I had heard a rustling on the front veranda; there was a human-sized creature out there, so I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a large knife. It was a little blunt, but that would make the decapitation all the sweeter! I crept outside slowly and carefully, but all I could see was some rubbish bin…but of course! I realised, it would be hiding behind the bin! With the knife at the ready I peered around it, but instead of a flesh-eating zombie I found a large cardboard parcel. I picked it up carefully and headed back inside.

Zombies or not, the knife came in handy, as I cut the box open with glee and it contained another box…a Bang Bang Box! I was still a little wary as a zombie may very well have delivered, so before I immersed myself in the game I read the comic. It’s a nice little collector’s item, and it sets the tone perfectly. Speaking of tone, let’s get to some motherfucking facts.

It’s two pages until semi-nudity and the first swearword, three until nipples, and just in case you missed them, there’s some more on the next page. 5 until the first Zombie, and six until the first amputation, and fourteen until the first threesome.

As to the game, from the “licensed by Nintendo screen” it’s 50 seconds until the first stripper, 1 minute and 30 seconds until the first swear word, 4:17 before the first balls line, 5:11 until the first decapitated head, 10:48 until I ate a banana split. 12:46 until the first mad scientist, and 21:30 until the first big explosion.

There's the whole package, with a convinient shot of the nunchuk in the right Hand Cannon.

But that’s already too many fucking facts, so let me give you some fucking opinions. Firstly the fucking Hand Cannon. It’s a badarse piece of shit, and I don’t mean that it is shit! Yes, the fucker is fucking heavy, but if you’re not a piece of shit that hasn’t played light gun arcade games—and if you haven’t then you suck—then it shouldn’t be a problem. However because the fucking handle is so far fucking back from the motherfucking wii-remote, it means that it’s more top heavy than Varla Guns. But for the fucking babes out there that is easily remedied by simply resting it on your free hand, though I’m sure Steel would probably be busy with something else while Isaac said “balls”. I know I was.

It's like a BMX Gyro. Quite nicely designed, and it doesn't get in the way at all when you're holding the nunchuk.

Oh, and if you couldn’t tell from my subtle hints, there is a lot of swearing. Every second word is fuck or shit, and while I’ve heard balls twice, the number of balls is disappointing. Though two balls are generally the recommended number of balls. But I disagree with the reviews. Yeah, it’s fucking stupid, but if it wasn’t it just wouldn’t have the same b-grade vibe. It might be a bit to exaggerated, but fucking hell, it’s not meant to be Kubrick.

I played through the first level twice, the first time with the Hand Cannon, and the second time without it. My accuracy was only 2% better without it, and I much preferred playing with it. I never really liked using the wii-remote as a light-gun, it’s fine with FPSers, but when the emphasises is on slower and more precise shooting I didn’t like having to hold it on a stupid angle, and it always felt too light, so the Hand Cannon actually feels like a vast improvement to me. Plus it looks absolutely badarse. I also tried Umbrella Chronicles with it, and it didn’t work too badly. Switching to zapper controls helped, as then you grab items with Z rather than A, but there was still the problem with slashing the knife. It’s not really practical at all to reach for the A button with the Hand Cannon. Plus, it feels really stupid slashing with a hand cannon. Not only that but due to the increased length, reloading is hard, as it is hard to get quick flicks in, because you’re so far away from what you’re flicking. I found I had to let go of my nunchuk or balls and grab the end of the gun to flick it quickly to reload. So there are a few problems with UC, but it works perfectly with Overkill as you’d expect.

[

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Now coming into the game as a HOTD fan, but not expecting anything HOTD-like, I was pleasantly surprised. Naturally the presentation is anything but HOTD, but it’s got the same classic light gun gameplay with a few tweaks for console use. Unlike Umbrella Chronicles there’s much less talking and tension building and a whole lot more decapitations and amputations (yes you can pick off both of a Zombie’s arms, and yes that is as awesome as it sounds). There’s nothing cooler than slowing time down to completely gib a zombie in slow motion. Fuck yeah! Especially with all the fantastic effects. The colours are drawn out and the screen is flickering and dirty and marked and it just looks fantastic. It’s not as polished as something like Umbrella Chronicles, and the character models aren’t as good, but the effects give it a wonderful feel and atmosphere. Plus you can’t gib people in Umbrella Chronicles like you can here!

Did I mention I played through the first level twice? One of the problems I personally had with UC was that it got boring re-doing levels because there were a lot of breaks between action and it was slow. Well this is HOTD so that’s no problem. The actual game might be not that long, but I don’t think I’ll have trouble playing through the levels again and again.

I haven’t had any slowdown yet either. There have been ten plus zombies on screen at once, with water and fire, and me blowing them up, and is ran perfectly smoothly. I actually had problems with the frame rate all the time on UC, so if the first level doesn’t have slow down, and the rest do, then it’s already one up on UC in the frame rate department!

The attention to detail is wonderful, and bound to bring a smile to your face if you like b-grade films. This was basically made for GG and Steel. Hell, even on the first level you’ve been given one ball each! Or you could keep them together and suck them in tandem. But back to my point, there’s a scene with a guy in glasses in a wheelchair. The effeminate evil guy slaps the glasses from his face (after calling him impotent) and then in the next shot the glasses are back. Lovely!

The aiming feels a lot more precise than in UC too. I always felt that the aiming was too twitchy, and as such my headshots suffered. Well, the zombies don’t seem to stand as still in HOTD, but I’m having no trouble blowing there heads off.

In short: I’ve only played the first level and I’m loving it so far, but I can’t wait for the Quentin Tarantino cameo.

More impressions to follow probably.

Well, do ya?