THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD: Remake

The House of the Dead: Remake is a contemporary update of the first game in The House of the Dead series and this remake does a decent job with most elements, giving us a good looking world, competent controls and a very welcome and challenging new game mode. At this level, this remake successfully brings the experience to our day and age. Its performance is affected in the most intense moments, though, especially in multiplayer mode and its long loading times may be off-putting for less patient players.

Your enjoyment of The House of the Dead: Remake is going to be highly dependent on your nostalgia for the original arcade game and a firm understanding of what you're getting into. It's a lightgun game on a platform where it's almost impossible to encounter another one like it unless you're into emulation. It is a faithful enough arcade experience that you have time for at least two runs of the campaign in an afternoon. It remains a fun, fleeting experience if you have no intention of going through all of the paths and uncovering all of the secrets. It's good enough to recommend for arcade nuts, but everyone else might want to wait until they feel the need to play a game like this or when they acquire their own lightguns for a more authentic experience.

House of the Dead Remake is a fun, quick romp perfect for a night in with a friend, but will most likely wear out its welcome after a couple of hours. The HD graphics help update the game to the modern era while the addition of unlockable weapons, a horde mode, and multiple difficulties help to extend a rather short campaign, but still doesn’t offer much reason to continue playing after you’ve completed the game a few times. The thing I was excited for the most, the motion controls, ultimately became my biggest disappointment and I can’t help but feel that there was a huge missed opportunity to not package the game with a gun peripheral. Still, the core game remains fun despite being released over 25 years ago.

In The House of the Dead Remake, the experience of the classic original is still there, with some changes in different aspects that help to keep it updated and enjoyable for today's times.

Currently a Nintendo Switch exclusive, The House of the Dead Remake does a decent job at staying faithful to its legacy to the best of its ability by keeping the spirit of its campy acting and fast-paced action. The controller handicap the team had to deal with is unfortunate, but also an expected one, given the circumstances. While it’s a game that will guarantee a split opinion amongst fans, based just on frame rate and soundtrack alone, I found enough entertainment here to keep me pretty satisfied and coming back for more.

The House Of The Dead Remake is a lot of fun, especially if you can get a two player co-op/competition going. Even if you can only play the single player mode, you get to experience the classic arcade shooter with achievements, new weapons, various difficulties and a new mode to keep things fresh. Unfortunately, the controls leave a lot to be desired, while getting all the unlockables and achievements in the game will test the patience of even the most hardcore fans. It has its moments, but the flaws stand out just as much as the strengths.

Overall, this is an accurate and faithful remake of the original The House of the Dead but lacks the bespoke light gun controls to really make it work. While games like Virtual On have had their TwinStick peripherals over the years, it’s a shame to see The House of the Dead denied a proper light gun.

The House of the Dead: Remake doesn’t reinvent the wheel, is brief in length, and does have some niggly control issues, but this is a welcome addition to the library of any Switch owner who enjoys on-rails lightgun shooters.

I enjoyed my time with The House of the Dead: Remake but it's certainly not as fun as the classic games. It does a lot of things exceptionally well while failing at others so it ends up feeling more like a fan-made adaptation than a true remake.

The House of the Dead remake is characterized by a faithful embodiment of the elements of the original. However, it does not reproduce the sophisticated manipulation and immersion, which are characteristics of the gun shooting genre, so it stays in the remake as a rip-off of the original, not a remake beyond the original.

The House of the Dead: Remake continues to be as fast-paced and fun as ever, now with a completely new look and great new contents. Unfortunately, it can be improved at the graphical level, which, together with its loading screens, slowdowns and inaccurate gyroscope aiming, means that it doesn't look as good as it should.

While is nice to see this forgotten genre back, the controls don’t do it justice, and in this particular case they are integral to the experience.

The House of the Dead: Remake takes us back to the arcade era with new improved graphics but keeping the essence of the original title. It is a game that entertains for many hours, especially in company. The new additions are insufficient and it doesn't motivate replayability at all.

The House of the Dead Remake is a game rooted on nostalgia and zombies, but fails to bring an entertaining experience on Nintendo Switch due to the many issues with its control scheme. A pity, since the juicy arcade gameplay and extras would have deserved all of your love.

The House of the Dead Remake is back, but it seems that the old charm has been lost.

The House of the Dead still holds up as a campy and action-packed pastiche of the zombie genre, but this remake struggles to bring the gameplay competently to the modern-day. Issues with performance and motion controls hamper what could be a dead-good reanimation of an undead classic.

The House of the Dead: Remake successfully moves to the Switch everything you loved about the on-rails shooting arcade game…except the controls. It’s fun to play with a friend provided you both understand that the very act of aiming and shooting will be an exercise in frustration.

Converting the classic The House of the Dead experience from the arcades has resulted in a short game with not-so-ideal controls. However, the high replay value may be more than enough to satisfy starving fans of the rail shooter genre.

The House of the Dead: Remake gives the classic zombie-shooting game a frightfully fresh coat of paint, but its arcade roots create new problems as a home console release.

The House of The Dead: Remake bets on nostalgia and tries to renew itself while leaving its arcade essence intact. Sadly, controls are not precise and makes it frustrating in a short time. If you overcome this huge problem, its new art direction that gives the impression of being an old game and adjust to its shortcomings, The House of The Dead: Remake becomes fun to deliver you a simple and action-packed experience.

When it all works like it should, The House of the Dead: Remake is a fun update of a Sega arcade classic. The performance can be janky and the controls clunky on its default settings, but if you’re willing to put the time in to tweak them you should get something you’re happier with. You shouldn’t have to do that with a light gun shooter, though, and the fact you do has to go down as a failing on the game’s part.

The House of the Dead: Remake can be an classic enjoyable return to fans of the franchise, but its performance hiccups and not-that-well-made controls are more scary than the zombies.

The faithful remake of this light-gun classic only serves to highlight how bare bones it is by today's standards.

We like the visual improvements (running up to 60 FPS in performance mode) and the idea of using motion sensing instead of a light gun, but it is not precise enough to enjoy The House of the Dead. There are new game modes and unlockables, but still, it doesn´t live up to the original.

The House of the Dead: Remake can be an enjoyable return to the classic arcade rail shooter, but performance hiccups and frustrating controls are scarier enemies than the zombies themselves.

It would be hard to name a genre more trivial than rail shooters, but that’s not what bothered me the most about The House of the Dead: Remake. The game’s biggest problem is that its campaign mode offers literally half an hour’s worth of content. If you’re not a fan of replaying the same four levels over and over again to improve your high score, it’s hard to justify spending money on THotD.

The House of the Dead: Remake is a welcome return of an arcade classic on a less than an ideal platform. On paper, it would make sense for this to work on Nintendo Switch, but the gyro functionality of the Joy-Cons just doesn’t lend itself to the experience as smoothly as one would hope. Diehard fans are probably better off dusting off their Nintendo Wii, while most Switch owners will need to fiddle around with the controls before they can appreciate this classic.

The House of the Dead is one of the best on-rail shooters, but the remake adds very little to the well known formula. The game is still very short and issues with controls will drive you crazy.

The House of the Dead: Remake had a lot working in its favor going in that didn’t pan out in the end. The main problems lie in the controls, which never work as well as they should, at least at launch. It’s entirely possible like with the Panzer Dragoon Remake that improvements make the post-launch experience better, but as it stands, it’s hard to recommend this for serious light gun fans or those just looking to see what all the fuss was about in the genre 20-30 years ago. Playing the game varies from being fun when things work to being frustrating when they don’t work well — and that happens more than it should. It’s not a great-looking game, but does sound great and will hopefully receive post-launch support to improve the experience overall.

The House of the Dead: Remake will appeal to fans of the original for obvious reasons, but several significant issues hold the disappointingly threadbare experience back in several ways.

As a massive fan of the original game, I had high hopes for The House of the Dead Remake. Unfortunately, this one mostly misses the mark as far as updates go due to its constant performance issues and control schemes that range from merely unsatisfying to downright frustrating. While extras like the Horde mode and in-game achievements are welcome, it’s hard to imagine many players will want to trudge through the experience all over again after wrapping up the main story once or twice. If you’re dying for an arcade-style shooter to plow through with a friend, The House of the Dead Remake might keep you busy for an evening. Anyone else would be better off letting the dead rest.

Personally I’m a sucker for a game like this, and I’ve enjoyed it plenty enough to keep on pushing for all achievements and to see that pesky third ending. Your mileage will vary - newcomers will most likely be miffed by the whole thing, and purists dismayed that their bullets keep missing. But arcade-goers of the late 1990s who want a gory little slice of exhumed nostalgia might feel satisfied enough with what’s on show. Remake offers plenty to chew on - it’s a shame it doesn’t go down smooth.

A nostalgic trip down memory lane marred with aiming issues and a very short play time.

Unless you are a big fan, The House of the Dead: Remake is not the best way to experience this classic for the first time, and it would have probably been better off dead than revived in this form.

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD: Remake is an absolute disservice to the light gun classic. From the pop in to the loading times to the broken control scheme, this re-release would make even Dr. Curien cower in fear.

The House of the Dead: Remake can be fun, but that lack of a decent controller is a problem that holds the whole experience back.

A result that is not very convincing, especially on the gameplay.

A bad idea poorly realised and while the original coin-op retains its campy charm this remake is rendered pointless by the unsatisfying controls and glitchy performance.

The House of the Dead: Remake could have been such an easy recommendation if it controlled properly. It hits all the right notes EXCEPT for the most important ones, and I seriously cannot wrap my head around how it got released in its current state beyond a deadline that absolutely should have been pushed back. Either way, I think the Switch got the short end of the stick here… with FPS lag and bad controls to boot. At this point, you’re better off waiting for a version on another platform or at the very least waiting for a patch for this one, because this is one game that should’ve stayed dead a while longer.