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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun, but short and flawed, 25 Mar 2004
I have to admit that I have played this quite a bit since I bought it, which is good, but the reason it is fun is because of playing using the light gun more than the quality of the game. In fact, there are quite a few things about the game that suck.First off, it is really short! Once you've gotten the hang of things you can play from start to end in 25 minutes (and that involves some repeated sections). Which means that its replay value is pretty low - though, as a positive point, it means you can have a quick game while waiting for a meal to cook or something. Another reason that makes the short completion time a good thing is due to the second thing I dislike (almost detest) about the game. It is as much about firing as rapidly a possible as it is about aiming well. Some sections can only be passed if you fire like a maniac, most notably the final boss, though similar situations appear throughout the game. This will leave your trigger finger throbbing by the end of a game and sore for a day afterwards. It shifts the focus away from aiming well to testing how fast you can pound a trigger. Scoring is also based on the time you take to put down an enemy after its appearance. This, of course, means that memorising where an enemy is going to appear and firing like a loon gets a better score than precise aiming. Final bad point. The game is really inconsistent, which is probably a throwback to its arcade machine roots. Sometimes you pass a section without difficulty, another time you will never get through without getting hammered by the enemies. Sometimes one or two shots will kill an enemy, at other times you have to reload twice before the thing dies. At first you question your aim, but after a while it becomes clear that the game has decided that it's time you use another credit and that it is going to make it happen. It also changes the speed of the enemies to this end, accelerating their attacks and movements. On top of the rapid fire issue, this totally throws off the idea of your aim being your primary merit, since even aiming well will not get you anywhere if the game has decided that you are going to get hit. Finally, some other disappointments include the fact that you never get to change weapons, even for short periods. The branching storyline boasted in the blurb just means you get to choose the order in which you play the levels, which have either forwards or backwards routes. The actual story never changes and is really bad. So bad you wish you could play without it. But it is only when you play the House of the Dead 2, which unlocks upon completion of the game, that you realise that the 3rd edition is not really too bad. Part 2 looks really dated, is an even bigger bitch to play and can slow down horrendously. So, in conclusion, the game has faults, but provided you have a light gun it offers a reasonable diversion. It wins in the end because there is no competition on Xbox. Don't even consider buying this without a light gun, you won't have any fun at all.
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