![]() ![]() All the while, the spirit ensconced within the mask goads and curses at Rick to do better, makes fourth-wall breaking cracks about M-ratings and the nature of what makes a Splatterhouse, and occasionally takes the well-deserved opportunity to call him a pussy. As you run through this game, alternating between the weak and strong attack buttons to form accidental combos and periodically picking up boards, machetes, chainsaws, and even the occasional weaponized severed limb to ramp up the damage, licensed tracks from the likes of Mastodon, Five Finger Death Punch, and Goatwhore will often begin blaring in the background. Splatterhouse is basically the video game equivalent of a gigantic ASCII devil horns, a metal and gore geek's fantasy of grotesque violence by way of screeching guitar solos. Halfway Between Hell and Earth would make a pretty good heavy metal album title, as would much of the stuff found in this game, really. ![]() That said, Rick has little choice but to work with this demonic mask, since he would ideally like to save his comely young girlfriend before the doctor turns her into a sacrificial vessel and unleashes some creatures that exist halfway between Hell and Earth. The talking death mask transforms Rick, the aformentioned boy, into said juggernaut for entirely self-serving purposes. The set-up for all this "house splattering" is a pretty typical boy loves girl, boy and girl visit creepy mansion of lunatic doctor, lunatic doctor kidnaps girl and leaves boy for dead, boy finds ancient Aztec ceremonial death mask and uses it to become a hulking, jorts-wearing juggernaut of death kind of deal. Simultaneously, no matter how much blood, viscera and spinal fluid the developers see fit to dump on you, it's exceedingly difficult to muster up more than a casual shrug at the sight of it all. This is still a fairly standard beat-'em-up, but there are enough wrinkles, tweaks, and amusements here to keep a player functionally engaged through the entirety of its story. The modern day Splatterhouse for the Xbox 360 and PS3 is a game that manages to construct a more interesting gameplay experience around piles upon piles of largely forgettable gore. Arguably the most interesting thing about this remake-apart from its protracted development history, which makes for interesting reading elsewhere-is that the reverse is largely true here. And yet, here we are with a modern-day take on the franchise. Don't let the jorts fool you: Rick is as brutal as they come. Basically, it was all guts, no substance. At its core, the game was a fairly forgettable beat-'em-up with a few interesting monsters to bludgeon and eviscerate, but the sheer amount of blood and gore on offer (again, relative to other games of this era) made it an enticement, even in its heavily edited TurboGrafx form. The original 1988 arcade game, and subsequent TurboGrafx-16 release, mostly served of interest due to its highly graphic (for its time) violence. The remake drowns lovers of the arcade classics in fan service.Splatterhouse is probably not a game that was in dire need of rebooting. From weapons to enemies and a very familiar chainsaw-wielding boss, this is a game that pays tribute and homage to one of the most shameless games in history, and the love that the developers have for the series is obvious. The nod to the original franchise is much appreciated, however, and this is an area in which Splatterhouse thoroughly excels. To be fair, each 2D section gets better than the last, with the first being almost unbearable and the later ones almost becoming fun, but these sections really ought to have been kept to a straight beat ’em up format as opposed to a platforming one. Since Rick cannot jump over a hole to save his life (literally), there is a lot of frustration to be had, and a lot of replaying. For some reason, Namco felt the need to put in a lot of bad platforming and no checkpoints. These moments had potential to be amazing, with background music inspired by the 16-bit era and a cool visual approach, but unfortunately these portions are the weakest. ![]() The game attempts to take its retro references to the next level by sprinkling various 2D sections throughout the game. ![]()
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