Splatterhouse first made its debut in 1988 in arcades. It was soon ported to the TurboGrafx, but with a brand new parental advisory warning for its violent nature. Namco Bandai’s new remake of the original game looks to keep that violent trend. Splatterhouse contains more blood than the American Red Cross, and plenty of beat ’em up gameplay.
First, lets talk about the story. Your name is Rick. You woke up in a mysterious place with a mask on your face and your girlfriend kidnapped. You can’t get the mask off your face, but it does talk to you and try to help you through the levels. Now, it’s up to you to violently murder everything in your path to try and rescue your girlfriend.
The gameplay is bloody and fun. First off, your just going to have to believe me when I say that this game has more blood than in any other game. Every hit you land on an enemy sends blood flying into the air, and when an enemy dies, even more blood will come out. The blood will splatter on Rick, the floors, walls, and sometimes even the ceiling and will remain present during cutscenes. There will be be plenty of environmental objects in the levels for you to experiment with new ways of killing enemies. There are sound speakers that blow enemies apart, spikes on the wall, and spikes coming up out of the ground that you can slam an enemy onto and force the spike up his…well, you get the picture. There is also a nice feature where Rick will show damage on his body. After Rick took one too many hits from enemies, the left side of his body got partly torn away, and I could see part of his ribcage and organs.
There was a lot of variation in the enemies we saw. There were regular looking guys, but also butchers, chainsaw wielding maniacs, skinless dogs, and giant meat blobs. Some of the enemies, like the dogs, you could rip off their limbs, and then use that limb to beat other dogs to death. For bigger enemies, you could use a quick time event to finish them off. When fighting these enemies, you sometimes have to watch out for traps. In one part, you had to fight enemies along a long corridor filled with those speakers that blow enemies apart. Different sections of the corridor activated at different times, and if you were standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time, then you were treated to a very gory game over screen.
What I played of Splatterhouse left me feeling dirty and violated but wanting more. Splatterhouse will be carving up enemies in September of this year.
