There were an abundance of games being shown off during GDC earlier this month, and one stop had us visiting with Sega, to check out a handful of upcoming titles.

One of those games happened to be The House of the Dead 4 for the PlayStation 3.  Long-time fans of the franchise will recognize HOD4 as an entry in the series that has never before been available on a U.S. home console. But with public arcades no longer fashionable or even the norm, Sega has finally decided to bring the game to gamers’ living rooms.

The game, a straight arcade port, can obviously be played in single-player mode, as well as in 2-player co-op.  While the game can be played with the Sixaxis controller, Sega recommends the use of the PlayStation Move, for obvious reasons – the game simply plays much better that way.

Our 10-minute demo had us looking to escape an overrun and burning building, while trying to avoid flesh-eating “creatures”, as Sega likes to call them.  Gameplay was your typical arcade-style light gun shooter, where you blow the heads off of waves of enemies as the on-rails camera moves automatically and keeps you focused on the task at hand.  We saw a nice little variety in enemies, as some were your run-of-the-mill zombies, sorry “creatures”, while we also encountered big burly guys that could deliver plenty of damage, though their movements were slow.  There were also some fleet-footed creatures that were a bit more difficult to shoot as they were not only agile, but could crawl around the ground and ceilings, making you work for the kill.

The gory experience finally put us in a room that appeared to lead to our exit, only to see a giant arm break through one of the walls and snatch our heroine (there’s a guy and a girl) before pulling her back from where it came from, ultimately leaving us with a cliffhanger.

Surely fans of the series will feel right at home and know what to expect coming in.  As previously mentioned, we played with both the controller and PS Move, and found the latter to be much more responsive, quicker and easier to maneuver with.

Sega plans to release the game on April 17.