Games of the Abstract: House of the Dead - Scarlet Dawn (2018)

 

Developer: Sega Interactive

Publisher: Sega

One to Two Players

Arcade

 

When The House of the Dead 4 (2005) seemingly closed the door on Sega's horror light gun franchise - barring the spin-off by British developers Headstrong Games, The House of the Dead: Overkill (2009) - one should have realised like a corpse that refuses to rest in the ground, or a mad scientist refusing to stop trying to evolve humanity, House of the Dead would thankfully return. Thankfully, whilst a few intellectual properties have sadly seemed to be ignored by Sega, there was the advantage that light gun games were still found in arcades, and they brought it back with a swanky Unreal engine look.

They however decided to continue the franchise's narrative, which is a distinct touch, a full blown follow up thirteen years after the fact, factoring in parts four and The House of the Dead III (2002) in its narrative. Scarlet Dawn beyond this is pretty simple however; Thornheart, following on from the antagonists from those previous games, wishes to evolve the species but creates zombies, unleashing them on a party of guests at his mansion and causing mayhem. Within this guest list were AMS agent Kate Green and Ryan Taylor, the brother of her late partner and mentor, James. The result is House of the Dead not losing a beat from part four in how the ridiculous it is in a good way. The visual boost since the game before does need to be addressed, as Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games is used for this production, adding a marked improvement on some of the slightly generic environments and set pieces House of the Dead 4 had for its virtues.

The first opening stage shows the delirium, and how much the technology behind the game has upgraded in the decade past, where a literal horde of zombies ransack a dinner party, causing so much chaos that attempting a helicopter rescue is pointless when the undead can just pile onto each other and pull the vehicle down on mass to crash whilst indoors. With the building about to explode and up in flames, that is the "Prologue" level before you reach the main game, able to choose the first three levels in any order, and then the final one. Some moments, just to give an idea of the production value for the game, will even lag like this was a bullet hell shooter from the nineties, the game running with this boost in graphics and allowing for them to also fill the locations with both elaborate production value, but also a significant larger amount of enemies onscreen at one time on mass. The use of "Extreme Sound", the gimmick which you can turn on and off, seems far less important than this.

Able to choose two secondary weapons per level, from shotguns to laser cannons, with special events providing the needed weapon for convenience for set pieces, Scarlet Dawn is over the top. You pilot a quad bike and hurtle through one section, blowing the vehicle up in the end. You fight a squid monstrosity as a boss, gunning its tentacles. There is inexplicably, among enemies like emancipated husks to muck people in the water, a parody of musician Slash from Guns 'n Roses as an enemy type, a hulking zombie in a top hat, purple vest and armed with a v-shaped electric guitar, only the strangest above the ones dressed in nice sweaters like Ned Flanders or Mr. Rodgers you see frequently. It is lovely to realise, reflecting that whilst Sega had to focus over the 2000s and 2010s on bankable franchises, they still had a moment like this where you could still see their eccentricities and charm onscreen, literally at one point in a fire fight with a gargoyle boss where you need to use fire extinguishers on top a gothic castle. Not much has changed either since the older games barring automatic reload, which on the machine gun peripheral is both a concession for the player but still leaves delays in the reload where you can be caught defenceless, which is interesting in reducing a mechanics which is synonymous to the genre, but for non-gamers could be a struggle to get, and is itself a new hurdle to now plan around. Nothing else about the game style was broken previously, here just taking what worked perfectly before, and with the significant visual improvements and using the technology to boost the production value, where it is literally swarms of zombies at times you have to clear through on multiple screens.

The decision to keep the story alive from before, linking previous antagonists as colleagues, is something to also respect, basking over their tombstone monuments in the final stage before returning to our new antagonist. If the final boss is far easier than part four, it is contrasted by the epic nature of the conflict, to the point it enters into a demigod threatening God to literally strike them down with lighting as a giant necropolis entity. ([Spoiler] And they get struck down with a help of a metal rod for emphasis for this symbolism [Spoilers End]). Multiple endings promise another game to come, but whether that does arrive or not, it was a pleasure to witness this machine in action.