It came from the FETID WATERS!

Maybe I didn’t give House of the Dead: Overkill a fair shot, but light gun rail shooters, or whatever they are called (first person rail shooters according to Wikipedia) haven’t seemed to offer anything new since I first played Area 51 in some bowling alley when I was 9. After playing through the main storyline, a feat that only took two hours, I think I am fairly safe in my assumption. I only even considered Overkill after hearing a few of the bloggers I like raving about it earlier this year. Now that I think about it however, all the praise I do remember hearing was not about the gameplay so much as the over the top characters and purposely clichéd scenarios.

This brings up an interesting point. When can a games’ presentation and style be enough to keep players interested? That is essentially what successful action films like Transformers 2 do. Anytime you hear someone say, “Well, I didn’t watch it for the story” you can rest assured that they watched it for something else (hopefully the mindless action or visual effects and not Megan Fox in slow motion). The same applies to games that people don’t play for the story, but are there any games people play just for the story? Off the top of my head I can think of several games I grew tired of near the end, but finished for the story, but only one that I grew tired of fairly early on and trudged on solely for the story.

That game is Yakuza, one of the last few remaining decent franchises of the once great Sega. I played through it last Thanksgiving after it gathered a bit of a cult following in the U.S. and almost immediately grew tired of its combat. The game has a decent sized city to explore among other things, but as far as gameplay was concerned, you were either running errands from place to place or brawling. Sadly, the combat wasn’t nearly as deep as a game this focused on it needs to be. Still, even with my early disinterest with the combat Yakuza’s intricate gangster family storyline had me intrigued enough to continue mashing Square, Square, Triangle for another six hours…. I’m kind of a sucker for gangster movies, and I’d never really seen a compelling one about the Yakuza. Who would have thought I’d find it in a video game? Take that Ebert!

Anyway, I’m guessing the reason I could only come up with one game on a whim is because this doesn’t happen that often and honestly, it really shouldn’t. First off, games generally have terrible stories. More importantly however, they tend to have at least ten hours of play in them while only telling a few hours of story. Games have to captivate with interesting play mechanics first, otherwise you might as well just go consume some other form of storytelling.

I wonder how long the critics who liked Overkill actually played it? I can totally see what they were raving about, Brainy Gamer sums it up perfectly. Yet after two hours, I had seen and played enough. It was a fun two hours, especially the parts I played with a friend, but the ridiculous humor and style wasn’t enough to hold me for long. In defense of the critiques I’m referring to, none were official reviews of the game as much as comments in passing about what they liked about it. If forced to talk about lasting power I imagine everyone would say something a little different. Or maybe I’m just way off base here and people still like first person rail shooters, while the excellent parody of over the top horror movies of yesteryear was just icing on the cake.

Either way, I kind of want to add, “Motherfuck” to my collection of commonly used swear words now.