Sega's popular arcade franchise The House of the Dead returns for its third outing as an Xbox exclusive in The House of the Dead III, and this one rocks the house. Fans of light-gun games will greatly enjoy this one.

Okay, I'm a little biased here. I love light-gun games. All the shortcomings of this genre (short play time, repetitive action, etc.) don't deter me at all. Like steering wheels, dance pads, Samba de Amigo's maracas and Steel Battalion's massive mech controller, light guns offer a close simulation of the real action without going through the artificial interface of the standard game controller. I personally count that as a big plus.

The House of the Dead (HOTD) franchise is one of the four great light gun franchises that include Namco's Point Blank (my personal favorite), Time Crisis, and Sega's Virtua Cop. HOTD adds a little something extra to the genre because the player is actually presented some path choices that affect what he'll see as he moves through the game. Like all the games in this genre, HOTD III has a paper-thin story that simply gets you into a situation where you have to shoot a bunch of things - in this case zombies. Once again the player goes into Dr. Curien's labs; this time to rescue the father of Lisa Rogan, one of the two playable characters.

Targets are hoards of various zombies with the occasional boss character thrown in that demands a little more accurate shooting to bring down. Anyone who has played any of the HOTD games will recognize the types of enemies that have bedeviled them before.

Graphics and animation are excellent. Cel-shaded creatures shuffle toward you menacingly and environments look creepy. Zombies don't go down easily, so players will find themselves putting two or three large shotgun holes in the zombies before they bite the dust. Players have the option of seeing these large holes in red or green blood and at violence levels of Mild, Medium or Gratuitous via settings in the option menu. Personally, I like red blood with gratuitous violence while I slay zombies. Zombies are one of those things that the "they just needed killin" defense was made for, and it should be seen in all its gory glory.

Sound is adequate for the genre. Gunshots and other sound effects are good and the music is serviceable. The HOTD series is notorious for having the worst voice acting ever: stiff with horrible translations. However, HOTD III was actually disappointing; they improved the voice acting to the point that I'm not laughing anymore. This is a real loss in my opinion.

The real surprise of HOTD III is its control. Of course it plays great with the excellent Blaster light gun developed by Mad Catz, but developer Wow Entertainment actually made it fun and playable with the standard controller too. To my knowledge, that has never successfully been done before.

Once a player makes it to the end of the game he is rewarded with an excellent version of House of the Dead 2. This unlockable addition is a great bonus for gun-game fans.