Nintendo’s Wii-volution?1
Matt posted in Games, Wii on May 18th, 2006

E3 was really cool this year. There were a lot of great new titles to check out, and a lot of exciting new products. The product with the most buzz was Nintendo’s Wii. Unfortunately, many people didn’t get a chance to play it because there were REALLY long lines. Firstly, all the Wiis on the show floor were in a special room similar to the Nintendo DS previously. Luckily, it wasn’t like the Nintendo DS because everyone who waited in line got a chance to play if the were willing to wait in more lines once they got inside. (With the Nintendo DS, they showed everyone videos, and randomly chose a certain amount of people that could play the games) I heard accounts of people waiting 4 hours, but luckily I didn’t have to wait that long. So, enough introduction! What is it like?

Firstly, I think it’s important to realize that the Wii-mote has two basic features. There is the motion sensitivity, which allows you to tilt the controller on all three axes. It also has accelerometers, so it can detect relative movement. This behaves very similarly to the Playstation 3 controller, which I imagine more people got a chance to play. Interestingly, the nunchuk attachment also has these same motion sensitive capabilities. The other main function is like a souped up Super Scope 6. There is a bar that’s about 6 inches long that you stick onto your TV. This senses the direction you are pointing it as well as the distance you are from the TV. I talked to the Nintendo Representatives, and I didn’t get a straight answer on whether you can calibrate it or not, but it did NOT behave like a light gun even though the technology is similar. They showed a prototype Zapper shell for the controller, so you probably can set it up to work that way, but no games were using it as such. However it was calibrated, the positional functionality worked like a mouse. In every game that used it that way (Super Mario Galaxy, Red Steel, Metroid Prime, and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess), they showed you a cursor on your screen, and you move it around in order to select or shoot things. It seemed to detect not the absolute position that the controller is at, but rather where it is pointing, so pointing it in different directions moved the cursor rather than having to moving the entire controller around. I don’t know if you can calibrate it, but it had a very small range of where you could point it, which was sometimes frustrating especially for a game like Red Steel that relies on it for navigation. I enjoyed using the motion sensitivity functionality a lot more than the positioning for this reason.

So what unique features does the Wii-mote offer? Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz’s minigames were the best examples of this. They had a wack-a-mole style game that allowed you to move the controller to the left and the right and forward and back in order to wack the moles level. I’m not sure how well this worked, but it seems like functionality that is unique to the way the Wii-mote works (sensing motion towards and away from the screen is something no light gun could do). The other one that was quite interesting was another Monkey Ball minigame that allowed you to throw darts. I didn’t play this one either, but it didn’t seem easy to control. It was a new experience though because it allowed you to hold the controller like a dart and throw it at the screen. I imagine it used both the motion sensing technology and the light gun positioning to enable this. This was the only example I saw where both functionality was used together, but I didn’t play it, so I don’t know how well it worked. All the darts that the person in front of me threw didn’t seem very accurate though. Maybe he was just bad at darts.

So, how were the games? Let me give you a break down. 

Super Mario Galaxy 
This was the title that I was most excited about. I am a huge fan of Super Mario 64. Super Mario Sunshine was a let down, but that may only be because my expectations were set so high by Super Mario 64. Finally, Nintendo was giving the Mario fans a new chapter in the ongoing Mario saga! Super Mario Galaxy graphically is similar to Super Mario Sunshine. It looks somewhat better, but not as impressive as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. I’ve seen better looking Xbox 1 games, but the art style is very nice and colorful, which is a nice change of pace from the grey next gen games. But really, Super Mario Galaxy is not about the graphics. How did it play? The analog stick on the nunchuck controller moves Mario around and the A button allows you to jump. Shaking the Wii-mote does Mario’s spin attack. There is a cursor on the screen that you move around by pointing the controller. It is quite sensitive, but that may be adjustable. You have no camera control, which to me, is quite disappointing because especially for platformers, I like to have a lot of control over the camera in a platform game since you can adjust it to look in the direction you want to jump. The camera was okay, but far from ideal. The cursor let you interact with objects. If you held the trigger (the B button) you could pick up star shards and ring some bells. They had some sticky plants that you’d pull back on with the cursor and release to fling Mario. I don’t think it made good use of the controller at all. As far as punching, I’d much rather press a button than shake the controller. Shaking the controller requires a lot of motion and isn’t as responsive since it takes a few back and forth movements before it registers as a shake. The wii-mote functionality hardly seemed like an innovation in this game. Shaking instead of a button press seems gimmicky and worse for the player. Moving the cursor around highlighting things isn’t my idea of a good time. It seems like a game mechanic that might have been really cool when they first introduced a mouse, but we’ve all been using mice for so long that it wouldn’t thrill us anymore. Sure – the wii-mote is a new interface, but I don’t think the act of using it is such a joy that the mechanic itself can be void of any inherent fun like I feel selecting things is. I’m not trying to be down on the game. Maybe there’s a lot of other cool stuff in there. I can only judge it based on what they showed, and they didn’t show off anything all that impressive. Now, I’m not trying to say that Super Mario Galaxy won’t be an amazing game, but it seems to me that the wii-mote functionality was not used well in this title.

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
I can’t say much because I only played this for about a minute total. A picture that indicates the correct way to hold controller appears before the minigame. The minigame is a small gesture. One was flipping some vegetables in a pan. You move the controller up and down. That’s it. Another was running, so you moved your hand back and forth. That’s it. Now, I’ve only played about 5 minutes of the other WarioWare titles, so I may not really understand what they are all about, but I didn’t really get what was supposed to be fun about this title. I was thinking this title would be a must buy, but after playing it, I think I may hold off until I can play it for longer and understand what it’s all about.
 
Sonic Wildfire
I love Sonic. Although Sonic Heroes wasn’t all that great of a game, and I steered clear of Shadow the Hedgehog, I’m anxiously awaiting the next generation incarnations of my favorite blue hedgehog. The controls were a bit wonky in the PS3/Xbox 360 Sonic game, but I imagine they will smooth it out, so I’m still really looking forward to it. This game however, seemed too simple. Sonic runs on a fixed path. You can move to the left side and right side of the path and  forward and backwards by tilting the controller. Sonic can also jump. One one hand, I liked it a lot because it conveyed the sense of speed. The other 3D Sonic games have the really fast parts, and then the slower normal platforming parts. This was almost all speed aside from a part where you inched along a wall. My problem with it is that the limited control makes it a bit dull. It’s not even like a racing game because you don’t control Sonic turning – he does that automatically. You just have a certain amount of space to the left and right of Sonic that you can move to avoid obstacles. All in all, this wasn’t too exciting.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
I already discussed some of the interesting minigames above. I didn’t play them though. Instead, I chose to play the standard Monkey Ball game. It worked quite well as you can imagine except I have rather shaky hands and the screen shook to match that, which was rough on my eyes. Hopefully, they can put a dead zone in order not to hurt my eyesight. It may be more challenging that the other games (and the other games were EXTREMELY challenging) just because I think a thumbstick is more precise when you get used to it. The wii-mote is difficult to level off when necessary because you don’t know where level is. But, if they decreased the difficulty, this may be the best game in the series. (Hopefully, they keep up with the insane plots involving Dr. Bad-boon. The story was so hilarious that I think it was my favorite part of Monkey Ball 2)

Red Steel
This one seemed similar to Metroid Prime, but it has sword-fighting, so it seemed like it was a better choice to wait for. This game was quite difficult to play. A young Japanese woman who worked in the games industry had a heck of a lot of trouble trying to move around. The remote was VERY sensitive to movement. I was hoping for a light gun game where you could move your character around with the analog stick, but instead, small movements of the remote moved your cursor around the screen and if you moved your cursor to the edge of the screen, it would change the direction the character was looking. That was pretty tricky by itself, but on top of that, if you pointed too far in a direction, the sensor bar would no longer register that you were pointing at the screen, so the cursor would stay where it was (usually at an edge) and your character would start spinning. This happened to the poor woman who was in front of me in line quite frequently. I was also disappointed with the sword fighting. You don’t really have control over your sword. You can swing your sword wildly, but it won’t register at all. This is unfortunate because ideally for a sword fighting game, the sword will match the wii-mote. This would make gameplay more difficult to tune because it’s hard to prevent someone from kicking butt by waving the sword wildly (like I did in the arcade sword fighting game. I can’t remember what it was called, but they matched up the sword to where you were pointing the handle, which worked a lot better in my opinion) , but it would feel like you are in control of the sword rather than just doing gestures that initiate a canned sequence.

All in all, I’d say Super Monkey Ball had the best usage of the controller. I was disappointed with the positioning functionality for the controller. The sensitivity was jacked way up, and it was only used for a mouse-like interface, but it was more awkward than a mouse. If a mouse is the best use they can think of for it, then they should just use a mouse since I imagine everyone is already quite adept at using one. Now, despite its goofy name, I’m excited about Wii, but I was a bit let down with the games I played. I don’t think they worked all that well. Many have said I should have tried ExciteTruck. Red Steel was right next to it, so I got to watch it a lot. The physics seemed absolutely ludicrous, which might get frustrating because I imagine it’s difficult to figure out how the vehicle is going to behave. The other problem I see with it is that unlike a physical steering wheel, there’s no way to tell when you are at your maximum and minimum steering points. Maybe you can get used to it, but for next-gen driving I think the real winner is going to be Microsoft when they come out with their force feedback steering wheel for 360. I have the PC force feedback steering wheel, and it is amazing! It really feels like you are driving a car (except the pedals which have no force feedback, but that’s not as important). I also didn’t get to try out Zelda, which I am excited about, but a friend told me he’d rather play it with the regular controller. I’m still going to buy the Wii version because I’m interested in how games play on Wii (and hopefully it has better graphics), but I may regret that decision. (Or be thankful!) Still, I think they’ll be some interesting titles that will be a lot of fun on the Wii. It seems best suited for party games, so I can’t wait for Mario Party 8. I am disappointed with the first generation of titles especially after how much hype it’s been getting.

But, regardless of how much I’ll like the Wii, I keep thinking about Nintendo’s mission statement about getting everyone (or at least a portion) who is not a gamer interested in playing games. I really don’t think they’ll achieve this – at least not in the US. (Maybe in Japan because the reception to the DS has been amazing, so it could be Nintendo has their finger right on the pulse of the Japanese consumer) When they talk about targeting non gamers, I keep thinking about my mother. My mother doesn’t play video games. She won’t even play the video games I make. She doesn’t play PC card games, or web games. I once got her to play Samba de Amigo (which is probably has some general appeal outside of hardcore gamers), but she enjoyed watching it more than playing and never really got the hang of it. She seems like the type of person that Nintendo is trying to reach with their Wii. Honestly, I think the features of the Wii-mote are what make it tough for non-gamers. Sure, it has a lot of cool stuff you can do, but there’s no standard way of controlling it. You have to hold it in different positions, different gestures do different things, and every game can come up with a completely new way to use it. Now, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it definitely makes it more complicated. I think I could get my mother to play an NES game, which has a d-pad and two buttons, but if I’m trying to explain to her how to play Red Steel and that she has to shake the left analog stick attachment to open doors, she’s probably going to lose interest. Now, Red Steel may be a game that caters to the more hardcore audience, but it seems to me that a lot of controls are arbitrarily mapped to gestures, which only makes it more confusing in my opinion. You have to shake the wii-mote to punch in Super Mario Galaxy. Why not just press a button? If people have to basically “re-learn” how to use the controller with every game, that’s intimidating and confusing. Even WarioWare might be hard for someone new to games to get into because every minigame has a completely different way to hold the controller. Sure they could get used to it, just like my mom could get used to a Dualshock controller, but will they invest the time into it if it doesn’t come to them naturally? Probably not.

I think if we really want to bring in nongamers, Wii isn’t the correct approach. I think we need to simplify control schemes instead of complicating them. Sure, Wii has less buttons and sticks, but instead it has more complicated ways of interfacing that vary for each game. If we look back to the Atari and NES days, games had a very simple interface. You could explain to someone how to play it in 15 seconds. Learning how to control the character may take some time, but learning the interface was easy. The DS has been successful because non-gamers know how to write, and all of the games that appeal to them (Brain Age, Nintendogs) use pretty much the touch screen exclusively. This may sound like a bad example, but I think Gears of War is a step in a much better direction. The interface has been simplified through context sensitivity, so less buttons are actually used. If the camera control isn’t necessary (which I imagine it is, but just for the sake of argument), the interface might be as simple as a Super Nintendo game. Sure, Gears of War is still catering to the hardcore audience, but what if a PS3/Xbox 360 game was released that only used the analog stick and one button? If this game were fun, then I think it could get some non-gamers interested.  Sure, maybe it wouldn’t convert as many non-gamers as the DS has in Japan. I have a feeling non-gamers might get frustrated with the steep learning curve that some Wii games offer to both seasoned game veterans and newbs alike, so I’m guessing it’d be an improvement.

I’m not trying to be overly negative about Wii. I’m getting one at launch, and I think they’ll be some interesting games for it. I don’t think it’ll revolutionize gaming and  many games will be gimmicky, but I think it’ll give enough entertainment, so I’ll feel like I got my money’s worth. Even if it never achieves it’s potential, at least the console war won’t have three similar boxes this time, so thank you Nintendo for keeping things interesting!

Geometry Wars vs. Assassin’s Creed: What do People REALLY Want for Next-Gen Gameplay?1
Matt posted in Games, The Industry, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 on May 4th, 2006

 I love Geometry Wars. It seems everyone does, and for good reason: it’s really fun and looks very cool. Many people say that graphics don’t add to fun, but I think Geometry Wars seems to be a good counterpoint to that. I’d much rather play Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved than the original, even though it sounds like the original had more playtesting. (Stephen Cakebread, the developer, said that on the original, other employees at Bizarre Creations played it, but they weren’t allowed to on Retro Evolved because the first one ate up more time). I’m sure Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is outselling Smash TV on Xbox Live Arcade even though the gameplay is quite similar. What is it that makes Geometry Wars so appealing? For one thing, it is a joy to look at. The first thing people say about it is how awesome it looks. Good graphics are appealing. It’s easy to try and say that “gameplay is the only thing that matters”, but most people are drawn to better graphics. Why is Panzer Dragoon Orta a better game than Panzer Dragoon? I love them both to death, but honestly despite all my Panzer Dragoon love, I really can’t tell what the heck the enemies are supposed to be in the Saturn incarnation. I’m not trying to say that graphics are the most important thing, just that they can increase your enjoyment of the experience. This is because good graphics can increase the immersiveness of the experience. It’s easier to get lost in a world that looks more realistic. It’s distracting when you play Panzer Dragoon and wonder what on earth the clump of 20 polygons is supposed to represent inside the Panzer Dragoon universe. In the end, it doesn’t matter though because the Panzer Dragoon universe sucks you in anyway. The post apocalyptic world struggling to regain control over the technology of the past that destroyed it is a very engrossing storyline. Fusing the fantasy element of a dragon with the sci-fi genetic engineering and combining that with a primitive society that rose from the ashes of the apocalypse of the previous generation is a fascinating world that I love to be immersed in. It’s quite possible that I’m the biggest Panzer Dragoon fan in the world and few people really appreciate the series, but maybe it’s just that few people were willing to look past the low polycount graphics to see the world behind it - the world the polygons represent.

With next gen, this seems to be solved. Now, you can have the high quality art that the can more accurately represent the world that game developers imagine. Now you can engulf the gamers in the universe of your imagination. Game development is becoming a powerful tool. You can do more than just entertain - you can give someone an experience. But, what problems are there with next gen games? Well, let’s look at Geometry Wars. It’s called “Retro Evolved” for a reason - it’s a step back to the olden days where games were simple - where anyone could pick up a joystick and play. This concept seems somewhat shunned. Games are becoming increasingly complex. There is a large barrier to entry for those who haven’t been keeping up. Nintendo is trying to buck the trend with the poorly named Wii, but they are potentially introducing confusing controlling schemes that vary for every game since the controller has a bunch of unique functionality. Only time will tell whether they will be successful at capturing the audience that complexity left behind.

Many people view next-gen as modeling reality, but if we view Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved as a success, maybe reality isn’t necessarily the direction we should be going. The best example of this is the GDC talk about Assassin’s Creed developed by UbiSoft Montreal. (If you are unfamiliar with this talk, read Gamasutra’s coverage. It’s quite good and will get you up to speed) With Assassin’s Creed, the creative director, Patrice Desilets, mantra is: “Why do we create rules for our characters instead of using the ones we have in the real world?” He goes on to describe that the player has a range of moves and the player has the freedom to use them at any point. It seems like they are attempting to apply the idea of “emergent gameplay” to the platforming genre.

 Firstly, let me explain why I think using the rules in the real world is a bad idea. The real world is pretty dull. Not only is the realm of what the human body can do physically restricting to game designers, it’s also not as exciting. Can you imagine playing a game where the player character can only jump a few feet forward? If you use actual gravity for your player character’s jump move, it will seem very floaty. If you don’t let the player change his path in the jump, it’ll be very difficult for the player to hit his/her target. If the game automatically snaps to what it thinks your target is, then not only will it be frustrating when it snaps you to something wrong, but it’ll remove all the challenge. All of a sudden, you are playing an old FMV game since all you have to do is press the button close to a ledge, and you’ve flawlessly and effortlessly reached your destination.

Now, as both a game developer and a gamer, I have mixed feelings about all the freedom they are promising. As a game developer, the more freedom you give a player, the harder it is to balance the game. Warren Spector talked at my alma mater (University of Michigan) about what a nightmare it was to test Deus Ex and all the interesting things people found they could do. It was possible to stand on mines or something like that, and I think there was the potential to jump out of the world. It’s always bad if gamers can find ways to cheat and skip portions of the game or mess up the state of the game, and the more freedom you give them, the more tools they have to do this. But, in a free world, no longer to gamers have to hone their skills of guessing what the designer was thinking like in old adventure games. So, I’m certainly not arguing that freedom is always bad.

I like the fact that we are giving gamers freedom, but as a gamer, I’m scared of the actual execution. Maybe people expect the opposite reactions. As a game developer, giving people freedom is always scary because as described earlier, they can break the game. But, as a gamer it’s scary too. For example, let’s look at one of my very favorite games, Sucker Punch’s Sly 2: Band of Thieves. Sly 2 has a very similar style of gameplay to Assassin’s Guild. But, in Sly 2, they took the opposite approach. There is pretty much only one way to solve the platforming puzzles, but they make it obvious what move you have to use. Although the sparkles sometimes ruined the immersiveness of the game, it was VERY CLEAR what movies you could do where, and that worked to their advantage because there was no frustrating guesswork. The scenario I’m imagining is this: I’m playing Assassin’s Creed, and I get to a point where when the designers played it, ran across the wall, jumped off it, swung on a pole above and caught the ledge. That was how they solved the particular puzzle. I’m sure some testers found plenty of “emergent” ways to solve it, but testers are quite good at figuring out all sorts of mind-boggling solutions to play through a game (oftentimes exploiting bugs). When I play it, I try to do a wall jump off of the wall to land on the top of the pole. I try that over and over again because I’m convinced I can make it this way. After failing many times, I try to think about what other moves I can use in this situation. I completely forgot about the wall run because it’s been so long since I’ve used it. I manage to make it to the pole 1 out of every 10 times, but the ledge is really small (10 cm, the minimum length of a ledge to grab as mentioned at GDC), so I don’t realize that I can grab on to it. (On a standard resolution TV, that may be hard to distinguish from normal mapping from some camera angles) Instead I go for a different higher platform, but I can’t make it. Eventually, I get frustrated and stop playing or look at a walkthrough.

What went wrong? Didn’t they adopt the next-gen philosophy of creating an emergent world that featured multiple potential solutions to the problem? Well, sort of. It is very difficult to create a setup that features multiple solutions of equivalent difficulty to the same problem, especially for platforming. Although there was some other combination that could have solved the problems, all the approaches I took were doomed to failure because I had trouble recognizing what solutions would work within the constraints of a system. Sure, you can argue with enough playtesting you can figure out all the different ways that people are going to approach it. But, normally when faced with a problem in a playtest where people have trouble doing something, the easiest (which is often the best) thing to do is to change the design in order to make the “correct” solution more obvious. That then defeats the purpose of having all these moves which can be used anywhere. Honestly, as a gamer, I’m leaning towards a more controlled but tuned experience that Sly 2 provides. That’s really the tradeoff: the more control you give the player, the less you can tune it because it has to support all the different ways a player can try to solve it. In the end, does the player gain? You always run into balancing problems when you have too many ways to solve a problem. In this example, if I want to support 3 different solutions to the platforming puzzle, I have to make sure that all will work. The problem is that moving the platforms around until they work for all 3 solutions will probably make one solution much easier, thus removing the challenge of the game. If I’m making 3 solutions work, does that take the emergent aspect of the game away? Do I want to have no correct solutions - just situations and with enough play testing hope that every player can work out their solution through it? If that’s the case, how do you design it at all?
In my experience, emergent systems are fun - for a while. I remember getting a thrill out of just running around buildings and jumping on stuff in Sly 2 - for about 20 minutes. Then, I stuck to solving the actual puzzles in the game, all with a pretty obvious “correct” answer. I played Fable all the way through to the end. I was going to have some fun with the emergent systems. I wanted to kill everyone in every town, buy their houses, rent them out, and become the ultimate slumlord of Albion. The only problem? I got bored after a few minutes. I took over one city and didn’t bother to branch out my murderous rampage. Maybe I just don’t appreciate emergent systems like other people do. Many people had fun just driving around and crashing in GTA. I’ve steered clear of the GTA games because the content sickens me, but even still, I think one of the real reasons that GTA’s emergent gameplay is more appealing is because it’s based in the real world. It allows the player to live vicariously chainsawing cops, and renting time with women of ill repute, only to murder them to procure a refund. The Sims is a terrific example of the success of an emergent system. But, the reason The Sims is such a success is because people who aren’t ordinarily gamers buy it. Maybe emergent games allow you to get – not gamers - but the true mass market. That’s what The Sims did, and that’s where the real money is. Certainly though, neither Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved or Assassin’s Creed is targeting that audience though.

 Let’s look at another example, Shadow of the Colossus. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to play it, but from what I’ve played, it seems like there’s a pretty specific “correct” solution to defeating each colossus. They aren’t going for any sort of emergence. One who argues that Shadow of the Colossus is NOT one of the high points of the Playstation 2, which has seen more than its share of outstanding titles (including Sly 2), cannot be serious or didn’t play enough of it to get sucked into the wonderful world to which it exposes us.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a fluke. Maybe it isn’t a sign that people want next gen graphics with simple gameplay. But, looking at what people are trying to accomplish, I’m worried that people will think more power means more complicated gameplay. When I see more complicated gameplay, I find it a bit of a turn off. I’m not saying they can’t be successful, or that I won’t play them. But, for example, I paid $200 for Steel Battalion, then read through a 40 page manual since there was no in game training missions, and when I started playing, I ran out of in game batteries even though I found no mention of batteries in the manual. (The mech runs on gas and is a manual, so you have to be careful about your fuel consumption.) Steel Battalion is trying to model realism with its complex system, but when my in game avatar died, and it deleted my saved game, that was a big turn off for me. I’m not trying to say that Assassin’s Creed will be a bad game. Maybe it’ll turn out terrific that I will regret my lack of foresight in publishing this article. I’m really looking forward to playing it at E3 next week. But regardless, I wonder if there’s some insight to be gained from the almost universal praise of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.

House of the Dead 4 - Sega dropped the (Monkey)ball on this one6
Matt posted in Games, Xbox 360, Wii on May 2nd, 2006

I am a big fan of the House of the Dead series. Firstly, I’ve been hooked on light gun games since Duck Hunt. It’s a crying same that the apogee of their popularity was when the Zapper came with the NES bundle. I have a light gun for almost every system that they were available for, and it’s unfortunate that they won’t work on my HDTV. One of my favorite things about the House of the Dead series was it is exactly like living through a bad B horror film. From the deadpan line readings of the ludicrous amalgamations of one-liners that comprise a cutscene, to the absolutely ridiculous plot complete with stereotypically insane villains, it captures that campy fun feeling of the horror movies that are my guilty pleasure. Needless to say, I was salivating over the prospects of another installment to the series that I love to indulge, so I made a pilgrimage to GameWorks in the hopes of finding my much coveted arcade cabinet. Sure enough, they had it, and I couldn’t wait to play! It was quite expensive, but I expected it to be worth every cent. In the end, I dropped $24 for me and my significant other to attempt to stop the zombie invasion, only to run out of credits before my girlfriend could purchase more. We did however get to what I believe to be the final level. I haven’t had time to make another pilgrimage, but rest assured I won’t let the undead get the best of me! When I have time, I’ll make another trip and stop the invasion. So, what are my thoughts on the game?

Well, let me start from the beginning. When I was first thrust back into the House of the Dead setting, I was happy to reenter the B horror world that I so greatly enjoyed in previous installments. Just like all campy horror films have a ton of unnecessary sequels, so should campy horror games, right? The voice acting is still horrible, the one liners are frequent and appalling, so fans of the series won’t be disappointed in that regard. The light guns were no longer the auto reloading shotguns that we were spoiled with in House of the Dead 3. I of course did not read the directions, so I assumed shooting off the screen would reload. It did most of the time, but upon closer inspection, shaking the gun was what actually triggered the reload. I guess pointing the gun off screen quickly is enough of a jolt to reload it. There were several moments where you had to shake off a zombie, so the new shaking mechanic was a pleasing addition to the already enjoyable light gun experience. But, why do I say Sega dropped the ball?

There was no gore! For emphasis, let me repeat that. House of the Dead 4, the next iteration in the horrifically gory game, had no gore! The zombies just faded into ash! This was the game where in earlier iterations you could blow the top off of zombies and they would still relentlessly chase you! The exaggerated gore was one of the things that made the game so enjoyable! Now, I’m not one for overly gory video games. On the contrary, I don’t think gore adds anything to MOST games, but come on! COME ON! This is House of the Dead! It is viscerally satisfying to blow off parts of the grotesque figures that limp slowly towards the screen. On top of that, the fun and campy B horror films all have plenty of gore, so instead of feeling like I’m playing through the next Romero movie (no, not John Romero, George Romero, father of the zombie film) I feel like I’m living through a PG rated episode of Buffy, and Buffy is definitely NOT something I enjoy. On top of that, a lot of the locations and enemies are straight copies from the earlier games, so I felt like I’ve “been there, done that”. The next gen graphics (supposedly, it ran in HD) were a step up from HotD3, but didn’t seem to match my Xbox 360.

Although, I’m disappointed, I’ll still pick it up if it gets a home console release. I’m guessing Wii would be a good choice to port the game to because it has the light gun and shaking functionality built into every controller. The graphics might have to be watered down, but I won’t complain because I can’t resist an opportunity to replay House of the Dead over and over, even if it is the low point in the series. Well, to be honest, this was better than Pinball of the Dead, but I don’t know if that counts. Hopefully, they’ll redeem the series by making another Typing of the Dead since Xbox 360 works with USB keyboards.

Update: I did a bit more snooping around about House of the Dead 4, and according to Sega, it features ”Two violence and blood settings let operators go from mild to extreme, gaining greater location and community acceptance.” I imagine the Gameworks in Long Beach set their gore setting to mild (foolishly). If anyone knows an arcade in the Los Angeles area that has it with all the gore, please let me know.