Back to make you suffer like G did
I was pretty damn good at House of the Dead. I remember my initials being the only ones on the high score table at my local arcade, and my tacky rapid-firing technique. (See Benecio Del Toro in the Sicario 2 trailer, he does it halfway through.)
So the prospect of a new House of the Dead title should excite me, as it should most people who miss the halcyon days of arcade shooters. Now we have some footage to pour over, as Throwback Tokyo have uploaded video of House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, taken from one of the game’s location tests.
It certainly seems to be everything you’d expect from the series. Lots of camera-swinging, innocents wandering blindly into the crossfire, well-dressed (and well-armed) legions of the undead and, most importantly, dreadfully-acted cheesy dialogue.
Perhaps too much, in fact. I can imagine that the corny dialogue was a specific design choice, but I actually found that it really grated on me as the video progressed. You can have too much of a bad thing, perhaps? We also get to see some of the game’s multiple pathways and a variety of weapons that can be used against the onslaught of putrifying terrors, who have now learned to form avalanches, like all zombies post-World War Z.
The footage is cool, but it doesn’t rock my world. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks great and a lot of fun with a buddy, but maybe since HotD’s initial release I’m all zombied out. I did mark out at the reveal that we’ll revisit the Curien mansion, a fictional building I somehow know inside and out.
It’s great that new arcade games are still finding a home out in the wild, amongst all the crane grabbers and 2p machines that proliferate modern arcade centers. I’ll definitely give the new HotD a go should it ever materialise on the shores of Skegness, where I shot my first digital zombie, some two decades ago.
House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn is coming to Japanese arcades this year.