Sega's House of the Dead III was released in arcades in 2002 as the third game in the popular Light Gun Series before eventually being released on the original XBox console, the Nintendo Wii alongside the second game, the PC and lastly what I am here to talk about the PlayStation 3 version which is available for download and compatible with the PlayStation Move Controller. The House of the Dead III stood out as one of the better games in the series as it replaced the six shot pistol for a six shot shotgun utilizing the pump action feature which was really cool in the arcades and some new features as well. Does it make the game hold up and make use of the PSMove? Let's enter The House of the Dead III and find out.
The Storyline of the game takes place 19 years after the events of The House of the Dead 2 where the world has become invested with zombies and former AMS agent Thomas Rogan has formed a paramilitary force to combat the treat that is continuing to spread kind of like the COVID-19 pandemic we're all struggling with. Anyway Rogan's squad was sent to the EFI Research Facility one of the places where mad scientist Dr Roy Curien did his research but all but Rogan was killed and lost contact with him. G (also one of the returning characters) alongside Thomas Rogan's daughter Lisa enters the facility to find Thomas Rogan eventually teaming up with Dan Curien in ending Dr Roy Curien's plans and his resurrection the Wheel of Fate once and for all. What is good about the storyline that it provides a backstory of Dr Curien before events of the 1998 Curien Incident involving ways of trying to help his son Daniel who feel into a coma. Also another thing about the storyline is the shift between characters that you play as which is a nice way of keeping things in a dynamic fashion even if the storyline is just you typical zombies take over and you have to blast your way through any zombie stupid enough to get in your way. The voice acting and the writing is still cheesy to an extent and some lines a quite cliche but compared to The House of the Dead 2 this game has a much better voice acting performance in comparison.
Like the previous games The House of the Dead III is a Light Gun On-Rails Shooter where your movement is controlled automatically and you shoot at whatever number of zombies that appear on the screen before one of them attacks you and when the screen is cleared you automatically move on to the next wave of zombies and blast them all over again. Your weapon in this game is a shotgun that has six shots before needing to be reloaded, it does decent damage despite having as many shots as the pistol. The gore is as pretty as the older games where you can blow an enemy's arms, legs as well as creating a massive hole in a zombie's body as well as shooting it in the head which always guarantee's an instant kill. The zombie lineup is incredibly good ranging from the standard regular zombies, zombies that climb the celling, zombies that jump all around as well as other zombies that throw knifes and use other weapons and projectiles to attack you with. Every stage ends with a boss encounter where you need to attack at the weak point to damage it, taking lessons from the awesome Vampire Night is that a boss has two bars, one of which obviously shows the bosses current health while the other bar is the boss' attack bar that when you deplete it by shooting it at its weak point stops it's current attack before hitting you.
The game does mix things up by adding a new rescue system where instead of finding helpless civilians that need saving one of two players gets grabbed from behind and the other player has to rescue their partner before the approaching zombies hit them, if you manage to shoot the zombies off fast enough you'll earn an extra life. While different from saving civilians but the rescue system offers a different way of ensuring that the two players help each other out. Sometimes the zombies are quite fast and hard to hit during the rescue sections but doing these sections is very rewarding, especially if you are running low on lives. There is also a new scoring system where if you shoot down a zombie fast enough or shoot two at a time you'll see the words “Excellent”, “Good”, “Faster” and “Twinshot” which depend on how fast you can kill the enemies on screen. When you finish a level you are given a rank from “E” to an “S” depending on your accuracy, the amount of hits you took, the rescue attempts you completed and so on earning you some extra lives and how fast you go through the levels. You do also find barrels and other environmental objects that you can shoot at to reveal hidden items which adds up to your score but you do get extra lives on occasion. Another change is that instead of going different paths if you either rescued a civilian or not you are given a path that you can choose at the start of the level which allows you to go different ways as you see fit as well as choosing which next area to go to when you beat a stage. This allows you to play the levels differently even if you are playing the levels either normally or backwards. Levels range from the Facility Entrance, a Bio Lab, a Genome Ward, the Information System Department WEST Wing and lastly the Wheel of Fate which is the final boss of the game.
The game controls with the PlayStation Move Controller where you move the cursor around to shoot at enemies by moving the device around and pressing the T Trigger to shoot while occasionally reloading by either shaking the remote or pressing one of the face buttons on the remote. Playing with the PlayStation Move Remote is very accurate and smooth and you can change of the style of your crosshair to how you like it. You do have to put with the terrible three way calibration system is a bit of a nuisance and doesn't fully reflect proper Light Gun accuracy. The game is compatible also with the PlayStation Move Shooting Gun Attachment and other third party Light Gun Attachments that you can find. It is also compatible with the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter Gun Attachment and playing the game with that device makes it play very close to the arcade version and that is because you can use the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter's Pump Action to simulate the actual shotgun pump back action in the arcades and it is fantastically executed. The issue I do have with the gameplay of this port however is that the game has an auto-fire and auto-reload function which removes a lot of the challenge and fun but most importantly the aspect of using the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter's Pump Action to reload manually. You can just play the whole game using the PSMove Remote on it's own and hold down the T Trigger while moving the device around and win without any kind of challenge or without kind of fun at all because the game is automatically firing and reloading with the T Trigger pressed down. This is a House of the Dead game that originally played with a six shot Shotgun not with the freaking full automatic machine gun like what you would use in The House of the Dead IV which I'll eventually talk about sometime and having auto-fire and auto-reloading mechanics into this is stupid and unnecessary especially for a fast paced Light Gun shooter that is all about reflex and accuracy. Of course if you don't have a PlayStation Move Remote you can play the game with a standard Dual Shock 3 controller and have to deal with a slow moving crosshair.
The game isn't all that challenging even on the default Normal difficulty but it is still a blast to go through either on single player or with a friend locally where you can share continues with a friend to mow down zombies together. There are about 6 chapters in the game and the game will take about half an hour to finish on a first time playthrough. Replaying the game multiple times and taking different paths allows you to get the secret endings if you can obtain a high rank which adds some replay-ability plus also the PS3 version has a few unlockable trophies that you can get if you are good with your trigger finger.
There is another mode called Time Attack where your lives are replaced with a timer that continuously ticks down and you have to make quick shots on enemies and shoot items to replenish the timer before the timer reaches 0. Taking damage reduces the timer making quick accurate shots to the head, while also succeeding at the Rescue Sections and stopping the bosses attacks refills the timer. It's a challenging mode sure but honestly not all that entertaining to go through and doesn't add much to going through the levels in different paths. Shame that this version of the game doesn't bring back the challenging Extreme Mode from the Nintendo Wii version that makes the Shotgun weaker and enemies stronger and immune to gunshots not fired at their weakpoint which would have been superb to have. The House of the Dead III also lacks a Special Mode from House of the Dead 2 and also doesn't have a Boss Mode where you could take on all of the game's bosses in a time limit or even a Training Mode to give you some extra challenges to do from the previous games in the series. This PS3 version does have a Ranked Mode where you can play through the game and your Highscore is then uploaded to online leaderboards and if you really care about your score being ranked online then power to you otherwise this mode is worthless because you can't change any of the game settings and you are stuck with default settings. Also added is a “Making of” video where you can look at interviews with the creators of the game giving discussion on the development of the franchise like in those DVDs where you can look at how the games were made if you are willing to sit through it.
Sega at the very least did a fantastic job of brining the game to HD, the visuals are much sharper and the overall quality of the game compared to previous games in the series is much better to look at especially the gore which still looks impressive to this day. This port however doesn't support 16:9 wide screen display during gameplay which is a bummer but at least it runs really well and doesn't suffer from any performance problems which is a good thing. The soundtrack composed isn't as spooky filled as the other games and feels more action intensive but it's half decent enough.
The House of the Dead III overall is a much better looking and fun little enjoyable Light Gun Shooter, the storyline while cheesy in places is much better than The House of the Dead 2 and blasting through waves of zombies with a Shotgun is still fun after all these years. This PS3 port comes close to the arcade version while adding Online Leaderboards, support for the PlayStation Move and improving a little on the visuals. For what this game has available on offer it is surprisingly cheap to pick up on the PlayStation Network Store so if you have a PlayStation Move and enjoy Light Gun games with a friend than you can't go wrong with this PS3 port. The PlayStation Move successfully brings The House of the Dead III to the PS3 and comes close to feeling and playing like the arcade version but the lack of content on offer and auto-firing and auto-reloading features plus no wide screen display options stop it from being the ultimate version of this excellent undead Light Gun Shooter.
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Game Score: 7.0/10
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Game Title: The House of the Dead III
Platform: PlayStation 3
Developer: Sega
Genre: Light Gun Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+
Release Date: 12th February 2012
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The Good Points:
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Multiple Paths that you can choose to tackle each of the levels and unlock the different endings
Voice Acting and Story that's better than The House of the Dead 2
New Rescue Sections are quite fun and rewarding to do
Brilliant New Scoring System
Reloading using the PSMove Sharp Shooter's pump action makes it feel like the Arcade Version
The Bad Points:
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The Auto-fire and Auto-reload mechanics greatly lowers the difficulty, challenge and fun of the game
Not a lot of content on offer compared to previous HOTD games
Doesn't feature 16:9 wide screen support
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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