Sorry about missing the feature last week… I was really busy with school and work and Advance Wars. Regardless, A Closer Look is back to show you the games nobody else wants to! This week I look at Sega’s Wii port of the classic light gun shooters, The House of the Dead 2 & 3.

The light gun shooter genre has seen a bit of a resurgence on the Wii. Ghost Squad and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles started it, and House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return (which we’ll now call ‘HotD’) will continue the trend into 2008. For the unfamiliar, the House of the Dead series spans back to 1998, seeing its first release in arcades before being ported to various consoles. The series received a second installment in 2000, and a third in 2002. These are the games that are being ported to Wii in one package. Players take on the role of various generic characters who get drawn into an evil mansion/scary location filled with zombies and other hideous monsters. It’s your basic light gun shooter story: an excuse to get into the action.

Being ports of arcade games from the start of the decade, ‘HotD’ isn’t going to receive any awards for its graphics. Still, the hilariously bad voice acting gives the title a campiness that can’t be matched. It just feels like an old school zombie movie. Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles was very serious and very slow. ‘HotD’ pumps up the speed and the action while never taking itself completely seriously. As for new features, there’s six different game modes, including time attack and several multiplayer modes. There’s no word yet on if there’s any significant enhancements (it seems unlikely), but it does support the Wii Zapper. Here’s a trailer of the game if you don’t know what House of the Dead is all about.

One of the most exciting possibilties that stems from this game is that good sales might lead to a port of the 2006 arcade game House of the Dead 4. The title still hasn’t been announced for any consoles, but it almost seems inevitable given this re-release. Do yourself a favor and check out House of the Dead 2 and 3 Return when it’s released this March. It’s good, campy, mindless zombie destroying fun. And who can really complain about that?