house of the dead overkill is a game of two extremes, on one hand it's a super fun, very varied rail shooter that i had a blast playing, on the other hand it's also gross, misogynistic and outright hateful for every bit other than that gameplay, it's hard to reccomend because of this and i've had a lot of trouble even figuring out if i like it because of that. the games depiction of women and disabled people is just gross, the only relevant women in the game are oversexualised sex workers that the game treats like garbage and neither of which get good endings, its treatment of its disabled characters is also genuinely cruel and so much of the games dialogue is mean spirited, there's slurs and none of its minority characters get even an inch of respect and there's at least one awful misogynistic steriotype in here that upset me any time she was on screen, it made the new levels very difficult to sit through (the fact it has a level in a strip club should tell you all you need to know about the game, its gross) , it's just really bad vibes and it made most cutscenes very hard to watch, there is an arguement to be made that its less the games fault and more the fault of the inspirations the game takes grindhouse movies (mainly the 2007 movies planet terror and death proof), many of which were also misogynistic and cruel, it's difficult to really say, i'd say both are to blame, the game even seems to be aware of its issues, but just lampshades it and laughs it off, which honestly just made me even more upset at it. if this is all too much for you, and even beyond this the game is very violent and sexual and it even had a world record for most swears in a video game, is it worth it? yeah maybe if you love rail shooters.

despite being different from the normal HOTD games in every other way, it just plays like one with a few little additions, first it has multiple weapons you can buy and bring along, similar to the original mode from 2 or the saturn mode from 1, but here you can even upgrade them with money you get from levels, sometimes its even laying around and you can shoot money for extra cash, this is cool and each weapon plays pretty differently, personally i mostly used the handcanon which was a oneshot on every enemy, and the shotgun so i could easily hit collectables and health pickups, you also have the granades from 4 here, but their range is so limited that they aren't really all that useful, most of the time i didn't even pick them up, they also threw in a system where if you were to hit accurate shots in a row you would get extra score and every 6 shots you would go up a tier, but i didn't pay much attention to this because it really only effects score. that's kind of it for differences, it's just a standard rail shooter otherwise, though it does have a 3D mode that's optional, it even comes with cheap 3D glasses, tying into the movie theme, its cute and it works well even on non-3D tvs. the levels are good too, kind of, i don't think they're as good a set of levels compared to the original, and one is just flat out bad (the final mission) and there's much less replayability here as they cut out the multiple routes, so your 9 levels (7 on wii) are just 9 levels worth, where the older games may have only had 6 levels, but those levels had 10 or so worth of things to do with replays to see all of the routes, you do get extended versions with the directors cut but it really only ads a few extra bits onto each level, they are still largely the same levels with the same enemies and bosses, the enemies also have much less variety vs the older titles, with much less critters and zombie variations to go around, but the shield ones are new and cool and the exploding ones look really creepy, the bosses are all great though, tons of variety and beyond the final boss they're all really fun to fight, but that does tie back into the grossness i mentioned, as some of these bosses have needlessly cruel designs and setups, which can lean hard on sexism and ablism, it's uncomfortable at times and not in the way it seems to have wanted you to be.

it looks quite good though if maybe not as nice as 3 or 4, the grindhouse aesthetic is really nice looking when its not being grossout, i love the film grain filter, the fake trailers can be really cool and the level variety is great with tons of cool locales like hospitals, trains, prisons and carnivals, you even get two extra on ps3 with the slaughterhouse (which is great) and the, ugghhh, strip club, which while a well designed level, is just gross and crass, but like i said they're just not as good a set of levels as compared to the previous games and many don't even compare to similar levels in other railshooters, the ecliptic express from umbrella chronicles is a much better train level and the hospital from silent hill the arcade is also much more fun, the soundtrack also is really hit and miss, it keeps trying to splice voice clips from the campaign into songs and it just ruins what would otherwise be a decent song, the level themes can be good though, just those menu themes are awful. its at least nice and short, about 3 hours on ps3 and 2 and a half on wii, with an extra expanded mode if you really want to play it again, and i do think this mode is quite good, its really novel and a fun, harder way to experiance the game with all the weapons you collected and upgraded, with giving you a few new ones of its own like the crossbow, though i wouldn't say it has the staying power the older titles do, after i finished directors cut mode i think i'm done with the game entirely.

there's two ports as i mentioned, wii and ps3, but wii is more or less obsolite, if you have a ps move you can get everything the wii ver had to offer and more with the new levels and features, both are dirt cheap too so if you do want to play it, you won't find them too expensive, unlike HOTD saturn, there's also a spinoff that uses mechanics from typing of the dead on ps, but i have no real interest in that ver, seems cute though, it didn't have a legacy beyond that though, it was never given a real followup or sequel and the series would go back to the old style with scarlet dawn and the remake of 1, which is for the better i think. the game was developed by headstrong games who mostly seem to have been involved in games like the art academy and battalion wars series, both of which are super good and well worth playing, so this game does seem like an anomaly for them, though they were involved with the cancelled game, redwood falls in 2008, which looked cool and was much more in line with this. overall it's a mixed bag, if you can stomich the issues i'd say its worth a go if you love rail shooters, but on both systems you can do so much better with other HOTD games like 2 and 3 on wii or 3 and 4 on ps3, and even beyond that with games like the resident evil chronicles games and dead space extration, i'd rec all of those well before this, but its still not a bad choice persay if you really want one to play.