"You must stop Curien or else something terrible will happen."
--Sophie Richards, The House of the Dead: Remake
Nostalgia and the revival of dormant franchises on new platforms can still merit their own kind of celebration, but there is nothing to celebrate about an extreme paucity of content. An incredibly limited length does the remake of The House of the Dead no favors. Neither does the lack of emphasis on horror as opposed to very over-the-top action with light horror trappings. Now, the arcade experience is well replicated on the Switch, so the game is not without some successes. The game in its original form was also instrumental in catapulting the quicker, more aggressive zombies many are now familiar with to the forefront of popular culture, and the remake is a chance to revisit an impactful part of art, despite its flaws. For what it is, The House of the Dead: Remake remains a well-structured enhancement of a game with very particular flaws.
Production Values
No, the graphics are not terrible, however much more pixelated the enemies might appear in my still screenshots than in the frantic onscreen movements of the game; no, they are also absolutely not the best I have ever seen on the Switch. First-party games are usually the most aesthetically well-constructed titles on the platform, and House of the Dead is no exception to this norm. While this might reflect the way the original was designed, the voice acting is distinctively worse. There is scarcely any dialogue across the four levels of the game. Both the voice acting that is present and the lines themselves, unfortunately, make the dialogue original Resident Evil 4 seem sophisticated--a terrifying thing! In part because of this, everything besides the arcade-style gameplay has the depth of a miniscule puddle, but the less excellent or deep works of art can still by contrast provoke contemplation of artistic excellence.
Gameplay
In its four levels, which together only provide around an hour of content aside from replays, the remake of House of the Dead takes the player on an on-rails trek through the mansion and laboratories of the deranged Dr. Curien. Zombies (or at least humans that resemble the common zombie aesthetic, even if they are not actual reanimated corpses) roam the building and the land around it, sometimes even brandishing axes or barrels they hurl if not stopped first. This sets them apart from the culturally predominant version of a zombie. You have to kill a member of each enemy type before it becomes viewable in the Gallery, where you can also see other things like the achievements earned. For instance, one is earned by killing 666 enemies.
Encouraging replays are the alternate paths, scientists that can be saved, and a handful of secret weapons to be unlocked. Shooting scientists kills them and requires a restart of that level to save everyone. With such a shooting-heavy game adapted from light-gun arcade origins, having gyroscopic, touch screen, and more conventional control options is a significant strength of this remake. With the touch screen controls, you can tap the touch screen with one finger to fire and two to reload, while the gyroscope option lets you aim by tilting the Joy-Cons so that the cursor migrates around the screen. Perhaps someone would want to replay the game simply to experiment with the controls--though trying Horde Mode alongside the standard mode extends the replayability as well. Here, many more enemies can be onscreen at once. Compare the screenshots below to see how different this makes the same parts of the game in Original and Horde Mode:
Story
Dr. Curien has allegedly been experimenting on the human genome in his mansion, and upon investigating up close, Thomas Rogan finds his romantic partner endangered and a host of scientists trying to survive attacks from biologically altered humans and animals.
Intellectual Content
There are mild options for exploration that have to be brought about by timely player input, something that might take multiple playthroughs to fully experience, but other than this, there is little to stimulate the player besides shooting and reloading quickly enough to outlast attackers. This is not an abysmal thing on its own. Though artistic quality and relaxing enjoyment of art are themselves philosophical matters, as all things are, art can be excellent despite not having a gravitation specifically towards abstract necessary truths and metaphysical/epistemological issues. The remake just lacks philosophical depth, lacks any explicit horror beyond the basic visual enemy design and environmental settings, and also has a very small number of levels. All of this combined is what really handicaps the game.
Conclusion
By design, The House of the Dead: Remake is not brimming with anything like metaphysical exploration or superb characterization. It does offer an updated gameplay experience, for all its thematic limitations and extreme brevity compared to many games, of an arcade release that wound up helping shift the broad direction of zombie horror. On the Switch, the control options can even capture elements of the arcade version's setup rather well, as with the gyroscope aiming. Again, for what it is, this remake that resurrects the first entry of the franchise is executed well as a whole. The type of horror it offers is just by default not as developed as that of various later games that allow for thorough stories, among other things. It is also true that not every game in this general genre needs to be The Last of Us. This can be alright as long as other qualities are executed competently.
Content:
1. Violence: Very exaggerated spurts of blood of various colors come out when creatures are shot or killed.
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