House Of The Dead Overkill!: the ultimate B-movie homage

Sassy lady

Guns? Check. Zombies? Check. Rebellious and sexy siren to provide the eye-candy for bed-wetting gamers? Check. Varla Guns – the hot sister of wheelchair-bound Jasper – pops up shortly after her sibling is smoked by Agent G and immediately declares vengeance on Papa Caesar.

But for all the threats and cut-scene clips of her getting tooled up she only ever ends up splitting before the hot-lead action starts. Still, lingering shots of her cleavage and her Angelina Jolie trout-pout lip ensures the cameo provides a break from the buckets of gore. Speaking of which…

Guts and gore

HOTD: Overkill serves up so much blood and guts it’d make an abattoir employee’s stomach turn. Hold your nerve and wait for the mindless foe to waddle toward you and a shot to the skull will see his head pop like a balloon filled with claret.

Arms are hilariously blown from their sockets and even taking out a mutant’s leg will see the bumbling idiot crawl towards you whilst leaving a trail of blood behind them like a battered slug. The kill-count is so high that you’ll leave countless amounts of zombies in the death throes before you can say ‘RELOAD!’.

Cinematics and settings

Headstrong Studios have worked super-hard on the dirty, grimy look of HOTD: Overkill and the pay-off captures the grindhouse movie look perfectly. The tiny spots of dust and hairs on the celluloid makes the filter for the visuals look gritty and the garishly styled titles like ‘THE FETID SWAMP!’ provide the faux shock-horror of the B-movie genre perfectly.

Plus the classic foggy woods, science lab and house of horror setting just add to the feel of this surprisingly graphic Wii title.

For new House of the Dead: Overkill! screens click here

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Nathan Irvine
Hi, I’m Nathan. You may remember me from such websites as, erm, this one circa 2011. Been hustling in games for over a decade and write for Official PlayStation, Official Xbox, Gamesmaster and more.