TL;DR – The House of the Dead: Remake is a slightly janky if visually impressive port of the original game, that offers a decent amount of value to fans of the series and/or light-gun games in general. While it does provide 2-player co-op, this mode is unfortunately only available to those with both a controller and Keyboard & Mouse in local co-op, or for those who can host a Steam Remote Play session without any real lag. In terms of content there’s the faithful House of the Dead campaign with it’s branching paths, incredibly short playthrough time (you can seriously “beat” it in under an hour) and a bonus Horde mode. This is therefore a great party game and an easy recommendation for those who have IRL friends living near them, or who enjoy the cheesy faux-horror aspect of the game enough to reach for 100% completion. Everyone else should probably ignore this game unless it’s available via a steep discount, especially as the game is fairly basic and has some visual bugs/glitches.
Quick Note: This game is slightly glitchy if you start fannying around with co-op settings. If you get stuck you can always force the game to close by opening the Steam overlay and making it quit the game that way.
The House of the Dead: Remake is a game that came out of nowhere and was quickly snatched up and thrown into my Steam library around the time I first saw it was available, as for whatever reason it’s been the only HotD I haven’t played yet. Much like it’s sequels the game has the campy charm of a low quality release while still offering a variety of fun enemy encounters, a short-enough game length that it’s great for co-op while having enough unlockables and collectibles to still offer a decent amount of playtime. Unfortunately the port job hasn’t been conducted without any issue, as the game’s port by a motley band of developers I literally haven’t heard of has resulted in a Unity port that does little to dispel the negative conception of that particularly ill-fated engine. The two main issues I’ve encountered (and fortunately I haven’t encountered the “bug” where the game just flat out refuses to work) are surprisingly long load times and occasional instances of the game failing to load anything visually aside from the enemies. Fortunately these issues are fairly minor, as the game only fails to load the level briefly at a time and the actual loading of each level while slightly tedious only needs to take place when you’re booting up the game for the first time, or loading the game’s gallery mode. As such the game itself is able to operate on a fairly speed basis, with enemies jumping through windows, falling down from ceilings or clambering across walls and water features without any delay which keeps the pace up. The House of the Dead: Remake is therefore a fast paced game and were it not for the fact that it only includes 4 levels you would be in for a roller-coaster ride of an experience, but alas the game is over almost as quickly as it starts once you’ve figured out how the bosses work.
Which is kind of the game’s jam, for want of a better way of describing it. The House of the Dead: Remake is deliberately designed to be a short but intensive thrill ride which has the player basically unable to take a breather at any stage of the experience, as even when there are no enemies on screen there are hidden paths and collectibles scattered around that need to be shot to be unlocked. While this is great for keeping the pace up and ensuring that any co-op partners will find it hard to come up with an excuse to leave mid-session, it does also mean that the game has to be kept short enough that you’ll want to keep on rolling with the punches. Which means you get 4 levels per playthrough, of which 1 is a glorified boss-rush that barely lasts a few minutes because you should know how to deal with the bosses by now. In fact the bosses actually get easier as the game goes on, with the possible exception of the final boss who’s “weak spot” is hidden during the intro-screen. Fortunately the bosses are still fairly intense as they move quickly and you’ll need to keep hammering away at them to stop them for dealing a ton of damage to you, but they’re really more of a show-piece than an immense challenge – at least on normal difficulty.
As for the gameplay itself it’s an on-rails light-gun shooter where your character moves at their own pace through a variety of shooting galleries, with monsters appearing from all sides often with minimal notice. There’s a decent amount of enemy variety considering there are only really 3 stages, but on subsequent playthroughs there isn’t much in the way of variation unless you take the alternative paths. With these paths often being fairly well hidden, or at least requiring some intuition. Your character’s glance might quickly switch to a button for example, which you can shoot within the 2 seconds given to cause an elevator to appear or for a locked door to be shot down. Otherwise your character quickly moves on to the next series of targets. That’s about it for the gameplay, as outside of researchers occasionally getting in the way there isn’t much to it. These researchers are essentially civilians who you can shoot, but you shouldn’t as they give you extra points and sometimes healing items. In addition if you’re able to save all of them then you get a “secret” bonus room during the final stage. The House of the Dead: Remake also comes with an optional horde mode, which I had initially assumed was some sort of last-stand or defensive side activity, but which is instead just the same levels as the base campaign but with considerably more enemies on screen at any point.
With all that being said there isn’t too much to discuss about this House of the Dead remake, as while the graphics are perfectly acceptable they’re not worthy of extensive coverage. There’s a new soundtrack due to licensing issues with the original, which sounds fine to me but which can be replaced with the original’s via modding (on PC) for those who dislike it. The gameplay is enjoyable, faithful and frantic even if it’s fairly straight forward. There isn’t a huge amount of content but there is some replayability via the 3 different endings, different stage routes, achievement hunting (which unlocks additional weapons and even cheat codes) and the optional horde mode which provides a challenge for more hardcore gamers. It’s therefore a serviceable port of the original which features a handful of extra features, but which is sadly let down by the lack of online multiplayer and the lack of alternative game modes. So it’s short and sweet, but not particularly filling unless you are the sort of person who cares about 100% completion. One last thing to mention again is that you can unlock multiple different weapons and cheat codes which are fun to mess around with, but of course you can only play through the 4 included stages so many times before they begin to get a bit tiresome. Horde mode alleviates this slightly by mixing up the enemy spawns, but changing the difficulty doesn’t seem to have much of an impact.
In conclusion then The House of the Dead: Remake is an enjoyable co-op game and a decent enough single player experience, albeit one that most players won’t spend too much time with. While I’m glad that the game has been successful and that a sequel is in development, I am hoping that the House of the Dead 2 remake gets a bit more extra content to help add some meat to the base game’s bones. Unfortunately while The House of the Dead: Remake is a good remake, it does have some weird quirks like the lack of online co-op and some graphical bugs which haven’t been patched by the developers. As for whether I recommend it? Well yeah I do, I think it’s a fun little game and it’s not particularly expensive – plus having a local co-op game that’s not lengthy or overtly complicated is always a good thing. I do just wish it more content however, as playing through the campaign takes under an hour and once you’ve done that you’re just replaying through largely the same handful of stages with the same bosses, even if the alternative routes offer a sliver of much needed variety. The unlockable guns are great, the gallery is cute, the voice acting is still appropriately bad and the visual upgrades are nice, but it’s just oh so short and it’s replayability is near solely dependent on whether you can convince someone to come to your house and give it a go.
