they fling at you into bloodied chunks again and again, for hour after hour. They are the Brits let loose on a pulpy mash of American and Japanese pop-culture and told to do whatever the hell they like with it, and they're loving every second. The developers at Headstrong Games - formerly Kuju London, the Nintendo specialists responsible for Battalion Wars - are having way too much fun to be ironic. Its blend of explosive gore, mindless profanity and puerile gross-out barely manages irony, despite being wrapped in quote marks borrowed from Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse. When you attain the latter splatter nirvana, the combo meter disappears and is replaced by a huge, fluttering, resplendent Stars and Stripes.īut you can't call Overkill subversive, really. Provided you don't miss the "mutants", or the pickups, or the panes of glass, or the conveniently-placed giant candelabras, you'll progress through a series of score-enhancing states called "extreme violence", "ultra violence", "psychotic" and finally - worth a delicious extra 1000 points per kill - "Goregasm". During our playthrough we even thought we caught an errant projectionist%26rsquo s hair stuttering along the frame for a second, just like in the good ol%26rsquo days of cinema.The House of the Dead: Overkill, SEGA's Wii-exclusive reboot of its undead shooting gallery, has a score combo system. For one, the game%26rsquo s color is suitably washed out so as to look like it%26rsquo s come from a can of film left in the British Board of Film Classification%26rsquo s %26lsquo banned%26rsquo basement for several decades. In fact, we%26rsquo re rather impressed by their eye for period detail, with Overkill making use of a number of visual filters and effects to get the grindhouse look just right. Though much of the general gameplay of an on-rails arcade shooter remains, Overkill now has its tongue planted firmly through the rotted hole in its undead cheek, care of UK developers Headstrong Games. ![]() Yup, Overkill sports all the low-budget gore and cheap camp-o-scripting that B-movie fans love, and we just so happened to be fortunate enough to grab some hands-on time with the game recently. Much to our delight, House of the Dead has received a complete stylistic makeover for Overkill, owing more to the calculated camp of last year%26rsquo s Tarantino/Rodriguez movie blockbuster Grindhouse than previous games in the series.
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