during a vacation i was on this month i had spent a lot of time in arcades, i mostly played some random games that seemed neat but never got far, jojo last survivor, gundam versus and dissidia to name a few, but there was one that i got a little hooked on and beat twice during my stay and that was this game, the newest real house of the dead game: scarlet dawn, it's a short game with very little deviation in it but it has some cool stuff and it's as classic HOTD as you'd hope for and it's super easy to find at basically any japanese arcade, i saw like 5 machines in total and the one i used actually had some bonus things to it like that it shook and had air blasts during jumpscares or when you get hit, it was super cool, reminded me of what i've seen of cabinets for HOTD4 special or dark escape 4D.

everything about the actual game is very standard HOTD, it takes mostly after 3 and 4 with it having 4's machinegun but also throwing in 3's level structure with you choosing a route after the first real level and that changing little bits about the levels as you do them in whatever order, it doesn't have the immediate route variation of 2 or even 4 since you don't have quite as many obvious choices to make nor as much real variation, but there is some, the real replayability comes moreso in that it has multiple modes which feels very rare for a game in the arcades, you'd expect that more from a home release. you have your normal mode and a master mode, this master mode upps enemy counts and health pools and removes the random weapons you could find and use in the main mode, but it does instead offer a shop you can use ingame currency gained from playing to purchase extras, it's a fine mode but i don't think it's worth the effort to go out of your way, especially since for some reason it's only in japanese machines and requires a card to use. the weapon variation is nice too so not having that is a real shame, sure they're contextual but it'd have been nice to have them, things like a shotgun or granade launchers pop up in the main mode a lot and are very fun to use, it reminds me a lot of how they worked in house of the dead 2's original mode or the weapon system in time crisis 3, fun! there's also varied types here, sure you got your normal zombies which here come in huge WWZ style waves that can pile and pile to the point of making whole ladders of themselves and you got series staples like the axe zombies and the slime men but also new things for this game like the rats, the silly looking guitar guys and the samurai, the bosses too are mostly pretty original, but two of them are basically just reskinned bosses from the first game but less silly. that's the vibe in general, it's a much less campy feeling game versus before, it almost feels like sega wanted to make their own dark escape 4D, a more atmospheric and scary game and it makes the game stand out a lot, even if i prefer the silly vibes of earlier games. there's cute levels though, there's so many fun little gimmicks here like a level set on an ATV, count downs you have to rush to beat and the aformentioned horde scenes plus they brought back the survivors from 2, but without the level changes those brought, the short levels do have a lot of variety in design, so you won't get board of them.

the atmospheric changes do mean one bad thing though, the music here just isn't as memorable as usual with the exception of a few tracks, which for HOTD is a big downside, the series has always had some of the best music in the medium and this one just isn't up to that standard, it's not bad at all, just unmemorable, which is a shame because the composers here are both fantastic, with Hiroshi Kawaguchi who has worked on things as varied as sonic, yakuza, bayonetta and outrun 2006 and you also had Ryohei Kohno who worked on yakuza 4 and ishin. that said some tracks here are really good, chariot sounds amazing, someone in the comments of the upload i saw called it "ps1 racing game music" and that fits and the track nightmare sounds right out of one of the better silent hill OST's, big fan of that one. aesthetically it's pretty nice looking though, most of it takes place in a big money mansion but unlike 1 where it's been long since destroyed, here it's still expensive looking and more fresh, it's a cool setting, tons of golds and reds and it has that ps360 shine to it and they go ham on effects in some levels, like with the fog in the final level or the smoke in the first or the amazing looking fire during the bat boss fight, it looks very new and modern still and sometimes even looks a little like a super high quality pre-render in some screenshots, like it could have came out very recently, it looks even better than the remake of 1 that came out and that's far more recent, the main character models look a lil of though, but the zombies look super varied and detailed, same with the bosses, it's a little wild to see an arcade game with this kind of graphical fidelity! .

the story follows on from 4, which is cool and it has kate again, which is also cool, it has cute references and callbacks like a best boy goldman cameo and does what it needs to, a fun bridge between 4 and 3 and the character moments are really fun, it's nice, but not as quotable or fun as like 2 and 3, the darker atmosphere also just makes it feel less fun than it maybe should be, it's something i can be a little mixed on, but at least it's not as misogynistic and mean as overkill, while i like it a lot less than the first 4 games, i still think it's better than overkill, despite the darker atosphere and less fun style it's still much closer to a normal HOTD than overkill was and doesn't have any of that games major issues like its writing or its mean-ness, it really saved the seriees from ending on a sour note to me, it helps that its just a great time too, short and nice to give a try. it's never been ported though, which is a shame, there's a localised version you can find and it also is fully in english even with japanese cabinets, but you will need to find one to play, which isn't super easy unless you have a lot of arcades nearby, maybe its emulatable? im not totally sure, it'd be a perfect game for psvr or even just a switch port, it could run it i'm sure,if it can run world war Z im not sure why it couldnt run this. it was made by wow entertainment and was more or less their last real game they put out, which is a shame because they're basically the best light gun dev out there between stuff like the classic HOTD, vampire knight and ocean hunter, i hope they make something new soon or their older titles at least get ported, we need a home console version of ocean hunter ASAP. it was also directed by Takashi Oda who directed pretty much every other game in the series bar EX and overkill, he also made other cool games like sonic and sega racing and did the mascot outfits in one of my favourite games, 428 shibuya scramble!. i'd reccomend hunting the game down if you can, it's a pain to find but well worth it and its a nice cap off for the series, just ignore the pretty bad remakes.