Second Look Review: The House of the Dead 2 Remake Console Versions
When I reviewed the House of the Dead 2 Remake back in August, I felt like it had a lot of potential, but a lot of rough edges and missed opportunities to make the experience much better for fans on the PC version. Now the game has also been released on all of the major gaming consoles, so I wanted to circle back and see if these versions have improved the experience in meaningful ways and assess whether it's worth visiting these versions over the PC version for now, similar to what I did with the later versions of the first House of the Dead Remake.
Though the developer has recently announced that they're planning to add PC light gun support to the PC version of the game, it hasn't happened quite yet, but the console versions also offer some potentially better ways to control the game and recapture the light gun experience, so let's take a look at each one and see how they fare.
PlayStation 4:
The PS4 version of the game was the most anticipated one for me, since the PS4 version of the first House of the Dead Remake was the shining star of the console lineup, which supported the PS Aim controllers natively for a very authentic light gun experience and ran very well across the board. I'm happy to report that the PS4 version of HOTD2 Remake is equally good, running quite well on the PS4 and PS5 consoles, and supporting the PS Aim controller with only a small caveat, and it improves the out-of-the-box experience for PS Aim owners quite a bit.
The caveats are that at the start of each level, you'll need to press a button to "activate" the motion control feature and begin using the Aim controller, and will need to adjust the sensitivity and dead zone settings quite a bit to get it to feel just right for your TV and setup, but once you do, it's a blast and the game plays closer to how it should've felt from the start.
The bad news is that the PS4 version does not support the PS Move controllers anymore, like the first remake did, it only supports the Aim controllers, and also requires the PS4 camera to work properly, which needs a special adapter to work on PS5. Playing the multiplayer modes with two Aim controllers was similarly easy to set up and a lot of fun to play, even though the tracking can still get off sometimes and you'll need to occasionally reset the crosshairs to the middle of the screen, just like with any other gyro-based light gun setup.
The PS4 version truly stands out as the best version to play out of these new console versions and definitely feels like a better experience all-around compared to the original PC/Switch release.
Score: 8.5/10
PlayStation 5:
Unfortunately, the PS5 version of the game does not support any extra controllers, only the motion sensor gyro inside the DualSense controller, so you won't be getting a more authentic light gun experience from this version. It does look a little prettier than the PS4 version, but it doesn't make up for the lack of control options when playing the native PS5 version, so this one ranks closer to the other non-PS4 versions at the end of the day. While the DualSense's motion sensor is fairly advanced, it just doesn't hold up for this kind of game for very long without feeling sluggish, un-intuitive, and cumbersome, so the experience just doesn't rank very high.
Score: 5.5/10
Nintendo Switch:
The Nintendo Switch version for HOTD2 Remake is a pretty similar experience to the original HOTD Remake, where the gyros do work and can definitely simulate an experience that inches a little closer toward feeling like a light gun experience. However, there's a lot to be desired from the JoyCon gyro performance, making for a somewhat dodgy aiming and shooting experience on the platform. The game also doesn't run very well, feeling like it's always stuck at 30fps or less, which puts a bit of a damper on the gameplay, since it's meant to be a fast-paced action and reflex game.
The ability to adjust the motion sensor dead zone in-game goes a long way towards making it feel better with enough tweaking, but it never gets to be quite as good as playing with the PS Aim or a good PC light gun, and the poor performance on the Switch hardware makes it a little harder to play in general. On top of the performance being quite sluggish, the visuals are also quite muddy and poor, running at quite a low resolution with missing textures, yet still struggling to hit decent performance targets.
I've seen reports that the game looks and runs slightly better on the Nintendo Switch 2 console, though I wasn't able to test for myself, but it seems the improvement isn't quite enough to make it feel like a different game, so I can only comment on how it feels and runs on the original Switch hardware. Despite having some form of native motion controls, its other drawbacks stop this from being a great experience.
Score: 6.5/10
Xbox consoles:
I was able to test this out on both the Series X console and the original Xbox One consoles, and while the game did run quite well on both, which is an improvement from some of the major performance issues the first remake had on the older XB1 consoles, you are limited to only using a standard controller for these versions, so there's a lot left to be desired. I was almost able to get an older air mouse pointer to work on the older XB1 Console, but it had an issue where the Y axis was reversed, which doesn't really work for replicating a light gun experience.
I tried some other mice and air mice as well, and it's very picky about which devices it wants to recognize at all, but even if the device was recognized, it never quite worked right, since the mouse controls do not have axis reversal or sensitivity controls in the game's menus on this version. So unfortunately, it turned out to be a bust for using anything but the standard controller, which holds back the experience quite a bit, and since the Xbox controller doesn't have any sort of motion sensor or gyro inside, you can only use the analog sticks. The mouse or air mouse functionality might be fixed and patched in later, but as of right now it's not working correctly.
Score: 5.5/10
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At the end of the day, there's a clear winner as to which of the console versions is the best experience, but as is fairly typical with the history of light gun games, you'll need some extra equipment to get the most out of the experience. I'm still glad that the few months since the initial release have given them some time to make most of the versions run quite well with some patching and extra development time, and I'm still eagerly awaiting the official light gun support on the PC version.
Hopefully this has been helpful in deciding which is the right version of the game for you based on your setup and equipment available, and I hope the developers continue to improve the experience on all platforms as they already have.