Take a seat Nemesis. The OG memorable zombie game boss is here: MAGICIAN IS BACK.
An absolutely beautiful homage to House of the Dead 1. Since the original code was lost to time and copyright, these guys remade the game from ground up in Unity and while it might not be a perfect match, it is absolutely gorgeous. No effort was spared making Curien's mansion beautiful. The zombies animate and dismember and ragdoll wonderfully. The script is kept identical to the original. The soundtrack is all new, but rocks out nicely. (Magician's new theme feels like a composer who just wanted to remix Magician's old theme but could not for legal reasons so he got as close as he could. Which is probably what happened.) Despite a few changes, this is a loving homage from people enthusiastic about House of the Dead.
Now it is an arcade lightgun game, (For you kids out there an arcade game is like a roguelite game but instead of random levels it has good levels) that is only about 20 minutes to clear. So you really have to appreciate replaying an arcade game with excellent pacing to get value out of this. The devs have four difficulties, two score systems, a horde mode (the same game but with many many more zombies), and some unlockable weapons that are OP and meant to show off ragdoll effects even more and justify the horde mode, not even counting HOTD's branching routes, but none of this adds longevity beyond HOTD itself being immensely fun to replay.
The timings are arcade tight too, so a controller will not cut it unless you have some gyro crap like the switch version did. You need to use a mouse. (My own light gun doesnt work on anything period so I cannot test but I have heard the mouse movement at the time of writing is not compatible with most mouse driving PC light guns)
There is a bit of jank. I have occasional loading errors when starting the game on a machine far too powerful to have them, but beyond that the game runs beautifully. Magician's moveset doesn't quite match his old iconic attack patterns which is a bit of a shame but I still grin every time I fight him.
But all that said HOTD Remastered is an excellent and loving tribute to one of the all time light gun arcade greats. It is not one-for-one so if you were a HOTD1 high score chaser you might not appreciate all the changes but they kept to the spirit of the game and I love it. Cannot wait to see how they handle HOTD2.
