this video is non-comprehensive because it could never be and also I shot from the hip when recording it but one funny thing I want to include as a comment is that the english and japanese unlock translations often don't agree with each other on what the requirements for some things are, so at least one of those scripts is wrong about stuff.
also adding an addendum here that at time of recording this video, the PC version wasn't even announced let alone released. game looks better on PC. it probably still plays equally as badly. I don't know, I'm not throwing more money at this mess to find out lol. just putting this here as a notice to people going "but the PC version" to please look at the post date of the video
Update: I have since played the PC port of this and the framerate/visual polish is definitely better but the game is still about as broken on a mechanical level thank you
Have you played the mobile version (j2me i.e. java) of the House of the Dead? It's still on rails but instead of a FPS it's like a third person one. Very interesting, well, for the time and platform standarts anyway. Neat designs also^^)
Well, this is awkward. After the second remake got rated by the ESRB, I was reminded of this video, and I randomly decided to edit my original comment from 2 years ago and elaborate a bit on the wiki plagiarism lore with an archived link of the tweet made calling out the developers... and UA-cam yeeted it out of existence without warning. Guessing it didn't like the link. So here's literally just a slightly-edited repost of that very comment for posterity, minus the link. Yeah, I know, weird, but I'd like it out there given how miserable my experience was with this game and how strong my dislike of it is. Carry on. HOTD wiki admin here. Great review. Thanks for bringing up the bad localization and plagiarism--that's something that not many other reviewers have touched on. Also good analysis of the game mechanics in the original game vs. the remake's. I run the wiki Twitter and deleted the tweet we made responding to the plagiarism. A writer from IGN was DMing us asking about it, probably to write an article or something, but I just ignored it and moved on because the community manager did apologize and added us to the credits, and at that point it wasn't worth it having the drama swirl out of control. Although the tweet is archived on Internet Archive, and ironically it's used as a source on the wiki itself as the plagiarism is mentioned on the remake page. There was some obscure Thai gaming website that made an article about the plagiarism, but nothing else major, and people forgot about it pretty quickly once the game launched. However, it stung after the fact when I kept promoting the game via posts/retweets and it was extremely unpolished at launch, and had very little post-launch support. Lots of serious issues were never fixed. There weren't a lot of patches for this game and the developers pretty quickly moved on, which was disappointing but I guess not surprising. I tried to stay positive but honestly my interest in promoting the remake dwindled. I felt like I was just promoting something that wasn't really moving the series forward. The wiki does cover the remake still since it's obviously a House of the Dead game and deserves to be documented, but lately because of these prior events and my general disappointment with the game I've stopped tweeted anything remake-related and have just focused on the mainline games. Those are the most enjoyable to me, anyway, and were what really made up huge parts of my childhood. Cheers.
Just want to clarify as a huge HOTD fan about the whole "shoot a zombies head off and they still hit you". When I was looking at the gallery, it became apparent that they overdid the whole "weak point system". Now instead of all zobmies being affected by headshots, some zombies are only affected by body shots only, meaning you can blow their head off but if you don't shoot their weak point center mass they will still come at you. IMO, while I overall like the remake (keyword like not love like I wanted to), it's fundamental flaw is shared with it's music: They over engineered and overthought the porting job. Like "hey, lets expand on the weak point system and not tell anyone" when fans have been trained since 1996 that headshots instantly put the creatures down.
My favourite quotes from this are "Here's a solid pro tip for you guys: if your game controls like ass maybe don't shitpost in the control settings" "A rail shooter has fundamentally one job, which is that when enemies are shot they're supposed to die and this is something that the remake cannot accomplish consistently" "It's one thing to make a bad game, it's another thing to go the extra mile and like wipe your ass with it in a way that makes me question wether or not you're even competent enough for the job you've been asked to do"
Bummed about the remake, but if there's one thing I know for sure: Somewhere out there, this game has inspired a developer to make a better rail-shooter, out of complete spite for this one.
Finally another person who understands why this game is garbage, it pisses me off when people say this remake is "faithful". Obviously with People like me and you who spent countless hours on the Original know damn well it isn't even close to being faithful. Also Sega hasn't published or had any hand in developing this title, forever entertainment simply just got the license from Sega and published it themselves. I highly doubt Sega had any Confidence in this Project at all.
I know I’m a little late, but here’s something that annoys me. I haven’t played the original or the remake, but Chariot in the original would swing his.. bardiche? Axe? Around his head, which would cover up his weak spot, and now that’s absent in the remake. He just does an awkward looking dance and walks toward you, kinda sucks.
This was highly informative. This explains rather a lot about Rail Shooters in a perfectly sensible way, improvised or not. Makes me want to look further into how to make a good rail shooter (since you did state this wasn't comprehensive), despite having recently heard people deriding the concepts of Rail Shooters in 202X. Also, honestly, your anger is completely justified. It is entirely inexcusable to take on the task of making a remake of ANY game, let alone a game of such historical significance, and then entirely fail to employ ANY of the Elements of Good Game Design that were in the game being remade. Moreover, those elements would have been expected from ANY decent game. To be perfectly honest, this "Remake" strikes me as being less like a proper game made by professionals and more like one of those really terrible Shovelware Steam Games that you could get for less than a dollar. Though I guess unlike those Shovelware games, this one isn't guilty of Copyright Infringement...though I suspect HOTD fans wish it was.
20:07 That's fun. It will be hilarious when it becomes defunct in a later remake and everyone can call them out with "er, guys...did you forgot the lore that you put into the first remake? That you stole from the wiki based on the original continuity?"
After 2 years they made 1 small update and that was it. They also confirmed THOTD2 remake is in the works but who knows if it will release with it's luke warm reception of the first installment.
@@maksudmobassherahsan1604 The boss theme of the Arcade original which got you really pumped was also replaced with this boring remake you can barely hear cause the music is so quiet.
On top of everything you talked about one of the things I was looking forward for was the use of blue and gray hues along with the blotches of bloody red present throughout the whole and mainly 1st half of original game which made other colors blend in rather than pop out and had a good ambience. EDIT: The fact that they didnt replicate the awesome shooting off enemy limbs and the enemies still lunging their attacks with the limb they are missing in effect missing the attack on you completely and instead having the damn bug of the enemies not dying when they are definitely supposed to.
Exactly. The original has cold dull colors that make the game sad and scary. The blood was the only warm color. Now the game has a weird cozy warm atmosphere like in the ps2 version of gtaSA. When you play the original you can feel the coldness of the place, when you play the remake you don't feel anything.
So happy that I'll get to play the original HoTD can very soon. Like, the only thing I could forgive was that little emoji, because it's supposed to look like a zombie, a little cute. I think if that was the one little non-hint text it probably wouldn't be as big a deal. (Oh my god that ending screen though, lmao.)
if it was one thing it'd be like ok weird but whatever but there's so many more dumber loading screen prompts and I could not be bothered to scrub my footage looking for all of them because that would've required more fucks than i had to give when making this video
This is so far the only video on UA-cam I've found that goes into the many issues with this remake. Literally everything stated I 100% agree with. The devs have several pictures of them playing the original arcade cabinet in their office so I have to wonder what the flying hell went wrong during the design process of this remake. This feels like House of the Dead 1 but it was made by people that have no idea how a rail shooter is suppose to function, or something.
1) terrible lighting (especially in the first part where everything looks red) 2) bad gun sound 3) npcs aren't scary at all 4) they ruined the original art direction and now the entire place has a "spooky halloween" atmosphere instead of the original "90's horror movie" atmosphere 5) the music is absolutely unacceptable 6) goofy cartoony graphics 7) now enemies have weak spots like the bosses (why?) 8) garry's mod ragdoll (animations are out of fashion I guess...) 9) many technical problems 10) the voice tells you to reload even when you're not shooting (kinda annoying) 11) you have a f*cking grenade launcher in horde mode (I can understand explosive ammo but grenades? Are we in resident evil?) 12) forced goofiness
Oh this is...a dire state of a whiff. The score pop-ups in general really undercut the mood of the game more than flashing bosses really. So many of these decisions just are baffling to think about.
21:24, so at the ending screen, the Curien Mansion gains a "cone hat" in the middle? Never understood that, it's not even on the attract mode, speaking of which, I prefered in the original where Rogan blows a Simon 5 times, being the last shot a headshot. Thanks for the video mate, conglaturation, you completed a great game, thanks for playing :)
I found your channel because of that L4D Arcade video, and let me tell you... I didn't want to admit this HOD Remake was bad, something inside me refused to admit the game I played on the arcades... It's not this one, at all. I noticed the first issue I ever had as an audio person, was HOW ANNOYING the sound effects get, I'm especially mad against the "reload" voice, because in this game you don't shoot "tactically" like in the original, you just mash>reload>mash>reload, and you keep hearing RELOAD(clickclickclick)RELOOOOAD(clickclickclick)RELIOD(clicklick)... I can't 1CC HOD1 consistently (unlike newer entries which I played more), but I don't die this quick or in bullshit ways like the remake does. I also noticed these weird shitpost emoji things during the loading screens, and while they didn't bother me too much, they were still an "...ok?" moment for me. My biggest issue might be the bosses, I was in deep love with HOD bosses, they were fun to fight, they were interesting, they were the reason I felt in love with boss fights in general (And the reason why I became such a Treasure Games fanboy, love their boss rushes), the remake make them... insanely boring, I don't like them at all, everything that made them interesting or fun is gone, Hangedman was such a moment for me as a kid, I loved the overall atmosphere of shooting at him while looking at the moon, there is just so much that's missing in this aspect, and I absolutely agree with everything you said. It's no longer a skill-based game like the original, it's straight what if HOD was made by a western developer like Midway during their heyday with forced hits and bullshit, something HOD never was. Great analysis, nonetheless, I appreciate it's not just a rant, it's an actual rant with purpose behind. Greetings from Mexico.
I want to add that while I'm not super upset about this remake (I personally give it like a 7/10 and I am going to do a whole video review of it soon) what does scare me (and I'm going to bring it up in my review) is that they're suppose to be remaking House of the Dead 2 as well. While I love the OG House of the Dead, most people's introduction to the series is the second one and it's the most beloved one in the series. If they screw it up like they did this one, heads will roll. SEGA should just bump that port up to one of it's "Super Games" and have AM1 do it in house like the rest of their remake ports.
For real though, if MegaPixel can't figure out the copyright situation for the HotD2 music, I'm not even gonna bother buying. Hopefully the devs are taking note of the issues people have w/ this game and tweak the upcoming game accordingly.
The house of the dead 1 is my first game I ever played, it's my favorite game of all time. I was hyped for the remake and one of th biggest reason (not the only one, thank god) I got a switch. When I played in launch day, I gave up on the first level and went to bed to cry because EVERYTHING WAS ABSOLUTE SHIT, the music, the fucking controls, the camera, the health and speed of the enemies. Eventually I finished the game on switch and started to tolerate the remake, but still hating it. After only 3 fucking weeks, we got pc and its way better. The visuals are way better, the soundtrack is just perfect (after you mod the OG soundtrack XD) and controls a little better. It feels that the devs just put the mechanics and didnt bother to refine them. - "Make enemy walk" but dont care about its speed. - "Make flashlight" but dont make the game dark so it becomes worthless and makes it not work after some seconds. - "Give lifes after saving people" that shit NEVER worked, I never get extra lifes and its infuriating. One time I lost a life in between levels WTF? - "Put score system" but don't bother to balance. - "Give health to enemies" but forgets that some enemies have lower health (those attacking people and the 2 monkeys in the entrance) and this together with the ultra fast enemies makes civillians FUCKING AWFUL to save. - "Put horde mode" but give 0 support or incentive to play it. THERE ISNT EVEN A ACHIEVEMENT FOR PLAYING IT. There is a achuievement for shooting kenfis to the other side of a wall, BUT NOT FOR THE NEW MODE? ARE THEY HIGH? - "Put camera" Jesus, I will not even talk about this. In normal is already shit, but on horde mode? it's awful. Also, let me shit a little on horde mode: The house of the dead Scarlet Dawn came out in 2018, before the game even began developing. That game is basically only horde mode and the devs of remake clearly didn't bother into looking at that game to learn how to do it. IT'S THE SAME FUCKING FRANCHISE but make everyone stands only in front when we can get to the side and behind the player for the camere go nuts and make it unplayable? It's unbelivable how a bigger team with way more time for development than the OG coundn't manage to get close to the OG. The game was delayed for at least 3 months for "marketing reasons" I call that BS since marketing was horrible. There is potential in the remake if they fix it, wich after a month after the release and 0 news from devs, I doubt it. The team have heart, but they suck at making games. Indie devs should not get a pass because they are indie, if the game does not work properly and control horribly, than you failed at making it. BTW great video, there is a lot that I notice that just make me furious but this is already way too long.
I always felt the game was slightly off and you explained the reasons for it. I was looking forward to the non-copyright version of the magician theme in the remake and I just couldn't hear it. I had to go into the settings and adjust it and even then I still couldn't really hear it. And I know exactly what you mean with the bullet whizzing sound effect when you miss, I can't believe I didn't notice that was absent. And man, those changes to the bosses sound like absolute ass. I hate passive boss fights where you just wait around for an opening.
you got a great amount of this right and far more than any other reviewer ive seen. from what ive seen and my experience with the game, it feels like someone was given the best engine they could have, some really good models were made, an artist with a guitar made the tracks as they best as they could, and the ball was completely dropped when it came to putting those things together in a game. it feels like the base components are free online assets they found around the internet and then they put this together after watching two unity tutorials, everything just irks me as done incorrectly and cheaply and its very akin something a beginner to creating 3D games would create, with a complete lack of understanding of how to give weight to hits or do animations or how hit detection works, let alone anything about optimization (i ran this on a laptop with a 2070 and 32 of RAM and it was not going about 20fps, actually ridiculous). it enfuriated me the most when chariot didnt go backwards after a hit, or damage was unavoidable with certain bosses, it just felt so unsatisfying to play, quickly made and like it was cruising along with the good assets and modern graphics it had to work with, which is the total opposite of how i feel about the original
YES! Thankyou for mentioning the super childish memes and dumb emojis. I absolutely fucking hated it for exactly the same reason as you did. Spot on review.
Holy hell, that Magician fight took almost _four fucking minutes_ 😱 (~ 13:51 - 17:34) Even a bad player should be able to beat it in less than half that time. It's not a stealth game, "waiting" should not be a central mechanic.
Omg punchy i came here after refunding after first-trying arcade horde mode and saving everyone with the game showing i saved everyone then simply didn't unlock the armory..... On pc the frames are okay but there is more bugs like spawning enemies flickering in in a t pose, or spawning in already doing damage at full screen without doing the animations. The dev gave a snarky remark to one of the steam comments saying they should be happy because we got achievements.....which are all full of typos like campaing and mdoe. Yet they shit talk players for using aim assist which they themselves couldn't program correctly. Also, my record for knockdowns on one enemy was 30. It was q monkey with no arms or head, but just kept getting up and then getting blasted right back down. I swear it's random bullet damage or something.
Always disappointing when a publisher whiffs a remake this hard. Like I’d rather have this kind of thing for convenience if nothing else, but give me quality convenience!
Been playing the steam version and although I'm having fun achievement hunting after playing through a handful of times, I can't pretend to have any hope of the following remake of HotD2 being anywhere near the amazing experience the original was. I'm sure it'll look pretty and it'll get a bunch of people exposed to the HotD franchise which is great so they can look up the source material. If MegaPixel can't figure out the copyright situation for HotD2 music then it's a high likelihood that I don't bother buying it. Honestly, listening to the original HotD OST made me appreciate the remakes' attempt a lot more. In a way, maybe the composer denying rights to the original music was a sign that the remake wasn't gonna live up to the standards it was expected to meet. I'd rather have a new soundtrack made from scratch w/ references to the original than an arrangement of the original since there's more effort put in to make it stand out and it would avoid the soundtrack having to rely on the original as a crutch. Guess we'll have to wait and see. Anyways, great rant vid. Had many of the same gripes as you and hearing them being recognized feels pretty good.
As a huge fan of the original I'm glad I didn't waste my time or money on this. Even the first trailer looked off and it looks like (as usual) nothing ever gets fixed or changed with products before release.
Have you played the mobile version (j2me i.e. java) of the House of the Dead? It's still on rails but instead of a FPS it's like a third person one. Very interesting, well, for the time and platform standarts anyway. Neat designs also^^)
This game is just horrible I really hate it(and the developers who made it too), not only because it's horrible but PS just straight up deleted 3 and 4 out of my PS4 just to put this garbage in it.
Yea there are a lot of problems. Thing is most of them could easily be solved, but they really want to. A PC port is needed, some updates could bring this game in a better light. Right now it's just meh. I'm happy THOTD getting games but it deserves better for sure
Was a really fun game and played this whenever I was at an arcade, so extremely disappointing to hear that audio and controls were pretty much ruined by this remake. All the dead enemies still hitting you is ridiculous. Also calling someone a filthy casual for needing aim assist is so unprofessional. That's the kind of mind set that we need to get away from. Like the get gud bullshit from Souls players. Thank you for making this video. It was extremely enjoyable to watch.
don't know if you'll see this but Punchy, if you're reading - this video actually has me interested in the original version of HotD1. how does one go about playing it nowadays without access to one of the cabinets?
your only real options are emulating the arcade game (runs fine on a couple of specific Sega AM emulators) or using the Windows port (very old PC port, kind of an ass to get working, isn't arcade perfect). There is also the Saturn version, the saturn version is however, bad in a slew of different ways mainly relating to it looking crusty, running badly and having really long and jarring load times HoTD1 has largely evaded any kind of reasonable port to any modern console unlike HoTD2 or 3 which received a slew of ports of varying degrees of quality, so the options are not great all in all.
Y’know I didn’t exactly have high hopes for this game but wow. HOTD is arguably the most important light gun shooter ever made and they’re gonna do it like this? for my sake I hope these people don’t ever touch Time Crisis...
First thing i did when this came out was look at the new magician fight on youtube. I wrote it off immediately but FUCK after watching this video i feel so sorry for everyone who actually payed money to watch their childhoods turn to ash in front of them
PC version is amazing! I miss better graphics (it has 10 years old graphics) but is not bad at all. Finger cross for a unreal engine 5 version of The house of the dead and in VR!!
@@IvanHabunek runs on an emulator simply called "Model 2 Emulator" and it seems to run pretty well. you aim with the mouse which I know isn't a perfect recreation but it'll do for comparison's sake
"now-defunct" is weird because it's a remake of house of the dead 1 and AMS is not defunct during the events of that game. It's a continuity error, not a typographical one. tellingly, that exact "now-defunct" phrase appears on the wiki, which is written more retrospectively so that's where they've copied it from.
The devs haven't paid attention to the storyline of HOTD2. The AMS were still active in 2000, two years after the events of HOTD1, it got disbanded when HOTD3 took place.
In the original, the midget enemies have a strange behavior where sometimes, they do survive headless. But every other enemy basically dies in one to two headshots, and the animals always die in one hit. For whatever reason, the remake eschews this for a strange RNG system, so enemy encounters are far less consistent than they should be.
Good review. But you over state some of your criticisms. You take issue with some artistic changes that the developers made that I actually prefer. For instance, not every zombie goes down with head shot. Some have exposed body parts in chest or abdomen that you have to take them down fast. You can hit the boss at a distance but not the farthest distance. Instead of white flash from the original game you get a larger blood splatter when you get critical hit. I like this better than the white flash. The game is in no way trash. It’s a fun arcade shooter. Get the PC version if you want better graphics and smoother frame rate. You can also use a lite gun on pc.
Mechanically it is still just as awful on PC. While I will concede it is not a completely worthless game.... it does fall far below the bar set by the originals that are going on 20 some years old now. This is the ultimate example of graphics being prioritized over everything.
this video is non-comprehensive because it could never be and also I shot from the hip when recording it but one funny thing I want to include as a comment is that the english and japanese unlock translations often don't agree with each other on what the requirements for some things are, so at least one of those scripts is wrong about stuff.
also adding an addendum here that at time of recording this video, the PC version wasn't even announced let alone released. game looks better on PC. it probably still plays equally as badly. I don't know, I'm not throwing more money at this mess to find out lol. just putting this here as a notice to people going "but the PC version" to please look at the post date of the video
Update: I have since played the PC port of this and the framerate/visual polish is definitely better but the game is still about as broken on a mechanical level thank you
Have you played the mobile version (j2me i.e. java) of the House of the Dead?
It's still on rails but instead of a FPS it's like a third person one. Very interesting, well, for the time and platform standarts anyway. Neat designs also^^)
Well, this is awkward. After the second remake got rated by the ESRB, I was reminded of this video, and I randomly decided to edit my original comment from 2 years ago and elaborate a bit on the wiki plagiarism lore with an archived link of the tweet made calling out the developers... and UA-cam yeeted it out of existence without warning. Guessing it didn't like the link.
So here's literally just a slightly-edited repost of that very comment for posterity, minus the link. Yeah, I know, weird, but I'd like it out there given how miserable my experience was with this game and how strong my dislike of it is. Carry on.
HOTD wiki admin here. Great review. Thanks for bringing up the bad localization and plagiarism--that's something that not many other reviewers have touched on. Also good analysis of the game mechanics in the original game vs. the remake's.
I run the wiki Twitter and deleted the tweet we made responding to the plagiarism. A writer from IGN was DMing us asking about it, probably to write an article or something, but I just ignored it and moved on because the community manager did apologize and added us to the credits, and at that point it wasn't worth it having the drama swirl out of control. Although the tweet is archived on Internet Archive, and ironically it's used as a source on the wiki itself as the plagiarism is mentioned on the remake page. There was some obscure Thai gaming website that made an article about the plagiarism, but nothing else major, and people forgot about it pretty quickly once the game launched.
However, it stung after the fact when I kept promoting the game via posts/retweets and it was extremely unpolished at launch, and had very little post-launch support. Lots of serious issues were never fixed. There weren't a lot of patches for this game and the developers pretty quickly moved on, which was disappointing but I guess not surprising. I tried to stay positive but honestly my interest in promoting the remake dwindled. I felt like I was just promoting something that wasn't really moving the series forward.
The wiki does cover the remake still since it's obviously a House of the Dead game and deserves to be documented, but lately because of these prior events and my general disappointment with the game I've stopped tweeted anything remake-related and have just focused on the mainline games. Those are the most enjoyable to me, anyway, and were what really made up huge parts of my childhood. Cheers.
Just want to clarify as a huge HOTD fan about the whole "shoot a zombies head off and they still hit you". When I was looking at the gallery, it became apparent that they overdid the whole "weak point system". Now instead of all zobmies being affected by headshots, some zombies are only affected by body shots only, meaning you can blow their head off but if you don't shoot their weak point center mass they will still come at you. IMO, while I overall like the remake (keyword like not love like I wanted to), it's fundamental flaw is shared with it's music: They over engineered and overthought the porting job. Like "hey, lets expand on the weak point system and not tell anyone" when fans have been trained since 1996 that headshots instantly put the creatures down.
You finally did it Punchy, you have finally become...the Angry Video Game Nerd.
it was only a matter of time before I gave into the dark side
Haha!
My favourite quotes from this are
"Here's a solid pro tip for you guys: if your game controls like ass maybe don't shitpost in the control settings"
"A rail shooter has fundamentally one job, which is that when enemies are shot they're supposed to die and this is something that the remake cannot accomplish consistently"
"It's one thing to make a bad game, it's another thing to go the extra mile and like wipe your ass with it in a way that makes me question wether or not you're even competent enough for the job you've been asked to do"
Bummed about the remake, but if there's one thing I know for sure: Somewhere out there, this game has inspired a developer to make a better rail-shooter, out of complete spite for this one.
Finally another person who understands why this game is garbage, it pisses me off when people say this remake is "faithful". Obviously with People like me and you who spent countless hours on the Original know damn well it isn't even close to being faithful. Also Sega hasn't published or had any hand in developing this title, forever entertainment simply just got the license from Sega and published it themselves. I highly doubt Sega had any Confidence in this Project at all.
i agree i wanted to have hope but ehhhh yeah it doesnt have the character and soul of the original games.
I hope they port the original arcade version (I know they lost the source code, I can still hope) and the Sega Saturn version onto the switch
I know I’m a little late, but here’s something that annoys me. I haven’t played the original or the remake, but Chariot in the original would swing his.. bardiche? Axe? Around his head, which would cover up his weak spot, and now that’s absent in the remake. He just does an awkward looking dance and walks toward you, kinda sucks.
This was highly informative. This explains rather a lot about Rail Shooters in a perfectly sensible way, improvised or not. Makes me want to look further into how to make a good rail shooter (since you did state this wasn't comprehensive), despite having recently heard people deriding the concepts of Rail Shooters in 202X.
Also, honestly, your anger is completely justified. It is entirely inexcusable to take on the task of making a remake of ANY game, let alone a game of such historical significance, and then entirely fail to employ ANY of the Elements of Good Game Design that were in the game being remade. Moreover, those elements would have been expected from ANY decent game. To be perfectly honest, this "Remake" strikes me as being less like a proper game made by professionals and more like one of those really terrible Shovelware Steam Games that you could get for less than a dollar. Though I guess unlike those Shovelware games, this one isn't guilty of Copyright Infringement...though I suspect HOTD fans wish it was.
20:07 That's fun. It will be hilarious when it becomes defunct in a later remake and everyone can call them out with "er, guys...did you forgot the lore that you put into the first remake? That you stole from the wiki based on the original continuity?"
Man the lack of the 'guhhhh' death rattle was one of the things that drove me crazy but I didn't even think of it before
After 2 years they made 1 small update and that was it. They also confirmed THOTD2 remake is in the works but who knows if it will release with it's luke warm reception of the first installment.
Remakes always succeed at making me miss the original
Exactly! The boss designs especially are godawful......
@@maksudmobassherahsan1604 The boss theme of the Arcade original which got you really pumped was also replaced with this boring remake you can barely hear cause the music is so quiet.
On top of everything you talked about one of the things I was looking forward for was the use of blue and gray hues along with the blotches of bloody red present throughout the whole and mainly 1st half of original game which made other colors blend in rather than pop out and had a good ambience.
EDIT: The fact that they didnt replicate the awesome shooting off enemy limbs and the enemies still lunging their attacks with the limb they are missing in effect missing the attack on you completely and instead having the damn bug of the enemies not dying when they are definitely supposed to.
Exactly. The original has cold dull colors that make the game sad and scary. The blood was the only warm color. Now the game has a weird cozy warm atmosphere like in the ps2 version of gtaSA. When you play the original you can feel the coldness of the place, when you play the remake you don't feel anything.
So happy that I'll get to play the original HoTD can very soon.
Like, the only thing I could forgive was that little emoji, because it's supposed to look like a zombie, a little cute. I think if that was the one little non-hint text it probably wouldn't be as big a deal.
(Oh my god that ending screen though, lmao.)
if it was one thing it'd be like ok weird but whatever but there's so many more dumber loading screen prompts and I could not be bothered to scrub my footage looking for all of them because that would've required more fucks than i had to give when making this video
This is so far the only video on UA-cam I've found that goes into the many issues with this remake. Literally everything stated I 100% agree with. The devs have several pictures of them playing the original arcade cabinet in their office so I have to wonder what the flying hell went wrong during the design process of this remake. This feels like House of the Dead 1 but it was made by people that have no idea how a rail shooter is suppose to function, or something.
This game blows my ass. I was really confused by all the good reviews this game got from sham gaming sites.
1) terrible lighting (especially in the first part where everything looks red)
2) bad gun sound
3) npcs aren't scary at all
4) they ruined the original art direction and now the entire place has a "spooky halloween" atmosphere instead of the original "90's horror movie" atmosphere
5) the music is absolutely unacceptable
6) goofy cartoony graphics
7) now enemies have weak spots like the bosses (why?)
8) garry's mod ragdoll (animations are out of fashion I guess...)
9) many technical problems
10) the voice tells you to reload even when you're not shooting (kinda annoying)
11) you have a f*cking grenade launcher in horde mode (I can understand explosive ammo but grenades? Are we in resident evil?)
12) forced goofiness
Oh this is...a dire state of a whiff. The score pop-ups in general really undercut the mood of the game more than flashing bosses really. So many of these decisions just are baffling to think about.
yeah I don't get that, the original had nothing of the sort wrt score popping up out of everything you kill?
you can turn those off
Glad I still have my Wii and a copy of the 2 & 3 remake...
they're remaking HoTD2 as well! nothing is sacred!!!
@@PunchyYT well, we dont have to play it. Plus, this game is giving the House of the dead some attention
21:24, so at the ending screen, the Curien Mansion gains a "cone hat" in the middle?
Never understood that, it's not even on the attract mode, speaking of which, I prefered in the original where Rogan blows a Simon 5 times, being the last shot a headshot.
Thanks for the video mate, conglaturation, you completed a great game, thanks for playing :)
I found your channel because of that L4D Arcade video, and let me tell you... I didn't want to admit this HOD Remake was bad, something inside me refused to admit the game I played on the arcades... It's not this one, at all.
I noticed the first issue I ever had as an audio person, was HOW ANNOYING the sound effects get, I'm especially mad against the "reload" voice, because in this game you don't shoot "tactically" like in the original, you just mash>reload>mash>reload, and you keep hearing RELOAD(clickclickclick)RELOOOOAD(clickclickclick)RELIOD(clicklick)...
I can't 1CC HOD1 consistently (unlike newer entries which I played more), but I don't die this quick or in bullshit ways like the remake does.
I also noticed these weird shitpost emoji things during the loading screens, and while they didn't bother me too much, they were still an "...ok?" moment for me.
My biggest issue might be the bosses, I was in deep love with HOD bosses, they were fun to fight, they were interesting, they were the reason I felt in love with boss fights in general (And the reason why I became such a Treasure Games fanboy, love their boss rushes), the remake make them... insanely boring, I don't like them at all, everything that made them interesting or fun is gone, Hangedman was such a moment for me as a kid, I loved the overall atmosphere of shooting at him while looking at the moon, there is just so much that's missing in this aspect, and I absolutely agree with everything you said.
It's no longer a skill-based game like the original, it's straight what if HOD was made by a western developer like Midway during their heyday with forced hits and bullshit, something HOD never was.
Great analysis, nonetheless, I appreciate it's not just a rant, it's an actual rant with purpose behind. Greetings from Mexico.
I want to add that while I'm not super upset about this remake (I personally give it like a 7/10 and I am going to do a whole video review of it soon) what does scare me (and I'm going to bring it up in my review) is that they're suppose to be remaking House of the Dead 2 as well. While I love the OG House of the Dead, most people's introduction to the series is the second one and it's the most beloved one in the series. If they screw it up like they did this one, heads will roll. SEGA should just bump that port up to one of it's "Super Games" and have AM1 do it in house like the rest of their remake ports.
For real though, if MegaPixel can't figure out the copyright situation for the HotD2 music, I'm not even gonna bother buying. Hopefully the devs are taking note of the issues people have w/ this game and tweak the upcoming game accordingly.
The house of the dead 1 is my first game I ever played, it's my favorite game of all time. I was hyped for the remake and one of th biggest reason (not the only one, thank god) I got a switch. When I played in launch day, I gave up on the first level and went to bed to cry because EVERYTHING WAS ABSOLUTE SHIT, the music, the fucking controls, the camera, the health and speed of the enemies. Eventually I finished the game on switch and started to tolerate the remake, but still hating it. After only 3 fucking weeks, we got pc and its way better. The visuals are way better, the soundtrack is just perfect (after you mod the OG soundtrack XD) and controls a little better. It feels that the devs just put the mechanics and didnt bother to refine them.
- "Make enemy walk" but dont care about its speed.
- "Make flashlight" but dont make the game dark so it becomes worthless and makes it not work after some seconds.
- "Give lifes after saving people" that shit NEVER worked, I never get extra lifes and its infuriating. One time I lost a life in between levels WTF?
- "Put score system" but don't bother to balance.
- "Give health to enemies" but forgets that some enemies have lower health (those attacking people and the 2 monkeys in the entrance) and this together with the ultra fast enemies makes civillians FUCKING AWFUL to save.
- "Put horde mode" but give 0 support or incentive to play it. THERE ISNT EVEN A ACHIEVEMENT FOR PLAYING IT. There is a achuievement for shooting kenfis to the other side of a wall, BUT NOT FOR THE NEW MODE? ARE THEY HIGH?
- "Put camera" Jesus, I will not even talk about this. In normal is already shit, but on horde mode? it's awful.
Also, let me shit a little on horde mode: The house of the dead Scarlet Dawn came out in 2018, before the game even began developing. That game is basically only horde mode and the devs of remake clearly didn't bother into looking at that game to learn how to do it. IT'S THE SAME FUCKING FRANCHISE but make everyone stands only in front when we can get to the side and behind the player for the camere go nuts and make it unplayable?
It's unbelivable how a bigger team with way more time for development than the OG coundn't manage to get close to the OG. The game was delayed for at least 3 months for "marketing reasons" I call that BS since marketing was horrible. There is potential in the remake if they fix it, wich after a month after the release and 0 news from devs, I doubt it. The team have heart, but they suck at making games. Indie devs should not get a pass because they are indie, if the game does not work properly and control horribly, than you failed at making it. BTW great video, there is a lot that I notice that just make me furious but this is already way too long.
I always felt the game was slightly off and you explained the reasons for it. I was looking forward to the non-copyright version of the magician theme in the remake and I just couldn't hear it. I had to go into the settings and adjust it and even then I still couldn't really hear it. And I know exactly what you mean with the bullet whizzing sound effect when you miss, I can't believe I didn't notice that was absent.
And man, those changes to the bosses sound like absolute ass. I hate passive boss fights where you just wait around for an opening.
you got a great amount of this right and far more than any other reviewer ive seen. from what ive seen and my experience with the game, it feels like someone was given the best engine they could have, some really good models were made, an artist with a guitar made the tracks as they best as they could, and the ball was completely dropped when it came to putting those things together in a game. it feels like the base components are free online assets they found around the internet and then they put this together after watching two unity tutorials, everything just irks me as done incorrectly and cheaply and its very akin something a beginner to creating 3D games would create, with a complete lack of understanding of how to give weight to hits or do animations or how hit detection works, let alone anything about optimization (i ran this on a laptop with a 2070 and 32 of RAM and it was not going about 20fps, actually ridiculous). it enfuriated me the most when chariot didnt go backwards after a hit, or damage was unavoidable with certain bosses, it just felt so unsatisfying to play, quickly made and like it was cruising along with the good assets and modern graphics it had to work with, which is the total opposite of how i feel about the original
YES! Thankyou for mentioning the super childish memes and dumb emojis. I absolutely fucking hated it for exactly the same reason as you did. Spot on review.
This game wasn't published by sega. It was published by Forever Entertainment
y'know this is actually true but that's even weirder that Sega didn't even publish a game in their own franchise lmao
@@PunchyYT yeah, it feels like The House of the Dead has been abandoned
Holy hell, that Magician fight took almost _four fucking minutes_ 😱 (~ 13:51 - 17:34)
Even a bad player should be able to beat it in less than half that time. It's not a stealth game, "waiting" should not be a central mechanic.
Omg punchy i came here after refunding after first-trying arcade horde mode and saving everyone with the game showing i saved everyone then simply didn't unlock the armory..... On pc the frames are okay but there is more bugs like spawning enemies flickering in in a t pose, or spawning in already doing damage at full screen without doing the animations.
The dev gave a snarky remark to one of the steam comments saying they should be happy because we got achievements.....which are all full of typos like campaing and mdoe.
Yet they shit talk players for using aim assist which they themselves couldn't program correctly.
Also, my record for knockdowns on one enemy was 30. It was q monkey with no arms or head, but just kept getting up and then getting blasted right back down. I swear it's random bullet damage or something.
The developers just didn't give a shit, and SEGA approved this...
And THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING, considering they'll put their hands on THOTD2 next
Always disappointing when a publisher whiffs a remake this hard. Like I’d rather have this kind of thing for convenience if nothing else, but give me quality convenience!
Been playing the steam version and although I'm having fun achievement hunting after playing through a handful of times, I can't pretend to have any hope of the following remake of HotD2 being anywhere near the amazing experience the original was. I'm sure it'll look pretty and it'll get a bunch of people exposed to the HotD franchise which is great so they can look up the source material.
If MegaPixel can't figure out the copyright situation for HotD2 music then it's a high likelihood that I don't bother buying it. Honestly, listening to the original HotD OST made me appreciate the remakes' attempt a lot more. In a way, maybe the composer denying rights to the original music was a sign that the remake wasn't gonna live up to the standards it was expected to meet. I'd rather have a new soundtrack made from scratch w/ references to the original than an arrangement of the original since there's more effort put in to make it stand out and it would avoid the soundtrack having to rely on the original as a crutch. Guess we'll have to wait and see.
Anyways, great rant vid. Had many of the same gripes as you and hearing them being recognized feels pretty good.
The ps5 update does help and I found it fun to play. It’s like the pc port.
4:03 There's even a very special sound for Headshot kills, like how Kenshiro's enemies explode into a bloody mess.
You know it's bad when you release a game worse than Touch of the Dead in 2022
“This must be the security card”
Christ the Remake missed the mark so much it’s truly saddening! 😩
As a huge fan of the original I'm glad I didn't waste my time or money on this. Even the first trailer looked off and it looks like (as usual) nothing ever gets fixed or changed with products before release.
Have you played the mobile version (j2me i.e. java) of the House of the Dead?
It's still on rails but instead of a FPS it's like a third person one. Very interesting, well, for the time and platform standarts anyway. Neat designs also^^)
This game is just horrible I really hate it(and the
developers who made it too), not only because
it's horrible but PS just straight up deleted 3
and 4 out of my PS4 just to put this garbage in it.
"So creatures. Much zombie. Very Horror."
MOTHER OF GOD NO
That's a demake
Ok the smiley at the end was pretty cute 😂
That has happened in the original it two headshots to kill zombies when I played the arcade version
Yea there are a lot of problems. Thing is most of them could easily be solved, but they really want to. A PC port is needed, some updates could bring this game in a better light. Right now it's just meh. I'm happy THOTD getting games but it deserves better for sure
its on PC too and it blows just as hard if not harder because of awful compatibility issues/optimization issues.
Was a really fun game and played this whenever I was at an arcade, so extremely disappointing to hear that audio and controls were pretty much ruined by this remake. All the dead enemies still hitting you is ridiculous. Also calling someone a filthy casual for needing aim assist is so unprofessional. That's the kind of mind set that we need to get away from. Like the get gud bullshit from Souls players. Thank you for making this video. It was extremely enjoyable to watch.
don't know if you'll see this but Punchy, if you're reading - this video actually has me interested in the original version of HotD1. how does one go about playing it nowadays without access to one of the cabinets?
your only real options are emulating the arcade game (runs fine on a couple of specific Sega AM emulators) or using the Windows port (very old PC port, kind of an ass to get working, isn't arcade perfect). There is also the Saturn version, the saturn version is however, bad in a slew of different ways mainly relating to it looking crusty, running badly and having really long and jarring load times
HoTD1 has largely evaded any kind of reasonable port to any modern console unlike HoTD2 or 3 which received a slew of ports of varying degrees of quality, so the options are not great all in all.
@@PunchyYT yikes, what a shame that options are so limited. I guess I'll just have to experiment; thanks for the info!
Rhythm brain head has consumed even the speech here, idk leaving a comment for algo.
Y’know I didn’t exactly have high hopes for this game but wow. HOTD is arguably the most important light gun shooter ever made and they’re gonna do it like this? for my sake I hope these people don’t ever touch Time Crisis...
omg there's a yellow yoshi in your comments
First thing i did when this came out was look at the new magician fight on youtube. I wrote it off immediately but FUCK after watching this video i feel so sorry for everyone who actually payed money to watch their childhoods turn to ash in front of them
PC version is amazing! I miss better graphics (it has 10 years old graphics) but is not bad at all. Finger cross for a unreal engine 5 version of The house of the dead and in VR!!
Doesn't capture the creepy/fun factor the original arcade version had. Pretty disappointed tbh
I doubt it, but hopefully the Steam version will be better.
I think in Hotd 2 or 3 headless zombies can still hurt you
How dreadful must the remake be to make Punchy create Edited Content so quickly
edited is a bit generous but still yeah I channelled my Mad for this lol
@@PunchyYT Yes, embrace your anger for more content. But really, good video. How do does the emulation of the original work? What do you aim with?
@@IvanHabunek runs on an emulator simply called "Model 2 Emulator" and it seems to run pretty well. you aim with the mouse which I know isn't a perfect recreation but it'll do for comparison's sake
I think the game is a 6 or 7 it's very meh.
I'm going to get hate for this but I think the remake is such a beautiful game. But the original will always be the legend in my heart
Well, on steam it is beatiful, but still plays like shit sometimes.
Good video, bad game!
The aim controls are bad.
kinda yeah but without a lightgun peripheral idk how much better they could possibly have done
@@PunchyYT i tried the gyroscope and omg, that's terrible.
nice vid
“Now-defunct” is fine. “But in an emergency situations perfect evaluate risk” is… less fine.
"now-defunct" is weird because it's a remake of house of the dead 1 and AMS is not defunct during the events of that game. It's a continuity error, not a typographical one.
tellingly, that exact "now-defunct" phrase appears on the wiki, which is written more retrospectively so that's where they've copied it from.
The devs haven't paid attention to the storyline of HOTD2. The AMS were still active in 2000, two years after the events of HOTD1, it got disbanded when HOTD3 took place.
Problem is the weapon of choice. Instead of bringing the shotgun, all we have is two crossbows, a grenade launcher, and an AK47, that's it.
Yes
I think it’s great. Pro controller. Gyro. It’s a wonderful time.
I believe zombies in the originals would kill you even if they had no head. I got that in the third game. Torsos attacked me.
this is not a remake of the third game tho now is it
@@PunchyYT so serious. 🤔
In the original, the midget enemies have a strange behavior where sometimes, they do survive headless. But every other enemy basically dies in one to two headshots, and the animals always die in one hit. For whatever reason, the remake eschews this for a strange RNG system, so enemy encounters are far less consistent than they should be.
guys mad!
angry gamer grrr!
I just put it on my wishlist.....
Good review. But you over state some of your criticisms. You take issue with some artistic changes that the developers made that I actually prefer. For instance, not every zombie goes down with head shot. Some have exposed body parts in chest or abdomen that you have to take them down fast. You can hit the boss at a distance but not the farthest distance. Instead of white flash from the original game you get a larger blood splatter when you get critical hit. I like this better than the white flash. The game is in no way trash. It’s a fun arcade shooter. Get the PC version if you want better graphics and smoother frame rate. You can also use a lite gun on pc.
Mechanically it is still just as awful on PC. While I will concede it is not a completely worthless game.... it does fall far below the bar set by the originals that are going on 20 some years old now.
This is the ultimate example of graphics being prioritized over everything.