![]() And it’s not like you can just insert that coin, either, because you only have so many lives (that is, quarters) until it’s Game Over. “Player 1 (or 2) insert coin” flashes on the screen when somebody is dead or not playing. Unfortunately, Sega did nothing to hide the fact that this is an arcade game. What’s more, both players can calibrate the Wii Remotes in relation to where they’re sitting. Or, like old times, you can grab a friend and blow through the undead army together. Whereas most of us didn’t have the excessive quarters to afford duel-wielding in the arcade, it’s entirely possible and outrageously satisfying on the Wii. I loved Umbrella Chronicles because it invoked The House of the Dead this new package comes with all the goodies from the Xbox House 3 like Time Attack, while House 2 gets a boss rush and a unique “Original” mode featuring item collection (again, clearly inspired by the Resident Evil series (whoo!)). Each level ends with an impressive boss fight which relies almost exclusively on pattern memorization and weak point spamming.Īnd it’s incredibly fun. Extra lives are earned by rescuing innocent civilians from the rampaging undead, and depending on how many zombies you’ve killed or people you’ve rescued, there are several branching paths in each individual level. At any rate, the comical storyline can’t get in the way of the pure fun which comes from shooting zombies in the head and watching chunks go flying in all directions.įor those of you who’ve never been to an arcade before (where, honestly, this series is a staple), House of the Dead is a basic rail shooter in which you’re given a pistol and shoot zombies as they come running toward you. Just like the Mansion Incident, the zombies in The House of the Dead are accidental byproducts of a much more sinister experiment. The House of the Dead plotline is laughably similar to that of Resident Evil’s, including the virtual duplication of some boss monsters and overall “biological weapon” theme. The obvious light-gun potential of the Wii Remote helps make the game a whopping success, although there are instances when its arcade roots hold both games back from their true potential. Now, the latter two games have been compiled onto a single disk: House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return for Wii. In 2002, House of the Dead 3 shambled into arcades, but because the American arcade scene had largely dissolved, the game was also ported to Xbox in 2003. Two years later, Sega released The House of the Dead 2 in the arcades and later ported it to the Dreamcast, where it remains a system favorite. In fact, the original title penetrated our American arcade scene in 1996, which, ironically, was the year that Resident Evil took over our PlayStations. Buy advance tickets here.The House of the Dead games are old. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for something to scare the kids this Halloween season, Nightmare: Ghost Stories is perfect for the pre-teen age bracket, though the $25-$30 ticket price might give you a bad night’s sleep. And if the producers are going to plant people to act like scared audience members, they need to be a bit stealthier on our way in a young man popped out of backstage to join us and screamed enthusiastically throughout the tour, lingering behind after we exited. (This is a massive production, so it’s likely that such kinks will be exorcised soon enough.) The unitard-clad ghouls do their best to startle, but the word unitard should tell you all you need to know about their fear factor. For us, the most frightening parts of the evening were the long lines, the powerful paint fumes inside and the errant hazards like a metal rod poking out of a mannequin that nearly tore a new dress. Tip: try not to get stuck in the back of the group like we were because you’ll end up missing a lot of the surprises. Maybe we’re too horrified by the real world these days, but we found the 25-minute long main attraction conceptually clumsy, repetitive and remarkably devoid of tension. The maze – a more subtle, psychological scare than the main tour – is well worth the extra five bucks we highly recommend getting separated from your friends and being followed by a clown through pitch-black corridors that culminate in a dead end. Now doubled in size, the house boasts 23 different interconnected rooms of ghosts, psycho killers and gory, dismembered limbs – the sight of which prompted one girl in our group to declare, “No Red Lobster ever again!” An extra fee gets you entrance to a separate but much more frightening side-show: a dark labyrinth haunted by barely-visible specters flitting through the shadows. Nightmare: Ghost Stories is a walk-through haunted house by the creators of last year’s shriek-out hit Nightmare: Face Your Fear.
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