For anyone else, Splatterhouse won’t offer much.īottom Line: The recycled brawling mechanics and frustrating platforming don’t do anything to support the cliché story and no amount of blood, profanity or nudity can save Splatterhouse from mediocrity. The only gamers who could get substantial entertainment from the boobs, blood and brawling are that special breed of teen-aged boys who can’t get enough slasher films and Playboy. I was more than a little uncomfortable as to who the intended audience for Splatterhouse is. Some of the assembled pictures are innocent enough, but more than a few show your girl exposing her chest. Your girlfriend Jen is a shutterbug, and she leaves fragments of photographs behind for you to piece together in each level. West was up to, and I wanted to know how the world was going to end (and how I was going to save it) but the character of Rick and the mask told the same reluctant hero/corrupting artifact story that appears in countless games, movies and books. The mask has some secrets, which he leaks out in between calling you a “fucking noob” and fourth wall-breaking comments like, “That’s why we got an M Rating!” Despite myself, I was caught up in the story but it was mostly interest of the “I want to know what happens” variety and not “Man, these are such compelling characters.” Audiologs peppered throughout the levels give a bit of insight into what Dr.

It’s never fun to die in a game, but designers should try to make that experience as quick and painless as possible to get you back into the action. An interminably long loading screen kills any action game, and Splatterhouse is doubly terrible because of those miserable growling creatures. A random enemy from the game disgustingly growls, moans and writhes on the screen for 30 seconds every time you die. That detail would be bad enough, but then Splatterhouse features the most annoying loading screen ever created by humans.

Berserker mode kills guys almost too quickly, if that makes any sense, because you are often left waiting for doors to open or more bad guys to spawn. When the monsters are ready for a finishing move, they flash red, but you are often caught in the middle of a combo and end up killing the dude before you could perform the eviscerating attack. You can pick up weapons such as chainsaws and swords which quickly chew through zombie things, but the items quickly degrade and you soon find yourself punching again. It feels like you are either pounding on bad guys too easily, or you need to punch one more than twenty times to do any damage at all. Where Splatterhouse fails is in providing consistently fun gameplay. You have to credit Namco for sticking with a theme, I guess. So the blood isn’t just for a cheap visual effect it’s a necessary component in Splatterhouse in nearly every game system. You also use blood to purchase new combat moves, a bigger health bar and fancy combos. Blood is also needed to heal yourself, which you will need to do frequently as you struggle to learn the mechanics. Once the blood meter is full, you can enter a Berserker mode (cue obligatory color shift to black, white and red) and use your bone forearms to slice through enemies. Killing monsters nets you blood, which fills your necro meter, but you get more blood per kill when you do a quick time event-powered finishing move that rips the enemy apart. As you quick or slow punch through waves of necrotic bad guys, the blood flows gratuitously and splatters all over the screen, making it hard to see what you’re fighting. In come the enemies and you use your new powers to beat them to a pulp.īlood is the fuel upon which Splatterhouse runs. If you pay attention to any trope in pop culture, you should know to never willingly wear masks that talk, but Rick complies and is immediately given a new body and muscles worthy of the All-Drug Olympics. Inexplicably, a mask appears and starts talking to Rick, offering him a way to save Jenny from certain death. Things don’t go so well, and Rick is left in a pool of his own blood with his intestines leaking out as the good doctor takes away his girl. West, a professor of the fake science of necrobiology. You start out as Rick as he escorts his girlfriend, Jen, to the abode of Dr.

Splatterhouse ps3 reviews