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?

Lol try posting this on Gamespot!

P.S. you are quite hairy, you hairy bastard

bugsonglass said:

awesome first impressions.  just out of curiosity, how much was the box? on UK websites it's something like £35 for the collectors edition which has the game and the comic, and £15 a piece for a handcannon.

bit pricy but seems great fun

T'was $93 including postage. So 3 Euros cheaper. That's actually a pretty damn good deal here considering you'll see a lot of games going for $100+ just for the game. It retailed for $64 without the guns, but they're definitely worth it so far!

SteelAttack said:

Is that your hand? It looks virile.
Oh man, that plastic gun looks awesome. I want one.
Not to play the game, though, just to annoy my wife running after her saying "pew-pew-pew". Until she hits me with a glass.
I will buy this game out of principle.

If you don't I will rip your balls off! Or try, at least.

Everyone else: the masculinity of a man is directly proportinite to the amount body hair he has!

SteelAttack said:

gamingeek said:

Nice impressions. I hear that you unlock a longer harder directors cut after completion too.

You like that, eh, bitch?

Aint nothing wrong with dual wielding my hand cannon. Bitch.  

My cousin came over today, and after the obligatory hour or two of FIFA (the highlight of which was being 2-0 down to Wellington at half time and coming back to win 2-5! If FIFA is anything it’s realistic. ) we gave Overkill a go. One thing that stands out about Overkill is the funky ‘70s porno soundtrack, and as we were slaughtering “mutants” by the dozen we were both bobbing our head and tapping our feet. As with UC, co-op is an even more enjoyable experience than single player, but with the added gore of Overkill it’s improved even more than UC was. Zombies were exploding and having arms and heads blown of at twice the rate and it made for a much more gory and intense experience.

My cousin is not a fan of cut scenes, in fact, when we played UC we skipped every one that we could, but after he watched the first cut scene he was more than happy to watch them and laugh at the motherfucking jokes. Never ask a brother about his music.

It is certainly looking like it will be a lot shorter than UC, though. Only two short sessions in and I’m already up to the fourth level out of seven. But as I said earlier replay value looks quite high. There are high scores that just have to be broken, and there’s memorabilia and guns to unlock, but I haven’t got to the mini-games yet, so I can’t tell you anything about them. The attention to detail is lovely. On the menu screens more porno tracks play, often with cameos from the characters, and the level-select screen presents the levels as movie posters. Not all are great, but the first level’s poster is a treat for the eyes and it’s a fantastically done ‘50s movie poster parody!

Only evil people and Steel wear cravats.

The Hand Cannon is really growing on me. During co-op I found that the reticle was even harder to tell apart from the reticles in UC, as they’ve got a different trail, but they’re the same colour with the second player having two rings on the reticle instead of one. But I was used to the Hand Cannon’s weight by now and I found myself doing something I could never do with the wii-remote. I was able to look at what I wanted to shoot and shoot without having to even pay attention to the reticle! If you can get over to the bad balance and arcade-gun-weight then you’ll find a very accurate little peripheral indeed! After I made this discovery my accuracy jumped a good 20% and I was kicking arse.Then mid-level he had to go and it was time to try out what everyone had dreamed of doing as soon as they saw the Bang Bang Box.

Dual wielding! In short: it is every bit as awesome as it sounds. I was dropped in the deep end—right in the middle of a level—but I found myself filling zombies with two shotgun shells at once, or a handful of shotgun shells in one zombie, while nailing another’s stomach with an SMG, with ease. I’ll say here and now that the game is easy, but that somehow adds to the charm. There’s so much gore and carnage that it makes you feel badarse, especially with the Hand Cannon. You’re there to kick arse then fill it with lead, and if you couldn’t go along at smooth rate then it simply wouldn’t feel like that. Besides, the real challenge is trying to rack up the points for the high scores and that means getting as many headshots and progressing as quickly as possible. Sure you might not die, but if you’re going for good scores then it’s no walk in the park. I still haven’t got a better rating than C!

I noticed my first slow down too, in fact the Carny level was filled with it, but for some reason the slow down was confined to when G and Isaac were turning or moving with nothing to shoot on screen, so it didn’t really interfere with my shooting. It doesn’t bode too well, though, but I can certainly put up with a bit of slowdown when I’m not shooting anything.

As I said before it is short, but the levels have been steadily increasing in length. Even with the help of a second player (and then a second Hand Cannon, baby!) there was a huge jump in the length of the second level from the first, and then another steady jump with the third level. And it’s been handled pretty well pacing-wise. There’s a nice variety in zombies, though they are pretty much the same archetype in each level, just with a different skin, which manages to keep things fresh. The number of tougher zombies is increasing, and it’s nice having to take on a couple of faster zombies, some long-range zombies, and some fat ones all at once only to then have to deal with some armour zombies. It would be nice if their bodies stuck around, but at least they explode in a bloody mess, rather than just fading.

She might be as same all the other zombies, but she's wearing a freaking nurse's outfit!

One thing that there is no getting around is the easiness of the bosses. I actually died during the boss on the first level, but that was due to me impatiently shooting his weak point when I should have been shooting the projectiles. Since then they’ve always proved to be the easiest part of the level. It’s a case of simply shooting the weak point until they die, and they die pretty damn quickly. I remember the boss battles in HOTD on the Dreamcast being long and tough, but then again that could well have been because I was quite young, nevertheless it’s a bit disappointing. Hell, with the screamer, we didn’t even bother shooting her henchman because she died so quickly! We just concentrated fire on her weak point and she was dead in a minute or two!

If you get the Bang Bang Box you will probably play through it twice whether you’re a completionist or not. Once with one Hand Cannon and the other dual-wielding. And perhaps a third time gansta-style!

Bonus pic:

Coopersville said:

I played through Story Mode and the Director's Cut last night. It's too easy, and the sometimes choppy framerate can be rage-inducing when I'm trying to focus on keeping my Goregasm combo.

So you've been getting frame rate problems during shooting? Does it get a lot worse on the DC because I've had no problems except on top of the train. The camera pisses me off greatly, though. Ugh.

Edit:

DC is a nice jump in difficulty, or the first level is anyway. I died twice on my first play through of the first DC level, though admittedly I did just callibrate the Hand Cannon and wasn't too happy with the results so that probably contributed to matters. The boss was still piss easy. Ah well, back to calibrating!