The House of the Dead III

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The House of the Dead III

Developer(s)	Wow Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Sega
Release date(s)	2002
Genre(s)	Rail shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Platform(s)	Arcade, Xbox, Microsoft Windows
Input	Light gun
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade system(s)	Sega Chihiro
Arcade display	Horizontal orientation

The House of the Dead III is a 2002 light gun arcade game with a horror theme, and the third installment to the House of the Dead series of video games, developed by Wow Entertainment and Sega. It was later ported to the Xbox in 2003 and Microsoft Windows in 2005. The game continues the story of the previous games and introduces new gameplay concepts. The game's main protagonist is Lisa Rogan, daughter of Thomas Rogan, the first game's main character, and players control either her or his former partner "G".

[edit] Gameplay

The House of the Dead III departs from the original games in two ways: weaponry and story branching. The former is immediately apparent upon playing the Xbox version. The shotgun used in the game no longer requires the traditional "shoot off-screen" reload, but rather reloads automatically. Reloading still takes time, but happens without prompt as soon as the gun needs it. The arcade version differs here, because there is the presence of light guns, allowing for similar speedy reloading. A reload is achieved by pumping the shotgun controller.

A branching storyline existed in the previous games, but was handled differently. In House of the Dead III, the player is given options for navigating through the game prior to the start of most stages, ultimately going through the same areas with different results dependent on the order chosen.

Another important difference is the absence of civilians. Unlike the first two House of the Dead games, in which players could rescue various people in peril, The House of the Dead III' contains no extra personnel beyond those central to the plot. Extra lives can be gained, however, through various methods:

Blasting barrels and other background objects and shooting what they contain.
Saving/rescuing the other partner in situations. (note: in 2-player mode, when this occurs, one player stops playing and the other must save him/her, and if they fail the non-playing character doesn't lose a life)
Scoring an A or S at the end of a stage, not counting the last stage and the prologue stage. This is judged by score and time.

On the Xbox and PC version, there is a "Time Attack" version, starting with 45 seconds, where Excellent, Good, Faster and Twin Shots give extra time, as do clocks in the background and end-of-stage bonuses. Getting hit by a zombie subtracts 7 seconds, projectiles subtract 5, and bosses subtract 15. Stunning a boss grants the player 10 seconds as well. Every successful hit on the final boss also grants two seconds, and does not require a stun.

[edit] Story

The Wheel of Fate

Set in the post-apocalyptic year of 2019 (sixteen years after the events of The House of the Dead 4), civilization has long since collapsed. Ex-AMS agent Thomas Rogan and his team of commandos investigate the EFI research facility, which may be linked to the world collapse. Thomas' nineteen year old daughter, Lisa, and his former partner "G" travel there two weeks later with automatic shotguns in hand after contact with him is mysteriously lost.

Notorious for his role in the creation of the original undead horde, Dr. Curien's motives are explored through flashbacks. Several years before the Curien Mansion case, in an effort to discover the cure to his son Daniel's seemingly terminal illness, he began research the nature of life and death.

Living in the shadow of her well-known father, Lisa muses with "G" about how she is often the subject of comparisons between her father and herself as the two explore the facility, only to come into contact with undead creatures such as EFI's one-man security force Death (Type 0011), a giant sloth known as The Fool (Type 0028), and a mutant tree known as The Sun (Type 8830) that had taken over the building's biological laboratories.

Ultimately, Lisa is reunited with her father. She and Daniel Curien (who has been seemingly cured of his illness by 2019) set out to destroy The Wheel of Fate (Type 0000), the final legacy of Dr. Curien which began around the same time as the Magician project in the first game. The genes of both the Magician and the Wheel of Fate, according to Curien, would change the future. After the scientist's death, he underwent a resurrection in the EFI research facility that would take nineteen years to complete (though how his body ended up there, and whether or not he was truly Curien at all, is never explained). Daniel hacks the Wheel of Fate's programming, and together with Lisa, put it to rest once and for all as a sign of their readiness to confront the uncertain future.

In one of the endings of the game, a mysterious man limping on his right leg picks up a canister of reanimation fluid from the floor of the chamber where the final battle takes place. He claims that "he failed to understand its true purpose."