I discovered The House of the Dead (Sega) in the arcade in the 90s. This shooter remains a reference in the genre (with Virtua Cop), we used plastic guns to aim at zombies at the screen alone or with 2 players. What a blast it was! So, a remake on Switch with the Joy-Con, we think it’s going to be deadly!… well, not completely… explanations…
The House of the Dead: Remake is therefore a facelift of the famous rail-shooter proposed by Forever Entertainment. Here, we only direct the aiming cursor and we evolve in scripted environments with zombies and other creatures tumbling in front of us, ready to devour us. Ideal for 2 players, the game is actually cleaner even if the realization remains very old-fashioned. But we benefit from fluid animations and a beautiful dynamic. We are very quickly in the atmosphere. Shoot, reload, shoot, reload, etc.
The story remains the one we know and takes place in the mansion of Roy Curien, a mad scientist who gave birth to demonic creatures. We will have to save our friend Sophie and other characters through different levels with certain choices of branches.
So what do controls say?
By default, the game is played with the stick and the triggers. It works, it’s not super precise, and we’re far from shooting with a gun in hand. So, in the parameters, you can choose the gyroscope function and then you can aim by moving your hand, but it’s still random and far from being precise… Finally, in all the possible settings, you never find the simplicity of a slider that ‘we might move with a simple movement of the joystick as we might have on Wii or with a PSMove! We then say to ourselves that the Switch does not seem capable of offering this kind of gameplay…? And we wonder: why propose a remake of a rail-shooter without being at the point level control?
The frustration is therefore great and if, in particular for two, we have fun for a while playing with the sticks, we are far from the sensations that the game might offer in the arcade…
It’s all the more unfortunate that the game is not so bad for the genre and that we find, in particular through the music, the atmosphere of arcade games of the 80s/90s and that a new mode Horde has been added (it remains anecdotal but offers another challenge with many more enemies on the screen).
There is also the possibility of unlocking new weapons or using a photo mode…
If it had been possible to aim with your Joy-Con as well as with a gun, this remake would have been an excellent title to discover or re-discover on Switch. But this is not the case, the control system is not optimal and spoils the party quite a bit… We would have loved an accessory (gun) specifically designed for the game as we often see on certain Wii titles ( which was more precise level aimed apparently…). Too bad then…
