The House of The Dead Remake: A Retrospective

Back in 2016, when I did a retrospective of the entire series, The House of The Dead's future looked a tad bleak; besides the extended cut/typing variations of Overkill and the bare-bones PS3 ports of 3 and 4, there wasn't a whiff of anything new on the horizon. Sega themselves had seemingly stopped acknowledging the series in any major way, and I was a tad disheartened about that fact.

Since then, we've had an arcade sequel in House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, developed with a team headed by series creator Takeshi Oda, a remake of the first game developed by Forever Entertainment subsidiary MegaPixel Studios, and hints at much more to follow in the coming years (with a remake of THOTD2 by MegaPixel already on the cards and currently in development as of this typing). It's never felt so good to be wrong, folks, let me tell ya.

Whilst I would like to cover Scarlet Dawn somewhere down the line, I'd need to spend more time with it- I've so far only gotten to actually play it myself once, and without further playthroughs to really feel the gameplay side of it out, any insight I could offer would feel incomplete. Conversely, I've spent a fair bit of time with the Remake since it launched, and boy howdy, I've got Thoughts™. So many, in fact, that it's actually been a little difficult getting this article going, less out of not knowing what to say or even how to say it, but how to structure it. Hell, I've doubled back already and got rid of a chunk of text within this draft. Slightly aggravating as that is, I do think it says something that I've got just that much to say about a game that basic flow and structure of getting it all said is the biggest hurdle- I'd rather that then having shit-all idea what to type.

So I'm just going to wing it, and hope the end result isn't too waffle-y. But it probably will be. You've read my articles before.

On the aesthetic side, the team has played it very smart; the details of the Curien Mansion have been filled out alongside the graphical upgrade, boasting tons of additional detail, furniture, decorations and detritus, but all the rooms you go through are still the ones you went through in the original game. The enemies, from iconic creatures such as Cyril down to the oft-forgotten Name, are almost all recognisable as themselves even with the facelift, with the team again mainly sticking to fleshing the details of what was already there or implied out rather then grafting on new details wholesale. The script, such as it is, is 100% identical to the original with zero changes, and the short cutscenes survived the transition mostly as-is, barring embellishments such as camera movement and placement differences and character animations (which I'll cover in greater detail below). So integral was the accuracy in this area of the game that the team at MegaPixel saw it right to include the fish with the head of a Bentley creature grafted on it that appears in a tank towards the final quarter of Chapter 2- an easter egg so subtle that even many die hard players of the original probably didn't notice it until many years later. Knowing that it was actually Forever Entertainment that approached Sega regarding the Remakes creation rather then the other way around, as well as how closely they kept in contact with the fanbase and community figureheads during development, this isn't too surprising; a good portion of the dev team are clearly big fans.

This is also evident on the gameplay side of things, at least at its core. One of the reasons the original House of The Dead is such a beloved rail shooter is because unlike many of its prior 3D contemporaries, it's dead (har har) simple; aim the gun, shoot at hostiles, don't get hit and don't hit non-hostiles. It did not, however, fall into a lot of the pitfalls that it's 2D forefathers often did with wild abandon- difficulty balance that makes single credit clears impossible and a lack of literal depth that made many come off like glorified shooting galleries, predominantly. I'm very pleased to say that the Remake manages to bring that over mostly intact; series wide traditions such as mook chivalry are still at play, enemies behave exactly as they did in the original, you still need to reload your weapon, destructible scenery still contains point-earning items and life ups (and are pretty much placed identically), and the triggers for the various routes through the levels are all the same. I feel confident in the claim that though it isn't completely one-for-one due to things I will discuss, you could in theory practice on the Remake and take what you learn to the arcade version and find things still play out in your favour. That isn't something you always get to say with a video game remake, and whilst that being a good or bad thing depends on your preference, I feel it's crucial to note that the original House of The Dead hasn't seen any sort of re-release or ports beyond its arcade debut and the Sega Saturn and PC ports that arrived in 1998 (due in large part due to the source code for the project getting lost during Sega's many internal restructures); making that experience available again, officially, is a noteworthy thing. Sidebar- this means the accuracy is extra impressive, as it would've been done through playing and observing the end product in motion rather then glancing at the code at its heart. I'm stunned it's as close as it is, even factoring in the simplicity.

The game does allow players to use the Joycons' gyroscope capability as a workaround, but the aiming calibration is somewhat unreliable and drifts heavily- necessitating the inclusion of a button that re-centres the aiming reticle during gameplay. It should be noted that fans have modded light-gun support into the PC releases of the game, should you wish to pursue that avenue.

As far as performance goes, the game quite noticeably chugs both at certain points pretty consistently, and at others seemingly randomly- enemy count or environment animation doesn't always seem to be the root cause, though the final hallway before the battle with the Magician pretty consistently causes slowdown and lag likely due to the numerous lightning/laser barriers. Pop-in of visuals and outright crashing or hanging are not unheard of, either- I can personally attest to experiencing the game hanging literally at the door to the Magician's chamber, requiring a reset- though thankfully the latter in particular are not common enough to cause serious concern. The team has mentioned finding it difficult to optimise the game in interviews, though they put it down to problems with the rendering system the game used in place of Unity's (deemed “inefficient”) rather then with the Nintendo Switch specifically. I have not been able to play the versions released for other platforms, so I cannot confirm whether they run any better or worse.

Another massive bugbear for a lot of people- myself included- is the Remakes soundtrack. Rather then licensing Tetsuya Kawauchi's original score, or commissioning remixes and arrangements of it, composer Sébastien Poncelet was tasked with creating brand new music said to be “eerily similar to the original tunes” which, in practice, means every tune sounds like a Tesco Value version of its counterpart. In my personal opinion, the new music is aggressively dull and annoyingly awkward; because the songs are trying to evoke the originals so heavily, they have to dance around the notes and arrangements without copying them exactly, and the end result is a bunch of tunes that don't stick in the head because none of the melodies are catchy. I don't begrudge Poncelet too much- he was given a very tall order here- but I think allowing for a greater degree of compositional freedom, and outright deviation from the source material, would have been the wiser (if slightly more controversial) move. Of course, the optimal play would have been to just license Kawauchi's score, but Forever Entertainment have gone on record as saying they wanted to avoid the legal red tape and further costs that comes with audio licensing. It is what it is- and if you're playing the PC version, somewhat moot considering that fans have also modded the original soundtrack back into the game.

The biggest bugbears for me, though, were a lot of the little things: the noticeable “Unity Jank” dotting much of the experience (particularly the way enemies rag-doll then freeze in awkward poses in death on occasion); the loading screen “hints” that are mostly unhelpful or painfully unfunny, awkward attempts to inject “personality” that don't land (this affects some of the wording in the menus, as well- see the Gallery of Shame below); the choice to direct the voice actors to “sound bad” on purpose resulting in actively less enjoyable cutscenes (and, frankly, are more grating then the supposedly “bad” originals); the fact that the level descriptions in the stage select were initially filled with very poorly translated and typo ridden text (though this has since been fixed in a patch, in the interest of balance); the fact that at least one if not several enemy/boss descriptions were ripped wholesale from The Wiki of The Dead without credit or knowledge (again, in the interest of balance, this was a straight up mistake/misunderstanding on Forever Entertainment's part, and was hashed out by them and community figures before the game's release full release). It would be extremely petty of me to say any one or even all of these completely ruined the entire thing for me- and would also be a massive lie- but they did and still do bother me a touch. I should note here too that in addition to toning down the gore, the Japanese version of the release also does not allow players to kill researchers themselves, not only taking a small bit of challenge out of some sections but rendering two of the achievements impossible to receive.

I don't want to close out on negatives, though, and there are a few elements I've yet to cover, so I'd like to go through them briefly in sequential order. Though the core gameplay has been left untouched, optional tweaks and alternatives are offered to the player; in addition to the pistol, players can find additional weapons to fill out their arsenal (and said weapons are dramatically different not just in damage and spread, but how they effect and interact with the environment), though they're never forced to use them- in fact, you can switch between the default and the extra weapons on the fly whenever you like. A toggleable flash-light function is available that allows you to better see darker areas if you so choose. Two scoring methods are selectable- one closer (though not exact) to how the arcade original calculated your score, or a “modern” one that accounts for chained kills in a manner similar to later titles in the series. Local multiplayer is supported even in the Switch version in both co-operative and competitive forms, which could have been a very easy thing to overlook or not even consider. Bosses show gradual incremental damage over the fight in a nice additional detail- it's most notable during the fight with The Hangedman, as it effects his wings. The options for adjusting controls and visuals are fairly robust and intricate, so you get a decent degree of customisability when tailoring the experience to your tastes. As alluded to above, there's also a ton of achievements to unlock, if that's the sort of thing you go in for.

Speaking of the researchers, every single one of the many you can rescue throughout the game has been given an individual appearance, with the end-of-stage results tracking which ones you did and did not save- a small thing, but a nice addition; some of them also seem to have little individual animation quirks upon being rescued (one guy heaves like he's about to throw up, and one lass darts her eyes left to right- dunno if the latter one's a bug, though). Though it only happens like, once, there's at least that single instance of a Creature doing something of its own accord besides attacking you or wandering researchers (in this case, absent mindedly snacking on one of the Murrer snakes with its back turned to you as you approach, which I thought was amusing).

The biggest boon, of course, is the Horde Mode. Filling the slot usually occupied by an Original Mode (rendered partially inert by the on-the-fly-weapon-switching in arcade and horde mode) and a Boss Rush (sorely missed), it does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; dials the number of enemies that assault you way the fuck up. Like, ludicrously the fuck up. It's flat out ridiculous, completely unfair, and using the handgun renders it damn near unplayable. It is pure, simple, stupid fun of the most chaotic order that swaps out the more intricate but still fast paced normal gameplay with something that encourages you to go hog wild. It also manages to turn one of my criticisms above- the rag-doll/freezing issue- into a strength by proxy, as very little is funnier then mowing down entire crowds of enemies and watching them bounce around and lock up in the dumbest possible poses.

I want to end the article on a bit of navel gazing, if you'll permit it, and I'm gonna start said pretentious wank with a question; what, exactly, should a remake of something even Be? I'm not talking about whether it should be faithful or different or how much or how little of either it should be, mind; what I mean is, what is the end purpose of it? To supersede the original in every aspect and become the “default”, to stand alongside it as a companion piece, or something else entirely?

I don't know the answer. I don't know if there even is a correct answer. I do know that if the House of The Dead Remake was intended to supersede, I don't quite think it manages; there's just a little bit too much holding it back. As a companion piece, though? Yeah, I reckon it makes the grade. It's got its flaws, absolutely, but what I hope I've managed to impart is that it gets the essential elements mostly right. It is, if nothing else, a very decent interpretation of the arcade original that is, ultimately, still quite fun to play. I'm curious to see how the team handles the upcoming remake of the second game, to see what feedback they take on board and how they improve on what they've started here.

~ Decon (19/10/22)