House of the Dead 2 is the sequel to Sega’s original House of the Dead, which came out in the arcades around 3 years ago. It’s basically a first-person shooting game, much like the Virtua Cop series and Namco’s Time Crisis. Using the light Gun peripheral (or the game pad) players have to shoot enemies who appear on-screen. These enemies either attack you or they attack innocent people who you must save during the game.

The storyline revolves around a maniacal businessman (Goldman) who has unleashed the undead upon the people in the city and is trying to re-incarnate an ancient demon who’s worshiped by cults around the world.

Players travel around a pre-determined path inside the city and its surroundings, destroying all enemies that they see and freeing the innocent from the clutches of the undead. Saving innocent bystanders and blowing open doors and picking up keys opens up new paths for the player to explore

The light gun carries six shots at a time, and when players discharge all of their ammo they must fire off screen to reload the gun in order to continue. Careful aim, nerves of steel and perfecting reloading and working out which enemies to take out first are just some of the skills that must be mastered in order for players to stand a chance at House of the Dead 2.

One or two player simultaneous mode. A single person can also use two guns for high action mayhem!

Light Gun or pad support. The light gun features are:

Excellent grip and sight feature

Two selection buttons + a digital pad and the fire button make accessing menus incredibly easy on the gun.

A slot for a VMU or the Puru Pur pack allows enhancements for gun games. The Puru Puru pak adds a rumble or kickback function to the games while the VMU allows players to save their high scores and game cheats etc for later use.

A boss mode that allows you to take on any of the bosses that you have previously defeated.

A training mode that gives you 10 objectives, like shooting a certain number of zombies within a certain time, or accuracy objectives where you must kill a zombie with a single shot. This helps build reflexes and accuracy, and is an essential training ground for the horrors that lay ahead in the House of the Dead.

House of the Dead 2 uses the Dreamcast’s high resolution mode of 640 by 480 pixels for a super clear screen image.

House of the Dead 2 runs at 50 frames per second for a super smooth images that allows easy tracking of opponents with the Dreamcast light gun

Uses the Dreamcast’s 32 bit colour mode to display 16.7 million colours on-screen for incredibly realistic and vibrant colours

House of the Dead 2 uses texture compression to provide almost photorealistic texture that create and incredibly impressive 3D world.

House of the Dead 2 makes full use of the Dreamcast’s advanced graphical feature set by using the following effects in-game:

Transparent (or see through) polygons for explosions, glass, water, smoke and green blood splash effects.

Lighting is used for the flashes given off when the gun is fired. This is especially useful in some sections of the game when you are underground and it is dark. Fire off a couple of shots and you can see things around you much clearer.

All the enemies in the game a drawn with incredible levels of detail, Monsters have eyes that move and follow your position, they have teeth that they gnash at you and their victims and their bodies are constructed from hundreds of polygons which gives them a very lifelike appearance. Furthermore, because of the game’s use of texture compression techniques, all of the monsters and scenery is incredibly detailed. Monsters have muscular chests that are ridden with scars and decaying flesh, others have sinew and blood dripping from their face, while others have shirts and clothes that look impossibly detailed. You often stand back to look at these evil demons before you kill them!

The enemies in the game can have nearly any part of their body blow off; their arms, legs, heads and they can even have large holes blown in their body by repeatedly firing at them. Chunks of meat and bone fly off your enemies whenever you fire shots into them, and there’s often times that you can blow holes in their chest to see sections of their rib cage protruding outwards!

Dreamcast uses its 64 channel sound chip to produce CD quality music and effects for the game. Gun sounds are solid and satisfying and the game’s music sets an eerie atmosphere perfectly for the ghoulish action that lies ahead.

Every level has its own atmospheric music that perfectly suits the game’s horror-style theme.

Sound effects for firing the weapon, people and monster’s screams are incredibly clear and provide a great level of atmosphere for the game.

The game’s story is accompanied by a large amount of speech that is CD quality. Innocent people cry for help as the monsters continue their mindless rampage. Can you save them?

House of the Dead 2 features multiple paths inside the game’s six stages that increase the longevity of the game substantially. Saving people, shooting open doors and picking up keys to open doors will make new paths available to players with new enemies and different scenery to explore. Also, depending on what path the player takes, a different boss will be at the end of the stage with a different background.

Lots of hidden bonuses are littered inside each level. Life ups and health ups are just some of these, as well as keys for the entrance to new paths and extra continues.

The game takes the player to new levels of interaction for this type of genre. Players now get to ride in cars and boats while they are destroying the forces of evil, as well as being able to go in the water and swim at one stage in the game.

Players are rewarded for their accuracy in the game. Some monsters can only be dispatched a certain way by being shot in a certain area, so accuracy is called for. Other monsters that carry weapons can be disabled by blowing their arms off, which renders them useless. This is especially useful in sections of the game where you have many different monsters attacking you at once as you can disarm the ones with the weapon and then take out the others who require more shots to dispatch first.

House of the Dead 2 is one of the Dreamcast’s most exciting games simply because it is fun – pure and simple. State-of-the-art visuals, excellent sound and great gameplay additions make this an excellent single and multi player game for people of all ages.