Call of Duty: "Dragon's Lair": One giant scripted quicktime event that the player cannot deviate from in either path nor interaction. Only when you find yourself fighting for long enough to realise that "this seems to be an unending stream of respawning adversaries!?" will you start hunting for the magic trigger-event to make it stop so the script can proceed. Sometimes that trigger-event is something that may seem redundant or illogical to a player, yet that stream of enemies will continue until found and tripped.

"House of The Dead" is a challenging arcade on-rails "twitch" shooting gallery where the player is unlocking narrative as reward. That is permissible because that's how that game works, though not how one may assume this one does.

It's not like me to jump the gun after only a few hours play, but I'm really not enjoying this one bit; while being the kind of guy who is quite forgiving of failed FPS attempts by developers in an "I can see what they were attempting though it didn't quite work" way. However, this game is just "aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!" annoying. All the things that I see general FPS lovers criticise about modern CoD games are all present in this title! - where I thought I was going to avoid them by it being an earlier release. I thought "Ghosts" was bad and yet this is worse for me, though so many people rave about this one!

Addendum: I've now played the game through and, after playing a handful of CoD games I'm getting the feeling this is how they're supposed to be; heavily scripted and controlled interactive movies. So, if you agree with that evaluation and like CoD because that's what it serves, then this works and is a good example. Me? I expect a bit more freedom and less scripting in my shooters so, NO, I still didn't like it and my original review stands.
I will, however, add that the sound in surround is great in this game and there are even a few audio tricks used to add cinematic style in places. Level layout and atmosphere is good, although my hidden-walls and other restrictions criticism still stands. Oh! and the AI is a mixed bag. Most of the time allies and axis randomly ignore each other and will often be found stood in close proximity shooting at other AI. Out.

Call of Duty: "Dragon's Lair": One giant scripted quicktime event that the player cannot deviate from in either path nor interaction. Only when you find yourself fighting for long enough to realise that "this seems to be an unending stream of respawning adversaries!?" will you start hunting for the magic trigger-event to make it stop so the script can proceed. Sometimes that trigger-event is something that may seem redundant or illogical to a player, yet that stream of enemies will continue until found and tripped. "House of The Dead" is a challenging arcade on-rails "twitch" shooting gallery where the player is unlocking narrative as reward. That is permissible because that's how that game works, though not how one may assume this one does. It's not like me to jump the gun after only a few hours play, but I'm really not enjoying this one bit; while being the kind of guy who is quite forgiving of failed FPS attempts by developers in an "I can see what they were attempting though it didn't quite work" way. However, this game is just "aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!" annoying. All the things that I see general FPS lovers criticise about modern CoD games are all present in this title! - where I thought I was going to avoid them by it being an earlier release. I thought "Ghosts" was bad and yet this is worse for me, though so many people rave about this one! [i]Addendum: I've now played the game through and, after playing a handful of CoD games I'm getting the feeling this is how they're supposed to be; heavily scripted and controlled interactive movies. So, if you agree with that evaluation and like CoD because that's what it serves, then this works and is a good example. Me? I expect a bit more freedom and less scripting in my shooters so, NO, I still didn't like it and my original review stands. I will, however, add that the sound in surround is great in this game and there are even a few audio tricks used to add cinematic style in places. Level layout and atmosphere is good, although my hidden-walls and other restrictions criticism still stands. Oh! and the AI is a mixed bag. Most of the time allies and axis randomly ignore each other and will often be found stood in close proximity shooting at other AI. Out.