The House of the Dead (series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Anticlimax Boss: Mother in Overkill, aside from the last phase. Probably deliberate, judging by the cutscene before the fight.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The Magician and Emperor's boss themes.
    • And in The House of the Dead: Overkill, Jasper and Brutus's boss theme (they share one).
    • Don't forget Mother!
  • Demonic Spiders: There's bound to be at least one or two per game. The Hermit and The Lovers are literal examples (though they're bosses, so they don't really count). Also notable is the Puker from Overkill, which can often damage you no matter how quickly you shoot them.
    • More specifically, if they are killed by anything other than a head-shot, they explode. If they are too close to you when they do so, you will take heavy damage. Ironically, if you let them grab you, it's easier to shake them off before they damage you -- which is fatal to them without doing anything to you. The problem is shaking them off while other mutants move in...
    • The last boss spawns them, and they break your view - you can't shake them off, and you have to give them about five seconds of sustained fire to make sure they're dead for sure. Most of the time, they'll be stunned, then resume barreling towards you.
    • The riot shield-equipped mutants to some extent.
      • Taken Up to Eleven on the Play Station 3 exclusive Hardcore Mode where you're required to kill only with headshots. It's not that bad, until you face these guys where not only do you need to get rid of their shield, you still need to take out their helmets. And you've also got a swarm of other zombies getting pot shots on you.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: "Remember, there's no such thing as a second chance". Also a Broken Aesop since this is said after Judgment's second chance.
  • Goddamned Bats: Every. Single. Game. In addition, The House of the Dead 2 manages to add the even-more-annoying kamikaze zombie owls alongside energetic, knife-handed midgets. Overkill adds in exploding zombies mutants, that, if you don't nail with a headshot, will damage you immediately. The last boss spawns them endlessly.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Play the game normally till you reach "Carny" and Washington will say something to Varla about him and Agent Gwendolyn that they are going to check out the place. In the Play Station 3 version, after clearing "Classic Mode" (you can only use the default gun and nothing else), you get the Gwendolyn gun; Isaac's favorite guns.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Sega and Namco shooter translations seem to feature a running joke of having hostages shout "don't come!" They've been doing it for years, bless them.
    • The infamous "Suffer like G did?" line in The House of the Dead 2. It would have been imposing if the creature hadn't presented it as a question. And didn't have such a high voice.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "RELOAD! Shoot outside the screen!"
    • The grunts and groans when a character is injured ("AGH!") also count.
  • Narm: "The original sin that man is resphaansible to... To protect the loyfe coycle! I have maaaig a creacher to rule over maaahn kiiine! This is tha faynl bawdl! Shoe yourself! Our new ruler, the Empurr!" followed by the camera pointing at a wall. In fact, anything anyone says in The House of the Dead 2 (and there's plenty of examples in the other games as well). There's enough to fill their own page. How could anyone do that?
  • So Bad It's Good: The voice acting and translation, particularly in the first and especially the second game. "Don't come! Don't come!" "Suffer like G did?"
  • Squick: Fat zombies that can have holes punched in them, incest in Overkill, open beating hearts... there's frequently stuff one shouldn't dwell upon. Some of the water zombies in The House of the Dead]] 2 look like they could be Tarman's clone, and Tarman is rather Squicky to a lot of people. Then there's more of Overkill, where we have macabre, disgusting bosses like the freaks in the Carnival, the Lobber, and Mother itself. It doesn't help that when she spawns mooks from her... erhm... womb, it looks like she's defecating. Also Warden Darling kissing his old, withered mother on the lips and Varla after her operation, with Mother's brain sticking out of her head.
  • That One Attack:
    • Ask anyone who has endured through The Fool's final attacks.
    • One of The Star's attacks is basically a Bullet Hell attack, shooting six to eighteen energy blades at you. Playing 2-player mode? Get ready see up to 'twenty-four' of the bloody fucking things on the screen AT ONCE. Oh, and his Tornado Spin too. Pray your gun's sensors doesn't fuck up.
  • That One Boss:
  • They Just Didn't Care: Sega's downloading service has a bit of a typo for The House of the Dead 2, saying it's rated EC (Early Childhood).


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