House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn Review
House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn is the fifth title in the House of the Dead series. It is a first person, arcade, rail shooter which was released in 2018 and is exclusively only available to play in an arcade unit. The story takes place 3 years after the events of House of the Dead 4 and features our 2 protagonists, agent Kate Green (House of the Dead 4) and Ryan Taylor (brother of James Taylor from House of the Dead 2 and 4). Spoiler alert, this article does go into the cringey story that house of the dead is known for, so prepare your weapon and advance at your own discretion.
The game starts off with Kate and Ryan working undercover at a party at Scarecrow Manor, where suddenly a horde of hostile monsters are unleased onto the manor by the party’s host. They must fight their way through the horde of monsters till they escape the manor and are faced with 3 new areas to explore; the annex, the laboratory and the rooftop. Each area has them fighting a variety of hostiles as well as a unique boss at the end of the area. The different bosses featured in the game are the chariot (an armoured humanoid) in the annex, the high priestess (a giant mutant octopus) in the laboratory and the hanged man (a winged bat-like creature) on the rooftop.
While exploring the different areas, Kate and Ryan find evidence about a secret project called “Noah’s Ark”, which has been developed by the manor’s owner Thornheart, who has affiliation with previous antagonists Goldman and Dr Curien. After uncovering this information, they confront Thornheart, who after doing an evil monologue, releases his creation that destroys the mansion and causing a storm to appear. This creation is the final boss of the game and is called The Moon (a winged humanoid tree-like giant). Kate and Ryan begin shooting The Moon but seem to be doing very little damage to it. Ryan notices a staircase structure nearby that hasn’t been completely destroyed and both he and Kate ascend the structure to continue fighting. After shooting The Moon a bit longer, Ryan desperate to end the fight, notices a metal bar lying on the floor which he grabs, jumps off the structure and impales the bar into The Moon’s head, where the creature gets fatally struck by lightning, ending the fight. Depending on your performance throughout the game, you are then faced with 1 of 4 endings and the end screen title which reads “To be continued in the next House of the Dead”.
During my play through of the game, I had Craig accompany me and the arcade unit we played in was a 4X one, which had features such as air being blown into your face and rumbling underneath your feet during the course of the game, which I thought made the game more immersive and was nice to experience, considering these features obviously cannot be experienced while playing the console version of the games. The only complaint I would say I had with the unit was the lack of curtains either side of the unit, to help make the inside darker and to stop people looking in while we were playing. This seemed to be an issue for our unit specifically, as when I looked up other arcade units online, they did feature the curtains, so I can only assume they were removed for some reason.
The game itself was enjoyable to play, even with it being short taking us about 55 minutes to complete, which is to be expected of an arcade game. The downside to this being an arcade exclusives though, is you need to pay to play and I’m unsure how much it cost us to play, as I already had credits on my card but it was at least £20, which wouldn’t be the same cost for everyone as this would vary depending on how often you die throughout the game. This will equally add up if you decide to replay the game to get a high score, or to see the different endings.
The major problem I had while playing this game was the sound mixing, which could have been a problem with the arcade unit or the game. During our play through, the sound was loud for everything except the dialogue which was extremely quiet and hard to hear. The only part of the game I understood was when The Hangman was talking, as for some reason the game had subtitles for when they talked but didn’t include them in any other bit of the game. I would have preferred if subtitles were featured throughout the game, so I could understand the story better while I was playing and so I could take in the cringey dialogue that the House of the Dead is known for.
Overall, I did enjoy playing House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn, especially playing it in an arcade unit instead of on a console as I have with the previous titles. I also did enjoy playing through this with Craig and I would always recommend playing through any House of the Dead game with someone else, as I find it to be more enjoyable, however it isn’t essential. Would I go back and play this game? Unfortunately, no. I think it’s a game you should play once to see what ranking and ending you get, but then if you are interested, you should just look up the alternative endings online, as well as the cut scenes themselves if you want to understand what happens in the game. If this game came out on a console, I would happily buy it and replay it, but as an arcade exclusive, I recommend the one time play through and watching the extra stuff online.
