The House of the Dead: Overkill – The Lost Reels (iOS) Review

For me, when it comes to The House of the Dead series, there are two distinct flavors.  First off, there is the silly, over-the-top classic arcade light-gun game where the story is absurd, the voice-acting is terrible, and the action is simple and straight-forward.  The second flavor, which is a bit more unsavory to me, is the Overkill series.  The Quentin Tarantino-homaged grindhouse 70s-style shooter, where the language and content is profane and sometimes outright disgusting.

The House of the Dead: Overkill – The Lost Reels, is sort of a mix between the original arcade-style HOTD and the newer, gritty Wii version.  If you have kids who often play games on your device, and you want to pick up this title, you’ll definitely want to hide it away within one of your iPad’s business apps sub folders.

The Lost Reels, which is how I’ll refer to this title in the review, earns it’s App Store rating of 17+ (equivalent to the ESRB M-rating) by dropping a big ol’ MF’er bomb during the game’s opening scene.  Just for clarification, there is very little — if any — voice overs, so nothing is actually spoken aloud.

When I first sat down to play this game, I thought I was in for an easy experience.  I had anticipated that simply tapping the screen where you wanted to shoot would make for an easy victory over the zombie hordes, in that putting-the-light-gun-up-against-the-TV-sort-of-way, but I was wrong.  The controls utilize a virtual directional pad, by default, to aim your cross-hairs   This can be changed to utilize the accelerometer instead, in the game’s settings.

There are a multitude of weapons, that can be acquired and upgraded.  Killing zombies will earn you “kash,” the game’s currency.  This in-game currency can be spent on making yourself a more formidable zombie slayer.  You’ll be awarded points by taking down zombies by blasting them away, but you’ll earn more points by stringing together kills by performing combo attacks.

The Lost Reels will cost you $4.99 (as of this review) via the iTunes App Store, but also offers in-app purchases.  Kash can also be acquired by opening your wallet and spending as little as $0.99 to as much as $19.99 of your real money.  You can also purchase weapons and gadgets packs, that range in price from $2.99 to $14.99.  For $1.99 you can also gain access to Naked Terror, the game’s third act, which, unfortunately, cannot be played without shelling out some money.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that into The Lost Reels, and while it’s not a knock against the gameplay, I’m just not into the grindhouse cinema-style.  I’m not even sure it’s that popular anymore.  Maybe I’m just coming off sounding like an old curmudgeon, but I miss the days of the original House of the Dead games with the horrible voice acting (“Suffer like G did”), when they felt a little more… innocent – and that’s certainly not the right word I’m going for, but you hopefully get my drift — and weren’t so profane.

I’m not sure what more I can say about the gameplay, other than if you like the light-gun style games and/or the House of the Dead series, I think that The Lost Reels is a pretty faithful adaptation for a touch-screen device.  You’ll have zombies popping up from everywhere, objects hurling at you that you’ll have to blast out of the air, and objects in the background that, if you’re quick enough, can be shot at to give you a power-up.  For that, it’s a pretty fun game.

While The Lost Reels is a universal app and can be played on iPad and iPhone devices, I highly recommend playing on anything but an iPad ( and maybe the iPad Mini).

It’s a profane and gory game, so if you have little ones that use your iPad for apps, you might want to try and hide this one away in another folder. I also didn’t like that the game’s third act was premium content.  If the game was a bit cheaper than the current asking price of $4.99, I don’t think I’d mind so much, but an additional $1.99 doesn’t seem to make much sense.  I know why Sega did it, but it just came across as being a bit… greedy.

Overall, if you’re looking for a faithful House of the Dead experience, especially if you liked the gritty Overkill Wii version, you’ll probably like The House of the Dead: Overkill – The Lost Reels.