For anybody knows their old school video games, they’ll instantly recognize Splatterhouse as a 2D platformer from the arcade that you stood in line for it’s obscene amount of gore. Namco has decided to bring back the series after so many other successful games have made their return including Street Fighter and Fallout. Usually there are two distinct results one with it being a complete successful breathing new life to a long dead series or it’s a failure forgetting what made the games great in the first place.
The first to start with talking about the graphics engine and it’s frequent inability to cope with the number of enemies of the screen. The game isn’t doing anything too impressive graphically yet when the enemy numbers start piling up which happens often enough the game has the tendency to start to lag terribly making it hard to play the game properly, this is not just limited enemies, but also just when there’s a lot of things are in the environment being rendered by the game. In these moments you’ll get the feeling you’re playing a game in it’s early beta rather than something that should be on retail shelves. The one thing the game isn’t short on is blood in which the game uses every opportunity to add more and more to game. It feels like an old Mortal Kombat going to excess but by now we’ve been desensitized to seeing the red blotches in games and doesn’t have that same impact as it used to back in 16bit days.
The gameplay does have some charm to it, you’ve got your obligatory light and heavy attacks, you can block and you can combo your moves. The game doesn’t try to be anything new but the controls aren’t too bad but then after there’s a million things to get in the way of having any real fun. One of the most annoying “features” is when the camera decides to make sure it doesn’t go through walls in tight spaces by freezing up and giving you little to no camera control making it very hard to play in enclosed spaces. Then there’s the assortment of bugs from invisible walls that shouldn’t be there to the amusing bug I saw in the first hour play where my character floated in mid-air having little impact on the enemies below me. The game has no balance whatsoever, you fill out a “necro meter” that has multiple segments that you fill by killing enemies and collecting blood, as you do you can recover your health from nearby enemies by using a part to do so, if you have 3 or more can go and use them all and enter Berserker mode; a mode where you do massive damage and are practically unstoppable for limited time. The problem is when you’ve got a full bar you’re character is pretty hard to kill being able to constantly recover your health. The only real way you’ll die is through pure numbers, especially if you’re knocked down and you can’t move for about 10 seconds while the various creatures are pounding on. Then there’s bits where the checkpoints are few far between where you might die after what is considered a cheap death and have to redo long parts of game because the game decided for some unknown reason it wasn’t worth putting a checkpoint in between The game has some 2D levels and generally they’re really fun, I’d say they’re easily one of the most fun parts of the game and fans of 2D platforming games should get a blast from platforming their way through them, not that there are that many.
One of the saving graces of Splatterhouse is the cheesy story. There isn’t much substance but what it lacks in substance it makes up with attitude. The game’s main voice is brought you by the Terror Mask , the mask stuck on the protagonist face. I knew instantly after heard the voice over that I recognized the voice and anybody who’s watched cartoons in the 90s should recognized it as well. The game has lending to it’s cast the talented Jim Cummings known for such cartoons as Darkwing Duck, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius among many many others. He makes the game for me executing his lines to perfection making me look forward to what the “evil” terror mask will say to the protagonist next. The voices of the main hero Rick and villain Dr Henry West M.D are competent but completely forgettable letting the Terror Mask stand alone as reason to listen to dialog. The game includes an awesome heavy metal soundtrack that’s quite good and certainly sets the mood well.
Included in the game to be unlocked is all 3 original Splatterhouse games for you to play after beating parts of the game. I don’t want to spend too much time talking about it but what I do want to say is these games really didn’t age well and are some of the worst platforming you could play for the early 90s. The only somewhat playable game is the 3rd installment but you can’t really get into it because it’s built as an arcade game and it’s gimmick to get your quarter is to have a time limit for you to rescue your girlfriend Jennifer keeping the playtime short.
What upset me about Splatterhouse is it has the possibility of actually being a good game had the developers actually spent the time to complete the game. As it stands right now the game is buggy, unbalanced and has major slowdowns during normal gameplay. The only conclusion I can come up with is they rushed it out for the holiday regardless of quality and released before it was ready which is a damn shame because as it stands it’s not worth your cash.
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Buy Splatterhouse for the Xbox 360 Online from EBGames.com
Click here to buy Splatterhouse for the Xbox 360 online from EBGames.com
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