PushSquare's Most Anticipated Overlooked PlayStation Games Of Holiday 2011: #1 - House Of The Dead: Overkill - Extended Cut.

Long-time Nintendo fans were tired of Wii Fit and Wii Play, they wanted something meatier to get their teeth into. But with developers ploughing the majority of their resources into the more traditional XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3, Wii owners were left fighting for scraps.

The response from most third-party publishers seemed to be on-rails shooters. These incorporated the Wii's unique controls, but also provided the action heavy gameplay experience that traditional gamers craved. In a short period, numerous publishers flooded the shelves with on-rails shooters. One of the standouts was Eurocom's Dead Space: Extraction, which got ported to the PlayStation 3 earlier in the year. The other was Headstrong Games' House Of The Dead: Overkill, a game riffing off the success of Tarantino's grindhouse reboot, and poking fun at the heritage of SEGA's light-gun series.

House Of The Dead: Overkill remains one of our favourite Nintendo Wii games to this date. The game's in-your-face stupidity remains unmatched, and with the PlayStation 3 exclusive Extended Cut we hope developer Headstrong goes all the way towards reclaiming its world record for the most eff-bombs in a video game.

In addition to the obvious extras — PlayStation Move support, trophies and leaderboards — Headstrong's implementing two new campaigns into Overkill's Extended Cut. One of these new campaigns puts players amidst a shoot-out in a strip-club, which is certain to provide plenty potential for black-humour.

It might be boring, but it's the performance upgrades that have us most excited about Extended Cut though. While the Nintendo Wii version pushed its parent hardware hard, it often resulted in a lot of frame-rate dips that lessened the impact of the action on-screen. We're assuming (and partially hoping) that leveraging the power of the PlayStation 3 will allow Headstrong to maintain a consistent frame-rate in Extended Cut.

Perhaps we're alone, but we've always been big fans of rails shooters, and House Of The Dead: Overkill is undoubtedly one of the best. That prospect of performance upgrades, new stages and improved visuals are enough to make this number one on our list of most anticipated overlooked titles of Holiday 2011.

Let's Recap

We've spent all week exposing those PlayStation gems destined to get overlooked this packed Holiday season. Because we're savvy (and lovely) we've included a handy recap of the titles that made our top-five below. Now you can't complain you missed anything, can you?

What are your most anticipated non-blockbusters this Fall?