Named the ‘Welcome To Violence’ bundle, it’s a good way to catch up on some OTT Wii action. The bundle offers up Madworld, The Conduit, and The House of the Dead: Overkill, for a single price of $109.95. The bundle will hit stores March 11th.

SEGA announced the release by calling it a good way to mark one year since the release of their Bang Bang Box special edition of Overkill.

It’s worth noting this is an Australia only bundle. Seems SEGA Australia figures that in spite of our current classification regime, we still have a better sense of humour than most.

7. The House of the Dead: Overkill (Wii)

I’ve never been a fan of light gun shooters outside of the arcade. Yet the genre presented me with two of my favourite Wii games of the year. Dead Space: Extraction, which just missed the cut for this list, drew me in with its expertly directed and surprisingly deep narrative – a unique point of difference within the genre – even if its core mechanics weren’t quite as sophisticated.

The House of the Dead: Overkill took a different tack, nailing the score attack compulsion a light gun shooter demands while delivering scene after scene of dizzying violence and exponential absurdity. If you’re going to be playing through the same levels again and again, you need mechanics and a presentation style to not just sustain but encourage repeat sessions.

The points system is genius. Infinite continues give you the opportunity to learn a level, but actually using them will penalise you enough to deny access to the new weapons in shop. Meanwhile the combo system rewards your skill with ever-increasing amounts of blood and gibs, culminating in the delightfully named Goregasm stage. The Director’s Cut, Extra Mutant and Dual Wield modes, the distracting mini-games and multiplayer options all extend the replay value even further.

Much has been made of Overkill’s “grindhouse” aesthetic – and rightly so. It’s pitch-perfect and often genuinely funny. You can’t help but get carried along by its preposterous swagger all the way to the holy-shit-did-they’re-not-really-going-to-show-that-are-they? oh-god-yes-they-did ending.

But Overkill is much more than just cheap thrills, it’s a brilliantly designed game. Forget Rock Band, this is the best party game around.

Kotaku AU’s Games of 2009 are my personal picks for the best games of the year. I make no claim to have played everything released this year, nor do I pretend to be any way objective in my rankings. I look forward to debating my choices with you in the comments.

Want to see what goes into designing a game’s branding? Fluid’s self-published case study on its contribution to The House of the Dead: Overkill might make you appreciate just what went into giving the Wii game its box art and the branding beyond the box.

There’s some great reference material here in addition to designs left on the cutting room floor. At the very least, we enjoyed studying the Wii game’s box art iterations.

The House of the Dead: Overkill [Fluid Design via Infovore]

House of the Dead: Overkill only sold 45,000 copies in its first month. MadWorld sold 66,000. The numbers paint a dismal picture, but as Sega’s MD of European Development Gary Dunn explained to GamesIndustry.biz, the first month is but a few strikes in the overall profitability painting.

“House of the Dead: Overkill was a profitable title for us… Whilst it had a rather sharp tail at full price, they do bubble away at a lower price point for a long time. You get your money back and a bit on full price, but over the years, if we do the final product return on investment, profits come from the lower price point.”

His response to MadWorld sales is a bit less chipper, but nonetheless hopeful.

You have to push boundaries and explore. I think whilst MadWorld commercially didn’t sell what we were expecting I wouldn’t say it’s game over for mature Wii titles from Sega.

I don’t know. If I were Sega I’d be developing a bit of a complex by now. They create Sonic-themed drek we claim we don’t want and it sells in droves, while games like MadWorld that we seem to enjoy barely make a drop in the bucket. What exactly is it we want from Sega?

Sega: It’s not game over for mature Wii titles [GamesIndustry.biz]

Sega’s classic shooter franchise meets 70s exploitation horror in The House of the Dead: Overkill for the Nintendo Wii.

Developer Headstrong re-imagines the House of the Dead franchise in Overkill, a prequel to the series that takes us back to a simpler time, when men were men, women were half-naked, and black policemen use the word motherf***er as often as humanly possible. The game tells the story of a young Agent G, teaming up with Detective Isaac Washington to take down Papa Caesar, a deranged, Chinese-food loving crime lord who seems to have turned the inhabitants of Bayou City into a horde of bloodthirsty monsters. You know, the usual.

Does Headstrong’s B-movie take on The House of the Dead series hit its target, or is Overkill firing blanks?

Loved
Exploitation, In A Good Way: The House of the Dead: Overkill is positively soaking in a retro 70’s exploitation horror vibe, from the menus to the music to the game’s actual story presentation, which features an overly dramatic narrator reading overly dramatic titles for each overly dramatic episode. It’s bombastic and over the top at every turn, and you cannot help but love it.

Colorful Characters, To Say The Least: Overkill replaces the more generic characters from earlier entries in the franchise with a series of exaggerated, cliched characters torn straight out of a 70’s B-movie. You’ve got your trash-talking, tough-as-nails cop with a grudge, your cool and confident government agent, and your mouthy stripper hell-bent on revenge. The voice actors do an excellent job of bringing the characters to life, sailing through raunchy dialogue with ease and never failing to bring a somewhat guilty smile to my face.

Play that Funky Music: The soundtrack for The House of the Dead: Overkill is an eclectic mix of vintage music styles, with my beloved funk represented in abundance. It’s the sort of soundtrack I’d purchase in a heartbeat, despite the fact that one of the songs seems to feature sex with a corpse. Graphic sex with a corpse.

Point and Shoot: Simple point and shoot gameplay mechanics are bolstered by an inventive combo system that rewards players with higher scores and bigger rewards depending on how steady their aim is. It’s not just about staying alive – it’s about stringing together kills and being as accurate as possible with your weapons of choice. The mechanic extends the replayability of an otherwise short game immensely, driving the player to go back through and aim for a better score. Completing the main game unlocks the the Director’s Cut version of the game, featuring tougher enemies and limited continues. Complete that, and you’ve unlocked the ability to dual-wield Wii remotes. I don’t think there is a better feeling in the world than taking down mutant clowns with dual Wii remotes.

Extras and Unlockables:The House of the Dead: Overkill contains plenty of extras, both unlockable and available from the get-go. A trio of mini-games is available for those wishing to take a break from the story, featuring a nifty little shooting gallery that I probably spent far too much time playing. Then you’ve got your standard artwork, video clips, and 3D models, unlocked as you progress through the game. There are also weapons you unlock by purchasing them with money or earning them through playing, essential if you want to really rock in the game’s ultimate unlockable, the aforementioned dual-wielding mode.

Canned Visuals: Headstrong goes a great deal towards getting around the Nintendo Wii’s graphical limitations by employing various filters to the game’s graphics to make the whole game feel as if it’s playing out on an old reel-to-reel projector. Dust and scratches play across the screen, further immersing the player in the grindhouse feel of the game. The film effect is used to particularly evil effect later on in the game, though I won’t spoil it for you.

Hated
Can A Game Be Too Gratuitous?: Within minutes of first loading House of the Dead: Overkill into my Wii I had already heard the F-word at least five times, and that’s before I even got to a menu, much less played the game. The profanity and adult humor are novel at first, but towards the end of a play through they wear really thin. With tons of profanity, allusions to incest, and that one particular song that had me turning several shades of green, Overkill has a tendency to go a little bit overboard.

Shoot The Red Circle: When it comes right down to it, a light gun shooter is all about pointing and clicking, but the boss fights at the end of every level should offer something different to spice things up a bit. While several of them do just that, a few of the boss fights simply amounted to shooting a red circle until the big bad guy was dead. The first few episodes ramp up the difficulty nicely, only to have the third completely let me down. Things picked up nicely towards the end, but it seems like Headstrong phoned a couple in just to pad things out.

How entertaining can a light gun shooter be? That’s a question I’ve been pondering since the Leipzig Games Convention last year, when McWhertor popped into the pressroom carrying a press kit disguised as a 70’s horror movie on VHS. Headstrong’s answer? Pretty f***ing entertaining. Fully realizing the limitations of the genre, Headstrong crafted a solid shooter and then set about infusing it with a unique 70’s grindhouse style, resulting in a title with more personality than any light gun game deserves. The exploitation horror-film vibe has been so fully realised that you’ll completely forget that you’re simply moving a cursor about the screen and pushing a button. You might need a shower afterwards, but its a good kind of dirty feeling.

The House of the Dead: Overkill, along with being a brilliant relaunch to an aging series, is a rare game that manages to highlight the unique features of the Wii while delivering a unabashedly adult experience to the console.

The House of the Dead: Overkill was developed by Headstrong Games and published by Sega for the Nintendo Wii. It was released on February 19 for $79.95. Played both normal mode and Director’s Cut mode to completion, and tried out each of the mini-games at least once.

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When the Wii Zapper simply isn’t hand cannon enough, turn to Sega’s semi-official Wii… Hand Cannon. Released in conjunction with The House of the Dead Overkill, it turns Wii Remotes into something far manlier.

While available for pre-order for UK customers via retailer Amazon, it looks like we folks Down Under will get dual-wielding Overkill options courtesy of the “Bang Bang Box” bundle, which comes with two Wii Remote shells and the limited edition version of the game.

No word yet on this going stateside, but given the more realistic nature of these plastic toys, we shan’t hold our breath.

Official House of the Dead Overkill Hand Cannon (Wii) [Amazon via Wii Fanboy]

The developer, formerly known as Kuju London and responsible for both Battalion Wars releases, is upping the shock factor for the Western audience targeted House of the Dead. The game has blood mapping, giving bullet wounds plenty of flow, spatters on clothes and the environment. And the bosses, at least the one we saw, veer from the fantastical to the… fucking creepy.

The team at Headstrong is going for that grindhouse look with Overkill. That aesthetic isn’t limited to the cheap film treatment — overexposed lighting, green-washed blacks, speckles, dust and scratches — it’s also getting some “really good intentionally bad dialogue”, according to Crooks. Suffer like G did?

Maybe, because Agent G is in the game, a prequel to the Sega AM1 developed series of arcade light gun shooters. He’ll star with Detective Washington as a fresh from the AMS academy graduate who ultimately makes a career for himself shooting thousands of the undead.

That shooting can all be done with the Wii Remote, with flicks of the wrist for reloading and pans to the left and right with the remote’s targeting reticule. It’s still an on-rails shooter, but you’ll be able to pan about 45 degrees beyond your normal view — not unlike the Wii’s other popular zombie shooter, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.

In Overkill, you’ll have more than just one gun to shoot all those zombies with. We saw a sub machine gun and magnum pistol, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. You’ll be able to switch between them to mix up your strategy. With “more zombies on screen than you can shoot in a second”, The House of the Dead Overkill ratchets up the tactics. You can slow fast moving zombies down by shooting out their knees, reducing them to a crawl.

Crooks also confirmed some gesture based attacks in the final version, making sense of the grenade power up he passed on during our demo.

Overkill has at least one other power up in the “mofo slo-mo” — name probably internal/tentative — that further overexposes the look of the game, slowing the action down to about half-speed. This makes it that much easier to boost your combo count and pull of brain evacuating headshots. It’s cool.

Based on what we saw, including the disturbing glance at the level’s boss, we’re certainly excited about what Sega and Headstrong are doing with the series. It’s certainly an interesting deviation, one dripping with rancid guts and style.

And wait until you see the press pack….

There’s a lot of Wii fans worried about the decline of decent hardcore games on the system. No, guys — we’re not making a 30 hour-plus RPG here, but we are making something you are going to have a complete blast playing. We are making it with a nod to one of the greatest arcade series of all time and we hope you’ll just purely enjoy teaming up with buddies and posting those high scores on the forums with the rest of us…It’ll beat the shit out of grooming a horse.

Don’t ever accuse Sega of not knowing which of the converted they’re preaching to.

GC 2008: The House of the Dead: Overkill [IGN]

Black. Magic. VIOLENCE.

“They’ve come for brains, you’ll give them bullets” [NeoGAF Thanks, Ishaan!]