House of the Dead 3 & 4: in HD and with Move support

My oldest daughter doesn't play many games, but the arcade version of HotD 3 is her all-time favorite. Finally a home version of both House of the Dead 3 & 4 are coming to the PS3 as dloads on February 7 for the first title and in the Spring for the second.

These intensely fun light gun shooters will get some HD polishing, as well as trophy and Move support. I'm only slightly disappointed that they didn't just go ahead and publish all four games to easily increase their sales:

Actually, the Move is in fact an amazing light gun replicator. It has merely one-half of a single frame of lag more than the DualShock 3 controller, and has 1:1 accuracy. Plenty of people who use it for light gun games have had an awesome time and praise how close it replicates the experience.

Deadstorm Pirates is a particular favorite of mine in the genre, and a fun little under-rated gem that shows off the Move's precision is the Prison Break sub-game of the Time Crisis compilation. And for FPS titles like SOCOM 4, my instant-aim headshot ratio is off the charts.

The Move isn't plug an play right out the box however. For one, you have to disable the magnetic sensor in the XMB menu or it might randomly drift in games (there's no game play penalty for turning it off). Much trickier to deal with however is the fact that many modern HDTVs are add up to four full frames of lag, which really throws off the precision feel of motion aiming where you see the cursor delay in moving when your hand moves in front of the screen.

My cousin had this experience when he tried to play a Move shooter at home that he enjoyed at my house and found out that his TV was laggier than he thought. Using pads, your eyes aren't matching up movements with your thumb and the cursor on screen like you do with the Move.

Even with the best HDTV it won't be the perfection that is a light gun in the arcade, but since the Move is literally only 1/120th of a second slower than the Dual Shock 3, it is comfortably close.

BTW, I haven't played DS Extraction. Maybe that game has some issues in its programming if it aims as bad as you say. Time Crisis 3 aiming doesn't feel as smooth as Deadstorm Pirates for example, so perhaps there are some other tech problems going on.

Both you and I played those light gun shooters for the Dreamcast, NES (and for me, Sega Genesis and Master System as well) on a CRT TV set. Unlike 99.9% of the HDTV sets today, CRTs were completely lag free.

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I've played it and the cool thing about HotD 4 is that it is already an HD game. If they can get HotD 3 to look close to it we'll be in for a treat. My concern is that HotD 4 is a natively widescreen game and HotD 3 is wide screen. I'm not sure if Sega plans to make some adjustments to make #3 widescreen as well.

~~~ Eliminating Cursor Drift for Move Games ~~~

To disable the magnetic sensor, go to the XMB menu and look under the accessory settings and calibrate the Move. Press Triangle for the option. It completely eliminates the cursor drift in Move games.

I've had it set up this way for well over a year and they all work perfectly now. The post above is the first one I've seen that says a game (No More Heroes) uses that feature, so unless you have it you should have no problem as well.

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House of the Dead 3 is a great translation of the arcade, but I only wish it had a full widescreen option. Co-op mode is where you have the most fun. We are using the ray-gun shells for extra immersion. The aiming is quick and precise, and the action is a full 60 fps. While a play through can be a bit short, the branching paths help keep things interesting.

Can't wait for HotD 4 with the improved graphic engine to come out next month.

We usually don't get new announcements before trades shows. Hopefully E3 gives us a few more. I want a Point Blank compilation!

In the meantime, I highly recommend the Time Crisis compilation if you don't already have it. Deadstorm Pirates is a gem, and the Prison Break sub-mode of TC4 is one of of the most fun and unique light gun experiences available. For myself, since I finished Dead Space I recently, I think I'll try out their light gun game next since I hear it is pretty good.

Unfortunately (except for Paradise Lost) my guess is that it would be difficult to get licensed titles made for the consoles since the genre is already pretty niche to justify the added expense. I like Terminator Salvation a lot (as well as the old Midway Terminator 2 LGG) and would buy them day one if they ever popped up.

The problem sounds like the angle and position of the camera in relation to the Move controllers. Try sliding or swiveling your PSEye on the XMB menu camera settings menu so that it is centered for best results.

Also try to see if it improves by placing the PSEye in the opposite position than you have it now (i.e., if it is on top of the HDTV, put it at the bottom).

If that isn't working, then you can overcompensate by aiming to an exaggerated left or right of the in-game calibration targets before hitting the trigger -or- slide the PSEye left or right off-center before calibrating in a game.

I had your issue for a bit until I was able to set it up right by playing around with the tips above. My PSEye is now at the bottom of my set (I had more issues with it up high) and it is in the center. I sit within a 60 degree radius in co op games and it aims perfectly.

Unlike light gun tech (which requires CRT displays to work), the Move doesn't directly interact with the display/monitor/screen at all, so it should work just fine depending on how your PSEye is set up.

The only potential problem to be aware of is true for any display - how much inherent lag does your projector exhibit? Since the Move has only a half of one frame (out of 60 frames per second) more lag than the DualShock 3, any significant lag inherently built into your display set up will be very obvious as you play motion games moreso than non motion games.