Splatterhouse, I'll splatter your house.

Splatterhouse is the first game for me that truly screams 'deadline abuse'. Despite the fact that games are, for better or worse, a creative work (note I didn't say art, I'm too clever to open up that debate of nightmarish hell) that needs constant tuning and work (like a book or a painting), games also have the added problem of needing lots of money and working hours to complete. So the money comes from the Namesless Ones (ie marketing, or as more commonly known among Vikings, The Spawn of Satans Arsehole) and hence the game developers have to bend to the whims of these money-centric morons because nothing says 'food on the table' quite like keeping your job.

Saying Splatterhouse is unpolished is like saying that the Gentle-Beauty isn't polished just after a raid. Saying that it's not polished is moot, due to the vast amounts of blood, mucus, vomit, cartilidge, brain matter, and hair that is all over the blade (most of it not mine {except perhaps the hair}).

Splatterhouse is a game based on an earlier series called splatterhouse which was a 2d platformer that's only call to fame was the (then considered) absurd amounts of gore. In 2010 it returns, with gore, and not much else.

You play as some skinny, un-viking like nerd whose about to drown in his own blood (which is the thickness and consistency of maple syrup, as if he had some mutant strain of diabetes) from having his insides ripped open by a monster (which I will describe its lack of detail in detail later) that's been set upon you by a mad scientist who also steals your girlfriend. About to die, a mask lying next to him says 'put me on and you'll live!' so our nerd puts the mask on and turns into a hugely muscled super-human, much more viking-like, and then beats the crap out of some monsters. At this point I thought, great, not much thinking, just gore and monsters. A game I can tune out to. How wrong I was.

I haven't really paid any kind of attention to the story because it started off with mindless horror and now, halfway through, expects me to pay attention to and understand some prophecy and rips between dimensions and shit. The banter between the mask and the nerd is fairly pathetic, and the mask won't shut the fuck up during combat, but seeing as the combat sequences are so loud it's like the mask is merely narrating under his breath, like a crazed lady in the back of a movie theatre asking rhetorical questions to the characters in the film and not having the decency to just die. So, with mask glued to face, we chase the scientist in hopesm of getting our woman back. Blood taken from your fallen (and dissected) enemies is what increases your powers and makes a general bad-arse, despite your complete inability to jump properly (explained later, when I felt less Viking rage).

The level design is extremely linear to the point of banal, and the game consists of running from one box room to another to fight different enemies before moving on. The only part of the level design I do enjoy is when, for no reason, the game shifts into a (roughly) 2d platformer where jumping rolling crouching and general timing skills become essential. This part of the game I enjoyed was also the part I hated the most, and is where the first orphan tears stain appears on the proverbial axe.

No double jump is forgivable. What is unforgivable is that the jump distances are further than your jumping distances, UNLESS YOU STEP ON THE INVISIBLE FLOOR ON THE WAY TO JUMPING. Yes, that's right, Splatterhouse, a game of 2010, has invisible floor. If you don't know what I mean, think back to your early ps1 days, when your character hadn't quite fallen off the edge of a wall/rampart etc because of some invisible barrier holding them up. The same goes for the earliest versions of Castlevania, when the was pixel or two (roughly the same size as the characteras foot) could go over the edge to perform a jump.

You can either have it so the jumping distance is long enough, or is long enough WITH invisible
floors. Relying on gamers to just use the invisible floor is just shoddy craftsmanship.

The jumping problems also run well into the the rest of the game. There is the same sense that your jumping somehow distorts the physics of the world to such a degree that it seems like the ground is supposed to come up to your feet instead of you down, and promptly forgets so it can blow a homeless man under a bridge. There are parts where you 'auto jump' in which we use all of our skills to press 'x' in the .00005 second gap where it will actually work and also on the one pixel and character position you need to be in for it to go, for a very liberally given value of smoothly.

Before I begin combat, I'd like to try and give you a visual of your enemies. Imagine brown coral, the size of a large dog, and it jumps around and bites you. That's what you'll be facing (in many varieties of coral such as light green and purple-brown) for the entirety of the game.

The combat is...well, just plain old boring. Like God of War, it has that same curse of 'press square to win' except with diffculty curves that would need a fourth dimension to figure out.

As an example, the regular enemies die after a hard session of smashing square and triangle, and they will barely damage you during this time. Another enemy that only takes a dirty look at to kill will end you in two hits. Yes, I can see how this all balances out and makes 'priority fighting' necessary, it just comes off as FRUSTRATING. These points become null and void if you pick up a machete, in which all enemies die in one stroke.

There is the usual option of doing a finishing move when an enemy is weak, except Splatterhouse decided to replace a cool animation with a two minute sequence and 'quick-time event' (and by quicktime I mean an either retarded mashing of buttons or just holding a direction) which happens EVERY FUCKING TIME YOU DO IT. In the 6 hours or so I played the game, at least 45 mins of that time was spent holding a direction to rip off what could only be assumed the 'head' off a piece of coral (enemy).

The only good thing about the combat (and the game) is the damage you take. Skin and muscle will be ripped off you, revealing your ribs and innards for everyone to see! Your arms can also be ripped off and grow back afer a short period of time, but not short enough so your enemies don't take advantage of your one-armed state.

Splatterhouse could have been really good, and the reason I blame the Nameless Ones and deadline abuse is because of how truly unpolished (see Gentle Beauty reference above) it is.

I'm giving Splatterhouse 2/5 pieces of coral.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.