There is not an awful amount of changes that can be made to the way any light gun game plays but the developers of Overkill have to be praised with the changes they have made to the genre.

 

Firstly is the new punishment continue system which no longer sees you have a set amount of continues. In Overkill if you happen to die you now lose half of the scored gained up to this point. This ensures that you need to be continually picking off the enemies with the best shots you can and looking out for bonuses on route and building up combo shots through the use of the amusingly named goregasm meter. This is a welcome addition although it can make what is already a short game easier than it should be and takes away a lot of the arcade feel of its predecessors.

 

 

On the subject of the games length players should be warned that the game can be completed in around two hours although there are a few route changes that can be utilised throughout to add a certain amount of replayability although the game still retains it‘s on rails gameplay throughout.

 

Whilst many gamers may frown at the length of the game one should understand that any light gun game is based purely on fun and pick up and play game mechanics not how long it lasts. If you take this on board then you should gain a great deal of enjoyment from Overkill.

 

Despite it’s relatively short length the pace of the game moves along pretty well despite a few niggling frame rate issues and graphical glitches which can be found on a number of occasions particularly which the on screen action gets rather frantic, although in many ways this can be forgiven as you get the feeling that it unintentionally accompanies the feel of the game quite well.

 

 

To add more replayability is the directors cut which can be unlocked upon completing the main game. Although this does not offer any significant changes to the gameplay it does up the difficulty level and adds further length and enemies to each level to ensure the game becomes more of a challenge.

 

In addition a variety of new weapons become available in the directors cut to accompany the usual pistols, shotguns and assault rifles although it has to be said that the variety of weapons at your disposal is fairly limited. However games such as this are not about using a wide a variety of weapons as a game such as Dead Rising or Left 4 Dead and it is just as much fun blasting a zombies head off with a shotgun as any other weapon.