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Hmmmmmm, human tastes like chicken! Well in Sega's new light gun game for the Saturn it does! House of the Dead developed by the Australin team Tantalus. Here's the basic plot there is a mad scientist Curien{who looks a lot like Sonny Ono from WCW} makes all these zombies and lets them roam free. They start eating the researchers. Now G and Rogan come in and startin blastin some zombie ass.

There are a couple modes but are the samething as arcade except a little different. First up is ARCADE, SATURN MODE, TIME ATTACK, BOSS MODE, and options.

GRAPHICS:
Talk about ugly! When they say this game is scary they mean it! First the graphics are in low-resolution. Almost everything is pixelly. All the textures are muddy and pixelated. The color palette is the blandest I've ever seen! Even the backgrounds look ugly. Almost everything in the background is 2-D. Even with all this said I did expect worse than this. Another problem I found is that I can say it is better than STCC. I'm not saying that the graphics are so horrible that you can't see a thing, you certainly can. All I'm saying is they could have been way better. Virtua Cop had better graphics. Also, there are many ways zombie can be shot so there are numerous deaths animations.

SOUND/MUSIC:
The sound effects are very well done. The only flaw I could find is that in arcad mode the 1P's gun sounds like a shotgun and the 2P's sounds like a little capgun. Also, the voice-acting is done very well and by no means is annoying. The only flaw a lot of the voices are used over and over. Another bad soundtrack from SEGA. Can't they put out a beautiful soundtrack for every game? Well the soundtrack sounds like techno music and then sometimes has an upbeat tune suited for more of a cutesy-type game. The music should be creepy, loud, dark, and low-beat.

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL:
This is the best light-gun game I've ever played! This is an adrenaline rush! First off now instead of just not shooting the innocent bystanders YOU now must save them. The biggest innovation of this game? The multiple paths! Chances are you'll play a different game each time. The only problem? They are very difficult to spot and shoot. Sometimes if you don't save a researcher and he/she is killed you'll be put on a different path. For example if you don't save the researcher at the beginning he is about to be thrown off the bridge you won't go into the house, but instead go into the sewer. Also, sometimes multiple shots are needed to put zombies away. Another thing is some of them don't wait to be shot they jump in and out of the screen attacking you. Like the gargoyle dog at the beginning jumps everywhere attacking you. Sometimes there is slowdown. The slowdown doesn't occur very often though.

This one really suprised me! I actually preferred the control over the stunner! The control is much, much faster in here than in say Virtua Cop 1 or 2. You don't even have to use the speed-up button the control target is so fast! I didn't like to use the gun because my finger started cramping up on the 2nd Chapter! Even though I prefer the controller I think the stunner is way more fun! The stunner is not as accurate as Namco's gun. It's no where near the level of Namco's gun. When I played HotD with my buddy and he had the control at the end of the first level he had about 3,000 points and I only had about roughly 500! It could be my aim, but after my friend and I popped in Virtua Cop 2 and the gun was very accurate.

The stunner is not very accurate in the House of the Dead.

REPLAY:
This game ranks as one of my favorite light-gun games ever. But as usual with ALL of Sega's light gun games they are too short. I heard there are multiple endings, 3 to be exact. So far I have only seen one ending. Another problem there are no other weapons to choose from like in Virtua Cop 1 or 2.

RATINGS:
GRAPHICS:2/5
SOUND:2/5
MUSIC:2/5
CONTROL:4/5
GAMEPLAY:4/5
BALANCE:4/5
INTERACTION:5/5
INNOVATION:5/5
REPLAY:5/5
OVERALL:****