House of the Dead 2 is my favourite zombie slaying game, and would probably say it would be on my Top 10 games of all time. It is an excellent on rails light gun game with multiple routes through its 6 or so levels.
The plot involves two AMS Agents who return to their HQ in an unnamed European Town to find zombies everywhere, and the place in utter chaos. Through lots of nonsensical ridiculous story the Agents discover a man called Goldman is responsible for the outbreak and head to his Skyscraper to defeat him.
I never had the pleasure of playing House of the Dead much. Once or twice I played it in arcades. The main character from that (Agent G) appears in a bit part here, as does the end of game boss from that game. Enemies mostly comprise of various types of zombies. As well as the token zombies you get ones armed with weapons such as chainsaws and clawed gloves, animal zombies such as Owls and Crocodiles, and insect ones such as giant leeches. The levels are littered with civilians, and many differing routes depend on you saving them or not. Later levels the zombies turn more technology based, and loose their ickiness which is a shame. The bosses are a highlight of the game. Each boss is fun to fight, and looks fantastic.
The levels are cool, and varied featuring streets, offices, sewers, and ruins, but as the game progresses the multiple routes reduce so that by the last level there are no multiple routes at all. As mentioned the voice acting is amazingly bad, and really funny as a result 'Suffer like G did?' 'My God' 'I don't want to die!' ' My friends went inside...but their not back yet!' all really memorable, heh.
I first played this in a sit down booth, it had curtains at the sides to make the cabinet dark, and had a magnified screen, it looked amazing. This game was one of the reasons I got a Dreamcast, I still play the game regularly. The Dreamcast additions include the option to have red blood rather than the default green, and adds bonus missions, as well as a RPG style mode where you can get exclusive little areas to collect different ammo types, and other bonuses that can be used for subsequent play throughs.
Lots of zombie violence, are able to shoot limbs and holes into the zombies, and blast chunks out of them, most fun. Well worth tracking down (Is now on the Wii along with the inferior House of the Dead 3, and also is a hidden game on the X-Box House of the Dead 3). A note of trivia - the scrolling 3D beat em up Zombie Revenge is a sister title to this, and features a level set in the Curian Mansion from the original House of the Dead.
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