The House of The Dead 2 Remake: horror hits the mark again!
by Simon Larocca·February 21, 2025
I enter the arcade with my
crumpled thousand lire notes in one hand, I feel between my fingers the ridges of the
clothes peg, the kind my grandmother used to throw down to me from the balcony
together with the money to go “play with the games”.
I told her that by now
I’m grown up and I earn my money honestly by writing essays for my
classmates, but she doesn’t want to hear it.
La game room is located in
a sort of semi-hidden basement of the old club, a disturbing place
with clouds of cigarette smoke that, by comparison, made Silent Hill seem like an idyllic
amusement park. The new arcade cabinet greets me with inhuman screams, horrifying faces
with skin torn off like wallpaper to be replaced, and the sight of a fantastic gun
sighted in front of the screen: this was my
first encounter with The House of the
Dead, by Sega, 1996.
Tutto questo per dire che certi
videogiochi portano con sé un bagaglio di divertimento arcade che non si può
facilmente replicare, sia per gli anni che li hanno visti protagonisti che per
l’effettivo stato di grazia degli sviluppatori, capaci in questo caso di
trasmettere ai giocatori l’esperienza di uno shooter su binari (o rotaia) in prima persona senza tralasciare
elementi fondamentali come bonus da guadagnare, strade secondarie da sbloccare
e una legione di zombi usciti da un film di Romero che non smetteranno di darvi
la caccia.
But times have changed, and now
we have the means to reintroduce the “new generations” to the classics that made us grow up as experts in monster-stopping ballistics and late-breaking snipers, so Forever Entertainment, after
having taken up the first terrifying chapter again, will bring us back into the shoes of James and Gary, the dynamic duo of agents
who will have to investigate what is happening in a remote little town, the setting
of a horror that will reveal itself one zombie at a time.
Although the plot is just a pretext to put the mythical Light
Gun designed by Sega in our hands, a more advanced descendant of other console hardware items such as the Zapper, to be clear, we have just enough to throw ourselves into the fray and prove our precision: by force of circumstances, considering that the remake we are talking about will land on the major existing consoles, from Switch to Playstation 5 via Xbox,
the external peripheral issue will be handled by controls that will necessarily
have to be perfectly integrated into the gameplay balance, but we await
technical details and confirmation on this front.
As I see it, titles of this kind would give a reason for the existence of the VR Headset, recreating the game world in immersive and engaging mode. Imagine Venice, the setting of the second game, overrun by hungry zombies, and the sense of danger that the graphical architecture of virtual reality would evoke in the player, with the remastered graphics that a proper remake would deserve.
Sognare costs nothing, however
let us give Forever Entertainment credit for having embraced the desire of
many fans of the saga, plunging their hands into the past and pulling out from the
murky waters of semi-forgotten IPs a
timeless classic, one of those titles that made afternoons (and mornings, if you
were little rascals who skipped math class to sneak into the bar with the arcade cabinets behind the school) unforgettable.
Announced for spring 2025
according to the latest rumors, The House of the Dead 2: Remake promises the
same gameplay as its predecessors, a Cooperative mode which is in fact the hallmark of a rail shooter, in
addition to other extras that we can’t wait to try and experience firsthand, we who still have it on us, unlike the laboratory monsters
we will be called to riddle with bullets!
Adatto to today’s players but
also to those of yesterday, like me, kids of the Eighties who perhaps no longer need
clothespins with thousand-lira banknotes thrown from the balcony,
however I can assure you that when I aim for the head of the first zombie that
stands in front of me while replaying the remake, I will go back in time.
Once again.
Simon Larocca
Mi chiamo Simon Larocca, e sono un videogiocatore, collezionista e amante della cultura pop in tutte le sue forme. Vado al cinema ogni volta che posso, leggo da quando porto gli occhiali, quindi da sempre, e ho la passione per lo storytelling in tutte le sue forme, così dirompente da farla diventare una professione. Ma come direbbe Doc di Ritorno al Futuro, non ci sarebbe presente se non si guardasse al passato con rispetto e ammirazione, ed è il Simon bambino di più di trent’anni fa, anno più anno meno.
Simon Larocca
Mi chiamo Simon Larocca, e sono un videogiocatore, collezionista e amante della cultura pop in tutte le sue forme. Vado al cinema ogni volta che posso, leggo da quando porto gli occhiali, quindi da sempre, e ho la passione per lo storytelling in tutte le sue forme, così dirompente da farla diventare una professione. Ma come direbbe Doc di Ritorno al Futuro, non ci sarebbe presente se non si guardasse al passato con rispetto e ammirazione, ed è il Simon bambino di più di trent’anni fa, anno più anno meno.
TGMGrading
Grade your titles
Inspection, sub-grades, seal and display case: every grade comes with the method behind it, written down in full.
