The House of the Dead 2 is situated in Venice, two years after the mysterious incident of the first game where Dr. Curien has released an army of undead into the world. No lack of zombies here, you are flooded by one wave after another. Besides that, you have to kill a boss and save innocent civilians from evil. Whether you succeed in these rescue missions, determines where you go next. This way, you don't have to play exactly the same over and over again.

The game is a port of the arcade game with a few extras like Training mode, a Boss mode (where you try to do better on the bosses you already slaughtered) and an Original Mode where you can find items like extra credits or a bigger gun chamber. However, this doesn't change a lot. The game is so difficult, that even the best will see "Game Over" on their screen a lot.

Nineteen years later, you end up in an abandoned research centre in House of the Dead 3. No civilians here, but you'll have to save your partner now and then. Moreover, you get the choice where you want to go next. Novelties are the Time Attack Mode with the clock ticking instead of your health dropping. You win extra time by shooting zombies, succeeding in a teamwork event, finding a clock or getting a High Rank at the end of a chapter. If you think the normal Arcade Mode isn't hard enough, you can always try the Extreme Mode that also features melee battle to defend yourself.

In principle it's a pretty fun game. The controls work exactly as they should so there will be no complaints about bullets ending up somewhere you didn't intend to. You reload by simply pointing outside the screen. What's the problem then? An arcade shooter is made to earn money. It's so difficult you'll die a lot and you'll see your credits melt away like snow to the sun. If you're playing a real arcade game, you can just slip an extra coin into it when you've reached the last boss and almost had him. Here, you can try to put your money into the Wii, but that won't do much.

However, we understand it's a difficult choice for the developers. An unlimited amount of credits wouldn't be fun either. In a way, they try to solve the problem by giving you an extra credit every time you fail. In the options, you can then raise the credits with one. Still, it's a very frustrating system that will definitely make you curse regularly.

Fortunately, there's also the possibility to fight the evil with a friend. Two extremely good gamers might get there this way, but even then you might need a lot of persistence.