Splatterhouse

Splatterhouse's aesthetic is little bit late '80s and a little bit late '90s, like it started development a lot longer than a few years ago. From Rick's baggy nu-metal shorts to the crusty thrash riffage that occasionally paraphrases a good beat-down, it's all curiously dated in a cool kind of way – just like the license it seeks to re-imagine. While it lacks the production values and fluidity of God of War III, it does ultimately champion excessive carnage for excessive carnage's sake. [January 2011 p78]

Splatterhouse is the revival of an old franchise and the gameplay is pretty extreme. It's a typical hack and slash game with a lot of blood and bodyparts flying around. The game is nice to play when you're fighting, but the platforming isn't great. Just for fans of extreme violence.

Although it surely can't be defined as a masterpiece, this reboot proves that the Splatterhouse franchise possesses an unquestionable potential even after 22 years from its official début. If you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, Rick's adventure, will surely be able to deliver the emotions you're searching for.

Far more competent than it has any right to be, Splatterhouse is an entertaining brawler that's over-the-top in its tackiness that you really have to fight not to grin.

Splatterhouse's most obvious flaw is that many of the abilities that are taken for granted in a modern beat-'em-up, like invincibility frames on a dodge or useful combos, are purchasable upgrades.

The clear-a-room combat can get a bit repetitive, but the diverse cast of crazies -- and the equally varied ways to silence them -- should keep horror fans hacking, slashing, beheading, and eviscerating through the ten-plus hour campaign.

It's too bad that Splatterhouse couldn't be brought to this console generation and become a competitive franchise.

Big, stupid and, at times, unpleasant. But despite that it can be gruesome fun. [Feb 2011, p.82]

The combo-based action is utterly ridiculous. [Feb 2011, p.100]

Flying body parts and buckets of blood form the basics of Splatterhouse. The soundtrack and the voice overs have been done very well but the graphics just aren't up to today's standards.

As blood splashes on the ground, walls, on Taylor's body and even on the screen, Splatterhouse shows that not all video games have to take the route of melodramas. It's simple. It's fun. Most importantly, it does its job at giving action fans a fantastic romp through a violent backdrop. It also helps that the soundtrack chosen is right out of a metalhead's dreams.

Gore, metal music and brutal combat. Splatterhouse is a good beat'em up, especially if you're a die-hard nostalgist for this franchise.

And that's the theme for Splatterhouse: inconsistent, erratic, unreliable and sometimes too unforgiving.

In this day and age, there is no way a game like Splatterhouse could have the shock value it so obviously yearns for, not to mention that all the blood in the world couldn't cover up its various deficiencies.

Back to the point though, Splatterhouse is actually more satisfying than the original games, even with all of the game's problems. In that way it's a successful reboot.

On the whole, Splatterhouse achieves what it sets out to do, even if it is spoiled in parts by some sloppy execution and technical niggles. It's mindless, tasteless and ultimately throwaway, but as the mask often intones: "I could say I wasn't enjoying this ... but that would be a lie."

For Splatterhouse to be a good game it needed to have more depth. For the majority of the game's 10 chapters I simply button mashed until I could activate my special attack, and repeated that over and over.

Splatterhouse is the kind of game that simply falls victim to its troubled development cycle.

It's a measure of how far we've come that just over 20 years ago the sight of blood alone was enough to shock and offend, whereas now it is nowhere near enough.

Splatterhouse isn't an uber-terrible, unplayable game...but its damn close.

This is not a game that will score high with gamer girlfriends.

Above all else, Splatterhouse is a game that screams "competent." Specifically, it screams it with a guttural heavy metal growl over the deafening din of grinding power chords and machine gun blasts of double bass, while simultaneously vomiting a fire hydrant's worth of blood all over the screen.

Only serious gore fiends need apply. [Issue#200, p.95]

It's hardly the deepest game around, but its combo system, barrage of enemies, and difficulty all dovetail with the endless brutal carnage to recall, in some ways, the Ninja Gaiden remake: If you're good and quick enough, you'll avoid getting hit, but when you get cornered, you'll be walloped.

There are definitely areas that the game could see some serious improvement, but overall, I'm not entirely disappointed in this old school revival attempt.

This gore fest is totally spoiled by bad level design, lame AI and frustrating controls.

It's not bad, just basic. [Jan 2011, p.113]

Splatterhouse is wildly gory and wildly uneven. It has unrealized potential, and maybe if the kinks were worked out it would've been a great action game.

Ultimately, Splatterhouse is a fun game when taken in tiny chunks.