4/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of The House of the Dead 4.

System: Arcade/PlayStation 3 Started: May 20, 2024 Ended: May 20, 2024 I do remember seeing the arcade cabinet of The House of the Dead 4 around the late 2000s, probably at a Dave & Busters, and I remember feeling amazed that there was finally a fourth game. However, I only played it once for the first chapter and never went back to it for some reason. The arcade scene in the late 2000s was a pretty desolate time. Almost everyone has a home console at this point, and people can now download games off their game consoles. I believe nobody really cared about House of the Dead 4. I assume it's due to the zombie genre being widely popular at the time, and people starting to get really tired of it. Fast forward to recent times: I played the arcade version of House of the Dead 4 and beat the entire game, and after that, I went home and played the PlayStation 3 version for the bonus story. The fourth installment has its moments, but it does slightly stray away from its House of the Dead identity, which I will explain. The story takes place between 2 and the recent entry, Scarlet Dawn. You play as either Agent James from the second game and a new agent Kate Green. I find Kate to be funny because she’s dressed like a fashion model in a zombie apocalypse setting. Goldman makes his return, but it's a recorded message and he launches nuclear warheads from his building, and it's up to James and Kate to disarm them. You battle your way from the underground tunnels to the zombie apocalyptic surface and finally to the Goldman building. There are new features in the fourth game. I have noticed that there are so many zombies in one area compared to the previous games, as they had only 3-5 zombies in one area of a level and you had to shoot them and advance to the next area once it was cleared. This entry is also the first to add grenades to your inventory. Because of that, I would consider House of the Dead 4 to be the most action-packed entry in the franchise until the 5th installment. The boss fights are pretty cool. I would say The Empress, The Star, and the Final Boss seemed to be the most memorable of these. With so many features added, I began to think the fourth game strayed more away from what House of the Dead used to be. The gore effects have been toned down to more like a rated T-like violence. Instead of dismemberment and blood from the first three games, the zombies disintegrate into ashes, which is lame. The boss fight against Justice felt recycled from similar boss fights like Strength from the second game and that of Security Guy from House of the Dead III. There is one pet peeve of mine in this game: when the zombies spawn, they are still in animation as you are raining bullets on them and taking no damage. Once that happens, you have to quickly reload your gun to full capacity and wait for their animation to end before damaging them. It gets annoying. The PlayStation 3 version has The House of the Dead 4 Special Version for digital purchase. It includes the main game, and there is a bonus story mode that takes place right after the events of the fourth game. After finishing with the main story, you’ll unlock a short behind-the-scenes video, and that’s about it. The only problem is that the bonus story is terribly short, as there are only two levels. In the first level, you fight Justice again in the very same boss pattern from the main version of the game, and the second one is the final showdown of a returning boss character from the previous entries. Also, Agent G from the first game makes his return as your Player 2 character. The House of the Dead 4 holds back a bit, but other than that, it's still a solid entry. The boss fights were pretty cool, and it's a fun co-op playthrough if you want some zombie carnage. But if you really want decent House of the Dead games to play, easily play the first three. I mostly recommend playing the PlayStation 3 version due to the bonus story, so it's clearly the definitive edition.