Living With a Nerd

When the alarm goes off
And she gets out of bed
She sometimes turns around
And kisses me sweetly on the head

Off to work she goes
Her job a full-time chore
She always comes home tired
But ready to make me sore

She drops her bags
And with a heavy sigh
She decides to play
And punches me in the thigh

I chase after her
Like some kind of young nut
I finally catch up
And begin to kick her butt

She squeaks and squeals
Running all through the house
I chase her up and down the stairs
Sticking to her like some kind of louse

She gets backed into a corner
Ready for my next big shove
Instead I gently hold and kiss her
Because she is my one true love

Brittnie picked us up a copy of House of the Dead: Overkill over the weekend. We blasted through it Monday night for the first time in about 3 hours, and we will DEFINITELY be playing through it many more times. It is by far the best House of the Dead game I have played.

Graphics: While looking somewhere between a last-gen and current-gen game (models themselves are blocky, textures are decent, particle effects are excellent) Overkill still looks on-par if not better than any of the arcade versions of House of the Dead. There are a couple of points where the framerate dips a little, but it is in no way frequent enough or bad enough when it happens to be gamebreaking.

Game: The game itself has a very Grindhouse type feel…laugh out loud humour, cussing, and violence abound. Basically, if you liked Grindhouse, this is an on-rails shooter version of Planet Terror. Each level is done like it’s own separate Grindhouse-type movie (similar to Left 4 Dead), however each of the “movies” ties together into the main storyline. You score points in the game which are translated into money at the end of every “movie”, and can then be spent to upgrade your current weapons or buy new weapons. It would likely take at least 3-4 solid playthroughs to unlock and upgrade all of the weapons. Other incentives for replay are a TON of unlockable art, music, etc, all of which require 360-style Achievements to unlock. You can also set each level to have “extra mutants” on the levels, or you can play through the “Directors Cut” which makes each level longer and more populated (you also have the “extra mutant” option in the director’s cut for even more of a challange.) There are also three minigames: a shooting-gallery style, a GoW2 Horde mode style, and another one I can’t remember.

Also, I haven’t tried it out yet, but supposedly in Single Player mode you can unlock the ability to dual-wield weapons…you simply use two Wii Remotes, and you can control a different weapon in each hand. I REALLY wish this mode was available in two-player, but as far as I know it is single-player only.

Music: Oh yeah. The music. This game EASILY has one of the best soundtracks that uses pre-existing music. Some of it was obviously written for the game, but the bulk of the music was just licensed. The boss battles always have hard-driving electronica, and some of the stages have a kind of trip-hop/tech-step Drum “n” Bass feel to them. I am definitely going to be on the lookout for the soundtrack, it is one of the better game soundtracks in recent memory.

Essentially, if you own a Wii and know someone who you can play games with on your couch, I very highly advise you pick this up. Each playthrough will only take 3 hours or so, but it will be some of the most fun 3 hours you will have. Definitely worth the full price of a new game.