Decapitation, Dismemberment and Blood. Lots and lots of Blood.
-The story for Splatterhouse is pretty simple. Evil doctor kidnaps girlfriend and to save her you put on a talking mask which in turn grants you amazing abilities.
-I have been waiting for this game for a long time since I read about it in a magazine a long time ago. Having just completed the game I have to say that I am satisfied and at the same time disappointed. Don't get me wrong, this game will have a lovely spot in my collection, but I am going to start off with all the problems I had with the game before I move on to the good stuff.
-For one thing, the game has some of the worst load times I have ever seen. While the game is loading a scene of a creature is played in the background which isn't bad at all, but when I am loading up my game or died and had to go back to the last checkpoint I don't think I should have to watch that load screen for 30 to 60 seconds at least. I have also had problems with it loading during gameplay. After killing all the enemies in an area I walked up to the entrance to the next part of the level and it wouldn't open til the loading emblem disappeared which took about 15 seconds. I was got a game over because I was on a time limit and the loading wouldn't finish and let me through a gate making me run out of time and fail. Also one time near the end of the game the loading emblem wouldn't go away and I had to quit and continue the game making me play through a section again.
-The next thing that disappointed me was some of the graphics. Rick looked really good and so did basically all of the creatures, but some of the environments looked like they had really crappy textures. I can understand making things in the distance a bit blurry to give that sense of scale, but not so much that it makes the game look awful.
-I don't know why, but it seemed like the game was also having problems with sounds. One minute I would be hearing the gruesome sounds of fist crushing bone and the next it was as if the game went silent. Even the voice acting became hard to hear. I found this really disappointing because the game does have an awesome heavy metal sound track.
-The last thing that I am going to say that I had wrong with the game is the final fight. It really disappoints me when a game has some really cool encounters all the way through then doesn't put any thought into the finale.
-Ok, so with all that stuff out of the way now I can talk about what I thought was good about the game. I love god of war style games so the over top fighting and brutal splatter kills made the game feel so amazing to me. As Rick, you can take damage that leaves your body with long cuts and holes showing off your insides. You can however heal your wounds whenever you want as long as you have enough blood. Beating, smashing and splatter killing enemies fills up a blood meter which can be used to heal yourself or used to activate a devastating attack where bones shoot out like blades from Rick's body.
-Overall, the combat felt satisfying to me. Sending an array of different enemies at you with each having a slightly different upper-hand against you than the last. At times, the combat felt easy which allowed me to enjoy drenching everything with blood while other times I was put to the test to figure out the best combination of attacks that would not get me killed. As the lead game designer said "Blood is power" and in certain situations the only thing that will decide if you live or die is if you have enough blood.
-There is also a level up system that gives you new attacks, levels up your health and increases your efficiency with melee weapons. Blood is also used to level you up, but you earn a separate collection on blood to use for that instead of using the blood you have for special attacks.
-Parts of the game have also been designed as 2D sections where you will play through it as if you are playing one of the classics. Platforming and killing monsters through side-scrolling isn't a huge part of the game though. Only about 5% is in 2d, which of course I highly enjoyed these section.
-The game will take about ten hours to beat depending on how meticulous you are about finding the collectibles. Scattered through out the game are pieces of pictures that when put together make up a collection of photos of Jen (a few of which are nude) and also scattered are journals of Doctor West, telling his back story.
-Along with the main campaign, there are survival levels where the player must fight off waves of enemies. There is also all three original Splatterhouse games to unlock and play. Anyone who is a fan of the series needs to play the game to at least experience the classics. Of course they can only be unlocked by playing through the main story.
-In the end, Splatterhouse was a great experience and hopefully they can make killer sequel that fixes all the problems of this one (or at least release a patch). I will say that a lot of people will not enjoy this game as much as I did, but I must say that it is at least worth a try.
-Now if you all will excuse me, I am off to play through on the hardest difficulty. As the mask says "Lets show him why we call this Splatterhouse".