Games of the Abstract: The House of the Dead 4 (2005)

Developer: WOW Entertainment

Publisher: Sega

One to Two Players

Arcade / Playstation

 

Among Sega’s franchises which have found themselves in stasis, though I will tip my hat to Polish developer MegaPixel Studio getting the rights to remake the original game in a 2021 update, House of the Dead is among them and has its fans. The first arcade machine, from 1996, tackled zombies at a time before they became a pop culture phenomenon, knee deep into their growth in popularity by the time of part four here. Over console ports, a neo-grindhouse inspired spin-off, and even typing education games where you blast zombies’ heads off by typing on dangerous keyboards, and it is a franchise people like even if it also led to that infamous Uwe Boll film adaptation from 2003. It is a franchise which took a simple premise, light guns with zombies, and was made by a company for all their misguided business decisions that were good at making games.

This feels like the game wanted to close off this franchise with a last hurrah for those who kept up with its actual plot, even existing in-between the chronology of The House of the Dead 2 (1998), the most famous of the games, and The House of the Dead III (2002), bringing in the importance of part two in the franchise. That game is significant for this one in back story, in how this leads to a full blown zombie apocalypse which is going to stick for society, following a lead from the second game James Taylor returning with a new character, fellow agent Lisa Green, to deal with the legacy of his former enemy, former CEO of the now-defunct DBR Corporation Caleb Goldman, returning from part two too. Goldman, seemingly behind this cataclysmic reattempt which worked, now has nuclear missiles in play, and thus with Uzis in this game and grenades, James and Lisa need to save what is left of humanity.

Beyond this, there is not that much to add as this is a solid arcade machine showing Sega’s commitment to closing out this part of the story for the fourth game, though they did tease in alternative endings the possibility of a follow up which was a long time coming. There were differences from before – gone are the civilians to rescue for bonus lives/items, gone are the shotguns from part three – but this is a work which is made by people who worked on these games for a long time and knew what they were doing, in this case WOW Entertainment, who were originally named Sega AM1, and returning back to said name as one of Sega's development departments. At a time where arcades would have been fighting for interest when consoles fully held dominance, this feels like a loving finale for these games from the time, only with the irony that the seventh generation of game consoles, with the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3, brought the possibility for lightgun games to return. Personality is really what counts here with House of the Dead 4, and it is beautifully cheesy.

Even if this presents a grim tone, where after a few levels underground you find yourself in a destroyed metropolis with one protagonist too old for this, you still find yourself in a subway train against a boss (named after a Tarot card as they all are in the franchise) armed with a dual chainsaw staff, or blasting your way through a shopping mall full of punk zombies. Even in mind this, like all these pulpy genre works, touches on serious subjects, that this follows Goldman (in-between levels) talking of how humanity has overpopulated and damaged the Earth, there is the contrast to these serious repeated themes in pop culture being interpreted in this pulpy ways, in this case a carnival ride between muck men and a giant spider boss to deal with. The only idiosyncratic touches which present differences to other fun light gun games are how there are some multiple choices in levels to choose, for which direction you wish to go, or how in certain circumstances you need to shake the plastic Uzi controller at certain events repeatedly to complete events, but this is a game which works even if the style and content is seen before. Even the potential risk this took in having a large part of its levels underground in bleak industrial areas, or a desolated metropolis painted mostly in browns, is thankfully contrasted in the little touches, like the goofy responses in the level rankings from your leads to how, for one level, you have to gun it in the best luxury car you can find, with only an hour before the nukes are set off, with zombies in cars a specific hazard to worry about.

Even in terms of an ending, fighting an ice based boss with an almost God-like and weirdly supernatural ting to them, with a bombastic tragic conclusion with multiple possible outcomes, this would have worked as a good last game for many, even if it returns to House of the Dead III for the proper finale. A game, House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn (2018), was released continuing the story but only in Japan and the USA for the arcades, emphasizing the sad sense that, for a genre which still gets immense interest in arcades which have not just embraced ticket winning machines, these games have found themselves in a limbo. Until we figure out the hardware that would allow them to re-release the lot of them, just like in the Wii and Playstation 3 era where motion controls made this possible, this genre has unfairly been maligned. Alongside a spin-off, the neo-grindhouse parody as talked about, exclusively for consoles named The House of the Dead: Overkill (2009), and Playstation 3 getting House of the Dead 4, these games can still be re-released, something which needs to be encouraged as, whilst thankfully House of the Dead 4 cabinets can still be found, as I can attest to, this genre really deserves more appreciation when even a later stage entry like this can provide so much fun.