Tag Archives: first-person shooter

House of the Dead — Issue 54

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House of the Dead
Sega, 1998

Retro House of the Dead sets up shop for franchise

Ah, the progress that has been made. The on rails shoot­ers genre has made strides in the last 27 years. Mod­ern con­trols — includ­ing light guns avail­able for the home mar­ket — have made play­ing a lot more enjoy­able. And that has made the House of the Dead series — and espe­cial­ly the orig­i­nal game — a tad bit more tolerable.

House of the Dead starts off as most zom­bie hor­ror games of the day did: A mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal weirdo is mess­ing with bioter­ror­ism unnec­es­sar­i­ly and has cre­at­ed a mess. And by mess, I mean mutat­ed, trans­formed humans with a taste for flesh. That’s lit­er­al­ly the plot of the game. There’s some­thing about a fiancée that needs sav­ing and stop­ping this blight from spread­ing to the rest of human­i­ty, but that’s the basics. It’s ser­vice­able and real­ly does­n’t do much to affect the game­play. You’re killing zom­bies, boss zom­bies and most like­ly the end boss guy who cre­at­ed the prob­lem. Clean it up and go on in future sequels to take on an even larg­er threat in the bad guy’s boss because, of course, he has a boss.


Clean­ing up the prob­lem is the fun part here. The con­trols are your stan­dard light gun shoot­er but they’re fine. Aim­ing and shoot­ing was­n’t bad, though lin­ing up my shot some­times was not exact­ly sharp. There were a few times fight­ing some of the aer­i­al boss­es that the cur­sor just was­n’t keep­ing up so I took cheap hits. As an arcade old head, I know that’s the name of the game here: It’s designed to be a quar­ter-munch­er. But by the time I get home, there should be a bet­ter under­stand­ing that this isn’t going to fly. Thank­ful­ly, cheat codes exist so it’s not a prob­lem. But for arcade con­di­tions sake, this real­ly isn’t cool.

Because this is a 1998 prod­uct we’re talk­ing about, I’m also not expect­ing the graph­ics to look like much. And they don’t, beyond these zom­bies look­ing OK. Keep in mind that these graph­ics did­n’t real­ly improve until well beyond the sec­ond game/Typing of the Dead, so you’re going to be see­ing them for a long time. The music fares about the same, too. They are decent enough for the late ’90s, and they work well in the con­fines of House of the Dead.

House of the Dead has made many improve­ments in the near­ly 30 years since the orig­i­nal game. It did­n’t set the barn on fire then but it’s a nice rail shoot­er if you’re into zom­bie hor­ror and like what the series has to offer. Per­son­al­ly, I’m more apt to play Typ­ing of the Dead before House of the Dead, but that’s because I pre­fer to be a key­board sharp­shoot­er these days. House of the Dead­’s ret­i­cle is set in the mid­dle with the abil­i­ty to go higher.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel — Issue 40

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Bor­der­lands: The Pre-Sequel is a lot of retread

Stop me if you heard this one.
A group of four boun­ty hunters run amok on Pan­do­ra and open a trea­sure chest filled to the brim with loot after killing a bunch of things.
In fact, you should have stopped me, because you’ve heard that song and dance before. Twice to be pre­cise. It’s because I’ve waxed poet­i­cal­ly about two oth­er Bor­der­lands titles in pre­vi­ous issues over the past decade. It was all fine and well, that run­ning amok on Pan­do­ra. Until it wasn’t. You see, Bor­der­lands has charm and grace, know­ing when it’s hit­ting its lim­it at the bar. Bor­der­lands 2, well, you have to tell it when to stop because it thinks it can han­dle its liquor but real­ly can’t. Pre-Sequel? Brown liquor gives it courage to talk to folks a cer­tain way, and it winds up get­ting thrown out of the bar and Ubered home. It’s because Pre-Sequel thinks it’s some­thing we’ve nev­er seen before, when we all have and we’re not buying.
Bor­der­lands: The Pre-Sequel is set between the events of Bor­der­lands 1 and 2 sto­ry­line-wise but was released chrono­log­i­cal­ly after Bor­der­lands 2. Pre-Sequel tells the parts of the Bor­der­lands saga that we didn’t see hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the first game and men­tioned in the sec­ond game: How Hand­some Jack dis­cov­ered the Vault; took over the Hype­r­i­on Cor­po­ra­tion and, by exten­sion, Pan­do­ra; and, cor­ralled an ear­li­er group to assist in his nefar­i­ous plans of dom­i­na­tion and galac­tic domin­ion. Along for the ride this time are char­ac­ters we already know from Bor­der­lands 2: Nisha Kadam, the future sher­iff of Lynch­wood and Jack’s future girl­friend; Wil­helm, pre-cyber­net­ic obses­sion and trans­for­ma­tion; Athena, wan­der­ing Pan­do­ra after the events of the Secret Armory of Gen­er­al Knoxx DLC in Bor­der­lands; and, Clap­trap, who’s assist­ed the Pan­do­ra Vault Hunters but doesn’t yet know he’s the sac­ri­fi­cial lamb of the sto­ry. These Vault Hunters are sum­moned through an EchoNet call from Jack to find the Vault on Pandora’s moon, Elpis. 
Know­ing what we know now about Jack and his motives, it’s safe to assume that there will be greed, mon­ey and shenani­gans involv­ing guns. Those are there, yes, but it’s just Bor­der­lands 2 with a slight­ly dif­fer­ent mask and a lack­ing sto­ry. Because make no mis­take: The sto­ry is not mov­ing for­ward here. It’s sole­ly meant to fill in some gaps, but it’s obvi­ous it’s not meant to be some sort of pitch-shifter that Bor­der­lands 2 or Bor­der­lands 3 were and are.
Know­ing this about the sto­ry, what you find when you get to Elpis is def­i­nite­ly a whole lot of typ­i­cal Bor­der­lands skull­dug­gery. From the begin­ning of the jour­ney once you touch down on the plan­et, the new mechan­ics of oxy­gen man­age­ment and low grav­i­ty are a pain to deal with and obnox­ious. Yes, you do need some­thing new to spice things up a bit, but it’s not imple­ment­ed with any type of pre­ci­sion or enjoy­ment. Con­stant­ly hav­ing to man­age how much oxy­gen is left while try­ing to avoid tak­ing dam­age means dis­trac­tion, and it ruins any sort of sand­box vibe the game might have been going for. Oxy­gen man­age­ment is also tak­ing prece­dence while work­ing through Bor­der­lands Begin­ning Syn­drome, or when you start a char­ac­ter in a Bor­der­lands playthrough with lit­tle to no help. The first few hours of any Bor­der­lands playthrough are slow and a slog with no help, and Pre-Sequel is no excep­tion. All oth­er mechan­ics are Bor­der­lands 2 based, so there’s noth­ing else new here of note.
Much like the non-new mechan­ics, the graph­ics are Bor­der­lands 2 based as well. So, you’re not going to see new tex­tures, though there are a few new ene­mies and NPCs to change things up a bit. The new ene­mies are slight­ly inter­est­ing, as are some of the boss­es. This has always been Bor­der­lands’ strength as fran­chise: Col­or­ful char­ac­ters that leave an impres­sion. Pre-Sequel man­ages to cre­ate some good­will with some new char­ac­ters, but they’re all in the style of Bor­der­lands 2. Bor­der­lands 2 was ser­vice­able in its graph­ics as a mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter upgrade to Bor­der­lands, so you’re get­ting that mar­gin­al upgrade here as well. The sound­track also is Bor­der­lands 2 based, so if you enjoyed that, you’re prob­a­bly going to enjoy this, too. There are a few tracks that stand out, but noth­ing spe­cial … much like every­thing else offered here.
Take Pre-Sequel for what it is: a stand­alone pack­age that real­ly should have been prepara­to­ry DLC for Bor­der­lands 2 or even fol­low-up DLC for that game. It real­ly shouldn’t have been held back after Bor­der­lands 2 because it works well as a stop­gap mea­sure between Bor­der­lands and Bor­der­lands 2. As a front-end sequel game, it’s just more of Bor­der­lands 2 — down to the reused assets and sound­track — and that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly increase its endear­ing qual­i­ties, no mat­ter how much I love Bor­der­lands as a whole. At this point, it’s suf­fer­ing from sequel-itis.