Splatterhouse Game Review

The development of Splatterhouse was originally given to Mark of Kri developers Bottlerocket Entertainment back in 2007. Namco snatched the title away early last year and gave it to the team behind 2008's Afro Samurai game. After 4 long years we can finally play Splatterhouse, but was it worth the wait ?, no.

Splatterhouse starts off more or less the same as the classic 80's arcade hit original, protagonist Rick is lying in a pool of his own blood as Dr. West drags his girl friend Jen away. An ancient mask offers Rick a deal, put on the mask and destroy Dr. West and all his creations, if this is done Rick will save his girl friend Jen. From then on the game is pretty much a bad VHS horror movie gone wrong from the 80's.

Splatterhouse rolls around in Lovecraftian themes that feel pretty tired in 2010, but the games slightly goofy sensibility takes the edge off of this somewhat. The game does nothing new and feels standard at best. The game follows the basics for a traditional third-person action game, light and heavy attacks, upgrades and better combos, quicktime kill moves, and hordes of pawn-like enemies followed by one oversized tougher enemy. This is the standard layout for a game like this and Splatterhouse doesn't even attempt to add it's own unique feeling or twist on this traditional layout for a third-person action game.

The gameplay is not bad, it's just not that good and with an extremely poor framrate on top of this, it really feels like a poor job. On top of the poor framrate are technically flawed camera angles which add nothing but frustration and annoyance to the players experience. The framerate problems hurt the already slow and unresponsive controls which plague the game, as well as the camera issues creating problems such as cheap hits from enemies you can't see. The game feels like it is still in productions and not like a finished product, it's a sloppy final product which gamers will be very disappointed with.

The side-scrolling sections of the game, reminiscent of the original classic from the 80's, really had me exited when i first heard about them. Sadly, all the issues in the rest of the game are carried through into these sections. Slamming a 2x4 into hordes of enemies works just fine, but the timing-based hazard puzzles are a chore with laggy analog stick response, and jumping feels like gravity is non-existent. Towards the end of the game the platforming sections are brought over into the third-person portions of the game and fares just as poorly, adding infuriating instant death moments which take away any of the fun or enjoyment that the game could possibly have left.

There is no doubting the fact that Splatterhouse is attempting to appeal to a particular type of audience, with it's over the top gore. The game has more blood and body parts flying all over the place than any game i have played in recent memory but while this will no doubt impress people visually, the games gameplay mechanics and control issues are too big of a disappointment to ignore. Players will be able to treat enemies very badly, enemies can be disembowelled, decapitated, beaten with their own severed limbs (or yours), ripped in half, impaled, and sodomized with spikes and other objects including Rock's fists. So anyone with a sick mind is going to have many sadistic way's to entertain their mind for hours.

About half way through the game, Splatterhouse begins to recycle the same enemies and themes over and over until the point you feel like the developers just ran out of ideas. The music is okay but just feels like it was a late decisions, crammed in to appeal to the metal crowds and doesn't seem there was allot of thought put into the selection of tracks. The graphics are okay and the blood and gore effects do look quite good, but it's nothing you haven't already seen a million times before.

Sadly this is all there is to Splatterhouse. It's an old-school classic which has failed to cross over into the modern day gaming era, There is nothing new, inventive, unique, or moderately satisfying here. without any real care or passion it seems the developers have created a mediocre, at best, game.

Splatterhouse is a boring game suffering from a lack of passion 4/10