House of the Dead: Overkill done for

Sega's violent homage to terrible movies is ready to roll. Today the publisher announced that House of the Dead: Overkill has gone gold and will be ready to meet its February 10 North American release date.

Like Madworld and No More Heroes, Overkill falls into the steadily expanding group of ultraviolent M-rated games being made for the usually family-friendly Wii. As with previous House of the Dead games, Overkill is an on-rails light-gun-style shooter that challenges players to mow down hordes of zombies while avoiding innocent civilians with an ill-advised penchant for startling heavily armed secret agents.

Setting Overkill apart from previous entries in the series is its adoption of a B-movie aesthetic to form a "pulp funk horror" vibe clearly inspired by efforts such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's film Grindhouse (itself an homage to an entire genre of exploitive cinema of the 1970s). Whereas previous House of the Dead games echoed the dialog and delivery of such films, Overkill incorporates gratuitous swearing, go-go dancers, and visual effects to simulate battered and beat-up film prints.

Development on Overkill was handled by Headstrong Games, formerly known as Kuju London. Previous projects from Headstrong include Battalion Wars for the GameCube and Battalion Wars 2 for the Wii.

For more on the game, check out GameSpot's latest House of the Dead: Overkill preview.