The House of the Dead 2 is a rail shooterlight gun game. It includes an auto-reload feature that allows players to point their guns off-screen to reload their weapons without pulling the trigger. It also incorporates a branching path system that allows players to take a variety of different routes leading to the same point in the game's story. The game served as the springboard for the arcade, Sega Dreamcast, and PC release The Typing of the Dead, the Nintendo DS release English of the Dead, as well as the inspiration for the Game Boy Advance game, The Pinball of the Dead. The flashbacks to the first The House of the Dead in the game's introductory sequence were recorded using the game's engine.
Plot
The game follows the fictional events of February 26, 2000, fourteen months after the 1998 Curien Mansion incident in The House of the Dead. AMS agent G has gone missing and his last known location is Venice, Italy. The city of Venice becomes chaotic when a strange zombie breakout takes place. American AMS agents James Taylor and Gary Stewart are dispatched, along with Amy Crystal and Harry Harris, to investigate and evacuate the populace. They suddenly encounter the impish Zeal, who had recently dealt with G. Upon finding G alive but wounded, James and Gary converse with him and G gives them a field journal showing the bosses and weak points. The pair are then met with a massive undead horde, similar to the kind from the Curien Mansion incident. They continue on, trying to save the town's civilians from the zombies. During the chaos, James and Gary face Judgment; consisting of Zeal and his giant, headless, axe-wielding armored puppet Kuarl. After killing it, they meet up with Amy and Harry, who split up and try to meet at Sunset Bridge. Upon getting there the group faces off with The Hierophant, an aquatic fishlike humanoid which heads an assault on Venice's waterways and Central Plaza. Upon defeating it, James, Gary, Amy and Harry get on a boat and continue through the rivers. It is revealed that the zombies were created by Caleb Goldman, the man who funded Doctor Curien in making his creations during the Curien Mansion incident. It is also revealed that Goldman created the new zombies and released them into the city. Goldman leaves a message on Amy's phone, inviting them to meet him at the Colosseum. Although fearing it's a trap, the group continues on. James and Gary split up again, and face off with a group of serpents known as The Tower. After killing the mother serpent, they receive a phone call for help from Amy, before getting cut off. The two quickly race to the Colosseum only to discover Amy and a wounded Harry, injured by Strength, a giant, chainsaw-wielding zombie which wounds Harry and chases James and Gary throughout the Roman Colosseum. After they kill it, James and Gary push on, while Amy tends to Harry's wounds. They drive over to Goldman's tower, fighting Judgment, the Hierophant, and the Tower. They are confronted by Curien's masterpiece, The Magician, who was also revived by Goldman to oversee the birth of The Emperor, a shapeshifting crystalline entity with mastery over magnetism designed to protect nature from humanity. After they defeat the Magician, they head to the top of the tower to confront the Emperor. In its prototype stage, the Emperor is not as strong as Goldman had hoped, and falls to the AMS agents. In order to evade being arrested, Goldman commits suicide by throwing himself off the roof of his building. Players are given different endings based on the following conditions:
If a solo game was finished as either player 1 or 2
If both players defeated the last boss
Number of continues
Points earned
In the good ending, James and Gary run into Thomas Rogan, the main character from the first game, who tells them that G and Harry are all right, and that they should head off to their next battle "as long as they have the will to live" or "as long as there is an answer". In the normal ending, as James and Gary leave the building, they are greeted by G, Amy and Harry, as well as a large group of civilians, who thank them for their help. In the bad ending, James and Gary run into a zombified Goldman outside the building. As the screen goes white, a gunshot is heard.
Development
Ports
The House of the Dead 2 was later ported to the Dreamcast, as a launch title for the system, Xbox, as an unlockable on the Xbox port of The House of the Dead 3, PC, and Wii, in a double release with The House of the Dead 3. It was also the second, and final game in The House of the Dead series to appear on a Sega console, with the original The House of the Dead for the Sega Saturn being the first.
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed The House of the Dead 2 on their January 1, 1999 issue as being the third most-successful dedicated arcade game of the year. The Dreamcast version received "favorable" reviews, while the PC version received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. AllGame gave the arcade version a score of four-and-a-half stars out of five. In Japan, Famitsu gave the Dreamcast version 33 out of 40. IGN praised the same console version's detailed level design and varied enemy designs but criticized poor voice acting. GameSpot said of the same console version, "Just a gun that lines up with the sights doesn't seem too much to ask for." Game Informer ranked it at number 99 in its best games of all-time list in 2001. The staff praised it for its expansion of its predecessor's gore and intensity, but noted that the lack of a light gun accessory for the Dreamcast version was disappointing. Blake Fischer reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "Without the light gun, this game is a complete loss. With a gun, it's better, but not for very long." A consensus among reviewers was that the quality of the English voice acting was very poor, with one calling it "easily some of the worst in the genre". Others found it to be so bad that it became amusing.
