Splatterhouse is a 3rd person Brawler/Beat Em' Up which will offer you nothing but blood and violence. The game doesn't feature a very strong story line or great game mechanics, but it does offer you straight up gore to an extent I've never seen in a video game before. How does this effect just how enjoyable the game really is? Is it just a short initial "wow that's cool" moment where you never go back to it again or does it warrant your full attention on a playthrough.
At the start of the game you meet the main character Taylor who comes across as a nerdy guy. Taylor is in a pool of blood, bleeding to death. The game starts how it means to go on then! The environment is an OTT mansion which has a decent atmosphere, bringing the game into context straight away. The mansion will remind you of Hell, with a lot of stuff burning and a lot of killing!
The main story line of the game is that you're trying to find your lover who has been taken by the main villain in the game, Dr.West. To do this you will walk through hundreds of enemies at a time spamming the X & Y buttons to launch off attacks, there is no need to block in this game. If you just spam those two buttons you'll progress just fine even on the highest difficulty. Due to this the game is very un-challenging and can get extremely boring and repetitive quite a lot of the time. The only time things change is when you are fighting bosses which may require a little bit more strategy, such as hiding whilst they do their 'mega attacks', then back to spamming those buttons!
Splatterhouse is definitely one of a kind in it's brutality, and that is proven by the currency itself being blood. You'll receive blood when you make your enemies bleed... which is all the time! This will give you a large amount of currency which can be spent on new moves for your character and to level him up abit. This will lead to you using a few new moves every now and again to test them out which sounds pretty cool, but once you realise they'repointless and are more likely to get you killed you'll soon head back to the spamming of X & Y technique.
Splatterhouse really offers you nothing, it is a game which seems to be there solely for some angry guy to take out his frustrations of life by ripping apart OTT monsters. The sound effects and heavy metal soundtrack make the game seem that much more convincing, but really it is just a distraction to the very below standard gameplay Splatterhouse offers.
This game will make you laugh, even though it's not really meant to be funny. Though there are some funny one liners the majority of laughs will come from the utterly stupid nature of the game and how messed up it is. Not to mention the annoying checkpoint system which upon death will set you back about 30 minutes of gametime, which is quite a lot in this very short game. Having a number of collectibles prolong the games life if you are a perfectionist, but not by a lot.
Overall Splatterhouse is just not a very good game, but can at times fairly enjoyable. Blood, violence & profanity are often loved by us gamers, but Splatterhouse offers it in such a simple unimaginative form that you cannot really draw as much enjoyment out of it as you would of liked. With a very short story line and simple gameplay, the game is the right length for its repetitive nature which makes it just about bearable.
Splatterhouse Gets An Official Game-Pad: 4.5/10
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