The Haunted Hoard: Splatterhouse (Xbox 360)

During the era of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, many classic video game series were receiving gritty reboots. The likes of Bomberman and Bionic Commando were given rugged new looks meant to make them seem more mature, but if there was one game series that was perfect for this movement, it would have to be Splatterhouse. Already reveling in detailing its gore and violence in a dark world, all a gritty reboot would really need to change is letting the gratuitous guts and blood get even wilder.

 

The 2010 Splatterhouse reboot has a similar set up to the original game but with more story to guide the exploration of the horror-filled mansion. Rick Taylor accompanies his girlfriend Jennifer Willis when she is invited to the mansion of necrobiology professor Dr. Henry West, but very quickly it’s revealed this was just a trap so he could try and use Jennifer in a dark ritual to bring his wife back to life. Rick is killed off quickly to prevent his interference, but an ancient talking mask known as the Terror Mask attaches itself to Rick, giving him supernatural strength and abilities so he can fight his way through West’s corrupted creations and the other dark beings he’s unearthed in his experiments. While much of the plot is constructed to give you reasons to visit interesting locations in the mansion or take you through portals to different times and dimensions, by the end you actually get a very good picture of Dr. West’s motivations for sinking to such dark arts. Rick’s character is a bit stagnant and Jennifer gets just as many lurid photographs to collect as actual details on who she is, but the Terror Mask is the real show stealer, Jim Cummings providing a delightfully evil ally who not only guides Rick through this twisted world but also taunts him, cracks jokes, and begins to prod at Rick’s psyche to see if his humanity can survive the incredible violence that must be committed to stop West and save Jennifer.

 

Splatterhouse is a 3D action brawler, most battles in the game involving Rick at the center of action as different monsters move in to attack. Using a mix of your light and heavy attacks you can pull off combos and special moves, although many of these must be unlocked by spending the blood you automatically collect from defeated enemies. Enemies can also be grabbed and thrown about, some rooms even requiring you to hurl enemies onto macabre devices to open the door onward, and you pack the ability to dodge and jump to help keep you out of an enemy’s reach. Most of the mutants and creatures you face off with will be fleshy abominations who only need to be hit enough to kill them, their dodginess and durability changing across the enemy types and some packing special body parts like a tentacle to harass you from afar or wielding special attacks or weapons like the fire breathing clowns and the machete wielding brutes.

There is one type of foe that Rick can’t actually touch without getting hurt, these fiery foes best dealt with your more situational options. Weapons like the pipe and cleaver can both be swung about by Rick for easy high damage attacks on even the more durable zombies who might otherwise be blocking punches, and with special tools like the chainsaw or shotgun, you can dish out even more devastation. Some enemies will even leave body parts behind after you dismember them during a battle, and while it’s fun to swing a limb or chuck a head at someone, they’re often pretty weak. You can use your own lost arm as well, but the fact losing a limb is even a mechanic ends up an annoyance because you essentially just have to wait for the mask to regenerate your damaged body to be able to really put up a fight against the game’s increasingly difficult packs of foes. If you are overwhelmed or running low on life though, provided you’ve collected enough blood through battle, you can quickly do the Splatter Siphon, a move that will stun nearby enemies and damage them slightly as you suck in their blood to top off your life meter. The Splatter Siphon is a godsend and allow for the fights to have more pressure during them, although the regular battles do begin to get repetitive over time as the limited enemy types are thrown together too often. The bosses don’t even introduce too much different to the fight formula, returning characters like the Biggy Man and new foes like the Golem both mostly simple dodge and strike affairs focused more on the sensation of tearing apart such gargantuan and dangerous foes than making the fight intense. Even the final boss feels underwhelming since the impressive design of it is wasted on what is mostly just a typical fight.

 

If you are having trouble with too many enemies on screen or need to deal some quick damage to a boss, your last ability can certainly give you a quick and easy way to do tons of damage. Berserker Mode can be tapped into if your Necro Meter is full, and since you have special execution moves that can fill it up with blood quite quickly, you can get Berserker in a pinch provided there are goons to farm for quick blood boosts. When you are in Berserker Mode, Rick is bulging with new bone spikes and able to use them to shred apart whatever is within their extended reach. It definitely has an appropriate name since its big appeal is just pressing buttons to quickly hurt whatever enemy type is nearby, but it’s not as satisfying as it might initially seem because it’s just a limited time upgrade to your typical combat style. It’s great for dealing free damage on bosses or clearing a room so it has its moments, but Splatterhouse’s combat mostly settles into a middle ground of decent but not exceptional.

Splatterhouse goes through a few different styles of play so it’s not constant arenas filled with monsters to splatter on the walls, one style mimicking the old games by locking Rick to two dimensions and having him easily kill most things he hits in this mode. There are plenty of hazards and unique enemies during this portion to keep it mildly challenging, but much like the puzzle solving or platforming moments, it’s neither exceptional nor annoying. It’s there and it allows the fighting to not be constantly focused on group battles, although it’s little surprise the game’s extra mode outside of the story is a series of arena fights where you fight waves of foes while items and goodies are thrown in to spice it up.

 

These small extras, the visceral bloody combat, and the decent story actually could have been part of an acceptable Splatterhouse reboot I would have no issue giving an Okay rating. It is easy to reflect fondly on the gothic style complimented by the red mark of over the top violence, but there is a giant lingering issue hanging over the game, and that’s that it is incredibly glitchy and poorly programmed in parts. One that any player will inevitably experience are the absurd loading screens. Any time you die you will have to sit through a long loading screen where monsters gnash and roar at the player as they wait for the level they were already in to load back to checkpoint, and the moments where Splatterhouse will happily instantly kill you for not jumping at the right point or crush you with heavy damage attacks become much more egregious when trying again requires waiting through the same loading screen you’ve already seen too many times before the game’s first chapter is complete. On the matter of glitches though, entire levels could be ruined by the game forgetting to properly transition from one area to the next. The camera could get locked in a strange position where I couldn’t even see Rick or who he was fighting, and even if I defeated all the enemies on the screen, it wouldn’t open up the next area, leaving me trapped until I turned off the system and did a full level redo. Some of the execution kills would not display their button indicators or wrap up in an odd manner like Rick tearing apart air while his enemy’s body floats off the right, and sometimes, you just fall through the world to your doom. Checkpointing isn’t awful, but every death, fair or unfair, incurs such a time penalty and can potentially throw you back into another glitchy situation, so while the action of the game has the thrill of mindless carnage, there are too many things that might potentially yank the rug out from under you and interrupt the rhythm of the mayhem.

THE VERDICT: Gloriously gory and with a surprisingly interesting plot as its backbone, Splatterhouse was almost a decent reboot for the franchise. The action is certainly more flash than substance but it’s broken up with different gameplay types enough that it doesn’t drag, but the benefits of the aesthetic and acceptable action are outweighed by the technical problems. Load screens already bring the game to constant screeching halts after any death, but the fact glitches can randomly pop up and force a retried level or even a console reset certainly stretch the limits of what the gameplay can provide. If its the bugs were tied up it could be passable, but the messiness you’d hope to find from the over the top blood and viscera has infected Splatterhouse’s code as well.

 

And so, I give Splatterhouse for Xbox 360…

A BAD rating. There are certainly stretches of Splatterhouse where a player can have a decent time, these being the ones where glitches are less impactful and cheap deaths are kept to a low. The bigger problems aren’t always frequent, but when they crop up, they definitely drag down an experience that was mostly getting by on its style and devotion to extreme violence. The arena mode is perhaps the purest way to experience the appeals of the game, the limited scope allowing you to experience the visceral thrill of the combat with a far lower risk of progression bugs or frequent long load screens, but of course even these have their glitches and they lack the main game’s appealing story. It’s far to easy to point at the technical problems and say those are what needs to be fixed to make this game better, but adding more strategic fights between the wanton carnage could have done a lot to let this 3D brawler have its bloody cake and eat it too. Bosses really should have asked for more than just avoiding the attacks properly and more special enemy types such as the Aegis squid who must be dealt with before the other monsters could have improved the fights, but most of the thought is saved for a mild puzzle component on the side and shifts to the action are more often the simple sidescrolling segments which are more about dodging swinging blades than fighting intelligently.

 

Splatterhouse’s bloody brawling and surprisingly good plot make me want to like this game, and the fact it even includes the first three Splatterhouse games on the disc really make it upsetting that it didn’t live up to its potential. Even if it was basic for the most part it could still provide some decent visceral action, but the shaky design causes aggravating technical problems that continuously undermine any attempt to enjoy the mediocre but stylish offerings.