VIDEO GAMES: Should've Stayed Buried: The House of the Dead Remake

Nov. 19—Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series S/X, Steam, Stadia

Normally, remakes are great ways to experience older games for the first time, or relive cherished games in a whole new way and with a fresh coat of paint. Unfortunately, this game probably should have stayed dead.

"The House of the Dead" is one of my favorite game series, providing fast-paced gameplay right out of an arcade, tense and unique boss fights, and oodles of B-movie charm.

They can be challenging, sure, most arcade games are, but there's something special about these games that makes them eternally fun to come back to.

In the months leading up to the release of the remake of the first game, I was hopeful it would be able to bring that charm to the modern age and enrapture a whole new generation of gamers eager to explore the mansion of the evil Dr. Curien and save the world from his deadly zombie experiments.

And while I can't fault it for trying, it certainly left a lot to be desired for this fan.

This game series is from a long-extinct genre of games called light gun games, which used infrared beams fired from special controllers to give the illusion of you actually shooting things on the screen. Obviously, making this system work on modern consoles required a massive overhaul, and this has definitely had a negative impact on the gameplay.

On Switch, "House of the Dead Remake" does offer a lot of control schemes, including one utilizing the Joy-Cons' built-in gyroscopes to try and recreate the aim-and-shoot mechanics of the original, but the actual execution of these various play styles leaves aiming feeling clunky and sluggish — something you do not want when you have hordes of the undead chasing you down.

Even the gyroscopic controls are awkward, forcing you to tilt the controllers in awkward positions to take down enemies and reset your aiming reticle constantly.

At the very least, the game is a little easier than its original and the other installments, starting you off with extra lives and allowing you to buy more continues by paying points from your overall score, but even with these bonuses, the shoddy controls will make reaching the end a veritable trial.

The one saving grace of the game is that it still retains much of the charm of the classic series. The old "HotD" games are notorious for their hilariously horrible voice acting, and while this remake redubbed the game to polish things up, it made sure to preserve the cheesy B-movie feel that fans know and love.

Even then, however, this game is still missing a crucial component: its music. Rather than touch up the original, amazing score, the remake uses several new songs that try to instead pay homage to the original themes, but quickly fall short of the mark.

A lot of the songs have a weird, chiptune sound to them, which, while it does fit with the game's classic origins, feels ill-fitting to the tone of the game and left me feeling sorely disappointed.

Rumors are that a remake of the second game in the "HotD" series, which is my favorite installment, is on the way, which does have me hopeful that they'll learn from their mistakes from this one.

As it stands, there aren't a lot of ways to legitimately play the original version of the game, unless you feel like tracking down a Sega Saturn, so while I don't recommend playing it, if you do want to give this game a try, this is your best bet.

Davis Cobb is a reporter with The Tifton Gazette.