Readers Splatterhouse Review
A Bloody Bloodbath of Blood, Guts-n-Gore
by : PhoenixSlap
©2010 Paddy-Jack Kearney
Yet another “Readers Review” comes to us from Australia this time, and it’s great to have our readers supplying great reviews, or even articles. If you would like to submit a review, article or news, then simply email us with your intentions, and we will check it over. The next one up on OXCGN could well be yours. Plus PhoenixSlap scored himself a neat thankyou gift for his great efforts.
Also Winners of our Splatterhouse Horenous Head Hunt are in. Many thanks to Namco-Bandai Aust for the great prizes, winners will receive their prizes very soon:-
- Min Sombe
- Bianca Lew
- Stephen Kirk
- Nathan Dries
On with the ‘bloody’ Review –
Blood, guts and skull crushing punches would be the best way to describe the newest instalment of Namco-Bandai Games; Splatterhouse. A recreation of their classic, side scrolling, arcade game with an unhealthy focus on the blood-n-gore.
The whole game is built around the blood. You collect blood to level up your abilities and you bleed out enemies to open doors. The blood covers every surface including your screen. If like me you love gore and mayhem then I would definitely recommend Splatterhouse.
Splatterhouse begins with you bleeding out on the floor of West Mansion, being insulted the sadistic looking ‘Terror Mask‘. The mask turns out to be a demon that possesses and transforms you into the hulking monster that you control throughout the game.
The game follows Rick Taylor through different universes and times as he demolishes his way through demonic minions to hunt down the psycho Dr. West and rescue his girlfriend Jennifer.
The game play is quite simple. Punch anything that moves until it’s a smear of blood on the floor, walls, ceiling or the screen itself. Though simple the game play can be quite difficult.
If you get mobbed by a bunch of enemies or you miss the correct button for a finishing move on the boss its lights out and you have to wait a long time for the level to reload.
After you have died a few times in the same place you may want to throw the controller at the screen but I wouldn’t recommend it. New TVs are expensive.
“Today’s console technology is literally decades ahead of what powered Splatterhouse when it made its first indelible bloody mark on gaming, which means we now have gore like never before for all the fans and the new generation of gamers lining up to get to grips with Rick,” said Hiroaki Ochiai, VP Sales and Marketing, NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe S.A.S. “If you have the stomach for it, there’s nothing more satisfying than beating a hell beast to death with its own leg.”
The enemies change as you go and make you change your style of combat. Some will dodge most of your attacks and others with burn you from a distance. As a result you find yourself evolving from the button mashing punch as fast as you can to timing your strikes and aiming the big lunge attack.
Weapons add another aspect to the game. They greatly increase the damage you cause can help you finish a section in no time at all. But that’s to be expected of weapons.
Throughout the game you will find yourself saying “holy crap that was awesome” when you perform a splatter kill by ripping an enemy’s arms or head off. After which you will proceed to start beating the others with the decapitated head or limb.
• Splatterhouse E3 2010 Release Trailer
Between the gruesome splatter kills and detailed destruction of everything that moves, I was able to forgive the long reload times and frustrating save points. At many points throughout Splatterhouse you will find yourself running through a side-scrolling section.
This was a feature I enjoyed a lot as it took me back to the days of the old arcade style side-scrolling games that I love and still play.
Running under crushing blocks, past timed spike traps and jumping over ominous pits is a great break from the constant punching mayhem and adds a required level of skill and reflexes.
I found that these old school sections got me in the mood for more bloody chaos and provided a balance to the game. The downfall for the side-scrolling sections is the instant deaths combined with the long reload times I mentioned earlier.
Splatterhouse has a great sound track full of heavy metal music for you to smash and destroy your enemies too. Although you will find is disappears into the background a lot as you cause extreme devastation you can turn it up like me and revel in the perfect combination of blood and metal.
The second part of the soundtrack brought a lot of smiles to my face. The mask constantly insults you and urges you to cause as much mayhem as you can and revel in ripping out monsters organs.
Even though you are a hulk of a man you still take a lot of damage. To refill your health bar you must use a move that shoots out tentacles in every direction and drains the life from your enemies. I found this to be a very frustrating feature at first as I wasn’t watching my health bar and died a lot.
After I got used to watching my health it became quite a novelty as the refill not only looks awesome but you can go from nearly no health to almost full if you can mash your B button quick enough. When you take damage you can see it in your body.
• Splatterhouse Gameplay Trailer
I spent a lot of the game with my side ripped out and my insides showing. getting your arm ripped off gets frustrating as you are greatly slowed and an enemy strong enough to rip your arm off will likely kill you soon after.
But the game makes up for it by letting you use your arm as a deadly weapon until a new one grows back
As mentioned earlier the blood is the main focus of the game. As you cause more destruction you collect the blood. As your blood gauge fills up you can spend the blood points to improve your abilities, learn new ones and increase your health.
This outing of Splatterhoues is an original storyline penned by Gordon Rennie, the critically lauded comic book author behind works including Necronauts and Judge Dredd. The original artwork for the game has been created by renowned artist and Marvel contributor Dave Wilkins, all of which enhances the impeccable comic book style of the game’s gut-wrenching blood-soaked universe.
Enjoy our Bloody Splatterhouse Slideshow
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Some of the new abilities are devastating and you will find yourself using them not because you need to but because you want to. To unlock doors during game play you will have to do some gruesome things to some monsters. Including impaling them on spikes to bleed them out and putting them in a blender like contraption to make a hellhound milkshake.
Overall I loved the game but there were issues. The scenes and backgrounds looked amazing throughout the game and the twisting storyline combined with lots of destruction created a great experience.
Splatterhouse also has the 3 original splatter house games that you unlock as you progress through the game. The instant deaths and long waiting times did frustrate me a lot and there were a few little issues with the camera but they weren’t enough to make me stop playing.
The gore and mayhem of Splatterhouse was a great break from all the iron sight shooters and sports games that I have been playing lately.
“7/10
©2010 Paddy-Jack Kearney
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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Action, Arcade game, Dave Wilkins, Game, Gordon Rennie, Heavy metal music, Judge Dredd, Namco, Namco-Bandai Games, Necronauts, Playstation 3, Splatterhouse, splatterhouse review, Splatterhouse reviews, Splatterhouse screenshots, Splatterhouse videos, Video game
