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If the Faith Book's correct, we're smack splash in the middle of the end times. Evidence? The dead look to have developed a case of cabin fever, and claustrophobic crypts just won't cut it anymore. Zombies are everywhere — comics, movies, videogames, you name information technology. So it's no surprise that, every once in a spell, one of the shamble undead goes unnoticed among the sardine put u-like atmosphere of the zombie horde. It is, even so, unfortunate – especially when that barely mobile cup of tea of bones is as fast, funny, and, ironically, intelligent as House of the Dead: Overkill.

As with every other gamey in Sega's House of the Dead serial publication, Overkill is a no-nonmeaningful light gunman shooter. If something moves, your liveliness expectancy will likely improve drastically if IT's dead. And really, for those who can't help but groan every clock time they visualize lyric like "Prologue," "Fin geezerhood ago," Oregon some other phrase that wears its desire to constitute a Tutorial on its arm, Overkill is a big backup man. Shoot up zombies in the head and they die. Pop their kneecaps and they shine. Etc. Simple, easy, and intuitive – and if you wear't know how to kill off zombies, you're in the wrong hobby. Or you're a zombie. Either way, Overkill's probably not for you.

Don't get the wrong idea, though; Overkill's not so elementary that a piece of duct magnetic tape, your Wii Remote, and a level cocktail table could embody MacGuyver'd into fending dispatch the zombocalypse. The game is full of nuances that, though they aren't required, give the halting's seemingly superficial crowning hat board sufficiency for more than a hardly a rabbits. Most notably, the game rewards you for (offend) shooting zombies without missing. Channel your inmost Robin Hoodlum asymptomatic enough and you'll get a jazz group going, which – if you continue to non miss – builds into a concealment-shaking, North American nation flag-spewing (yes, seriously) bonus named a Goregasm. Goregasms also give your score a courteous rise, but just re-read that last sentence. That's all the motivation you indigence. Following in a close endorse on your "Wait, I need reasons to shoot at zombies?" leaning are floating golden brains, greenness icons, and health packs, which step-up your grade, trigger a bullet-clock effect, and heal you, respectively.

Really, the sole issue one could bring forward with the existent interactive parcel of the game is that the chief mode's reasonably shortish and somewhat easy. However, a smattering of difficult miniskirt-games, a longer, meaner Director's Cut manner, and of course a cooperative mode that'll have you and your friends at each other's throats nearly Eastern Samoa often as you'll glucinium berm-to-shoulder have the main mode's back, ensuring that a pensive glance retrospective at your recently spent dollars won't be required.

Even then, though, Overkill is merely an to a higher place-average light gun shooter. What really pulls the halt out of the bargain bin and into must-possess territory is its 70's-era Grindhouse flick-esque presentation. Cheesy and over-the-top, Overkill's story, menus, and euphony ooze a playful screw for lineage-splashed, sexed-up horror whose end result is absolutely hilarious.

The spirited's plot tells the chronicle of Agent G, a priggish, enigmatic intelligence officer with a taste for C and W, Isaac Washington, and the disembodied narrator who follows them around. As bowel-bustingly questionable as G and Washington's buddy nail antics are, their immaterial stalker is one of my favorite videogame characters in years. His loquacious, unnecessarily dramatic interludes go the extra geographical mile in selling the wildly sensationalist life of Grindhouse cinema.

But familiar tropes are simply the bread on a parody sandwich, and the meat – in this case, the all-too-veracious humor – is where Overkill shines brightest. The game colours its cut-scenes with excessive cursing, wanting reels, and discussions of modern feminism with painter-the like preciseness, forming a hilarious whole.

House of the Dead: Overkill's writing is, float-for-blow, some of the record-breaking gaming has to offer. BioShock, Portal, Tim Schafer, and Overkill can – and should be – mentioned in the same intimation. The mettlesome's terminated-full with just as a lot thought, give care, and wit arsenic those other industry high-marks, and succeeds in respondent the wonder: "What's the absolute coolest thing we could do with the illumination gun shooter genre?"

The game's mood, while when first seen juvenile and F-bomb-dependent, contains many another subtleties that assume you're an adult. Likewise, its gameplay handles the player American Samoa though he/she is an intelligent, able individual. The spunky is at once without thinking infantile and boldly mature – and you can bet developer Headstrong Games intended information technology to live that way. Purchase this game. If you enjoy accessible gameplay, laugh, and Samuel L. Jackson's performance in Snakes on a Plane, House of the Exsanguine: Overkill is a no-brainer.

Bottom Line: House of the Asleep: Overkill is a competent bright gun shooter bolstered by some of wittiest committal to writing in all of gaming.

Recommendation: Pip out. The game's short, just if you want to see more mature, laughter-extinct-loud funny games happening the Wii, delight give Sega your money. You won't regret it.

Nathan Grayson was disappointed that Overkill's prison house horizontal didn't include whatsoever dancing zombies. C'mon! They had orange jumpsuits and everything!