It's mediocre but honestly at the same time it's fucking great lmfao. There was clearly so much love that went into this and it's seriously a huge shame things turned out the way they did.

The cell shading effects look pretty great, the dialogue from the Terror Mask is fantastic and while the gameplay is clunky, it's pretty enjoyable to just mash through fights and turn your enemies into paste on the wall. I also greatly appreciate the small nods to the previous games made by the mask breaking the 4th wall.

I'll have to settle with being fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy (since they cost a fucking kidney cause of resellers) but I'll forever be saddened to know there's never gonna be a sequel to continue onward with the huge cliffhanger at the end of the game.

Um jogo que tem certo carisma, que poderia ser melhor construido, mas ainda é um bom hack and slash, o design de todo o game é legal, bons inimigos, level design bom tmb, a história classica mas com um desfecho horrivel, ultimo boss mal feito, toda a parte final é abaixo do resto do game, parece que foi feito as pressas, o jogo em certo momento se torna cansativo, visto que não se tem tanto elementos alem de progredir na historia e massacrar demonios, mas na totalidade, se gosta de hack and slash é uma boa escolha.

I honestly was ready to give this game a 7 or 8, cause while it wasn't perfect, I definitely had fun with the game. But, the last two stages singlehandedly dropped the game to a 6, because they pretty much highlighted all of the biggest problems with the game.
I wish this game didn't suffer through development hell and a rushed release date, because I can see a good game hidden underneath all the janky parts.
The combat can be fun but gets repetitive when you don't have much variety in your moves, especially when a lot of the enemies can only be defeated using a single specific move. The enemies and their designs and movesets are fine on their own, but then the game suddenly throws around 10 of them at the same time, getting hit once can lead you to getting wailed nonstop with no way to defend yourself. The "gore kills" are cool, but do get stale when you have to do the qte's so many times.
The presentation is easily the best part of the game, the reimagined monsters and bosses are fantastic, the soundtrack is fantastic and hypes you up when necessary, and the story was actually a nice touch (aside from the shitty cliffhanger ending lol). Also, Jim Cumming's and Josh Keaton's banter as Rick and the mask is the highlight of the game.
I really hope this series will return one day and give us a proper great beat em up that Splatterhouse rightfully deserves.

This game is a guilty pleasure of mine. Despite that, it's full of problems. Combat doesn't feel great. The collectables being nudes of your girlfriend feels weird. There aren't many glory kills and they get repetitive fast. One of those glory kills is fisting an enemy's anus. A lot of the stage design is uninspired. The 2D sections feel terrible to play. There's enemies that can kill you in one hit by decapitating you. The loading times for when you die are absurdly long. There's a lot against this game.

Despite all of that, I still enjoy it. I like the interactions between Rick and the Mask (Voiced by Disney's Pete). I liked unlocking the original trilogy as a bonus. It has the greatest "#$%@ you" dropped in 7th gen, beating out the one in DmC: Devil May Cry by a wide margin.

Playing Splatterhouse is like ordering Domino's: It's not going to be great to get through. It'll probably find some way to haunt you. You're probably going to go back for more, despite that.

I was so excited for this game because I could see the potential it could bring. Lots of gore in a 3D setting with the awesome monster design from the classic arcade and Sega Genesis games. Man, was I wrong. This game is full of so many flaws and good ideas have gone wrong that just a little play testing and polish could have made this game great. It tries to be a modern action/adventure with a bit of softcore porn and (a lot) of ultra violence thrown in. The story is somewhat interesting with H.P. Lovecraft inspired mythos and art style, but you won’t care because most won’t even finish the game.


Splatterhouse is all about combat so let’s start there. The combat is just seriously flawed. I can’t explain enough how unbalanced and frustrating the combat is. If the developers only tweaked it some it would be just right, but there are so many little nuances that drive you crazy. Firstly, you never feel powerful enough. You can acquire new moves, but you never increase in strength. These moves just add to your arsenal of weakness. Even the smallest enemy needs a lot of pummeling before they die. This gets really frustrating when the game throws a lot of enemies at you. You are just so overwhelmed and you rely on your Mask powers which use the poorly balanced blood meter. This meter can be increased with upgrades, but it takes three slots to activate Mask mode. In Mask mode, you can slaughter enemies easily, but it doesn’t last long. A poor use of this meter is when you do temporary Mask attacks like Splatter or Smash. They each use a blood slot. Why?! That is so frustrating because you need to use it because the regular attacks aren’t powerful enough. If you use these special attacks you will never be able to enter Mask mode when you really need it. Highly unbalanced and frustrating.


If that isn’t enough let’s talk about the weapons and 2D platforming sections. They tried to be cute and go back to Splatterhouse roots, but they just ruin your precious memories of that game. Whenever you just touch an obstacle you get hurt. The jumping is terrible with no momentum at play. The run button is flawed because you can’t interrupt it so you have to remember how far you run because Rick just stops and it takes forever for the animation to end. This leads to cheap deaths which lead to horrendously long load times that can take up to a minute. You will die a lot in this game so expect to endure long load times after each death. If that isn’t enough the weapons break just after a few hits, and instead of creating more interesting enemies the last four levels of the game are just ridiculously difficult because tons of sub-bosses are thrown at you to compensate for lazy enemy design. There are only about 6 different enemies in the whole game and they are not any fun to even kill. The Splatter Kills are fun during the first level, but there are only about 4 different animations! This game just wants you to hate it.


So if that isn’t enough to keep you away I don’t know what will. A few of the bosses are pretty fun but towards the end that kind of stops. There are some interesting combat puzzles but are flawed due to poor hit detection. Even if you beat the game why would you want to come back for combat arenas? The combat system is just slow, unresponsive, full of uninterruptible animations, and just not fun at all. If you really want to play you can pick up the nude Jenny photos along the way, but it isn’t even worth it for that. Splatterhouse has a lot of potentials but ultimately fails due to lazy game design and unbalanced everything. The story and art are nice with a lot of gore, but even the graphics are lacking due to using the outdated Unreal Engine 3. I honestly can’t even recommend a rental. Stick with the three Sega Genesis games and forget this even exist. Maybe next time? We will have to see.

if you aren't at all enticed by a brawler where you bash demons in with your own severed appendages while jim cummings (who you may know better as the master, or winnie the pooh) relentlessly taunts you over the damned chanting of "WHITE WHALE; HOLY GRAIL", then seriously just get the fuck out of here

in all honesty there's some lacking enemy variety towards the backend (a problem with most beat em ups) but minor complaints aside this is genuinely one of the most underrated games of all time with some fantastic art direction and a surprisingly captivating story to boot

shame it'll prolly never get a sequel, but even if it does end on a cliffhanger - it's one really fucking cool cliffhanger

rick is literally me

TW: I cuss in this one

Janky, glitchy, derivative, the loading times are atrocious, there, I said it, there's the cons to Splatterhouse 2010. It's obvious that a ton of content got pruned out during a terrible development process. It's a shame. Now let's get into the good shit.

The voice acting is way better than this game deserves, featuring Josh Keaton and Jim Darkwing-goddamn-Duck Cummings, and the plot is good! You end up wanting way more of it but what's there is campy fun. Jim as the Terror Mask is hilarious, deranged, and he's acting the hell out his lines. It really is amazing.

I want some half decent Lovecraft content in a game just once in my life, and this does tap a little bit into some eldritch horror themes as well as your normal campy gore fest - the amount of mayhem is astounding and the combat is slick and satisfying. This is one of those games that kind of gets easier as it goes on and you unlock upgrades and combos. The splatter kill QTEs get a little old a lotta fast but they don't drag the game down too hard. This is the one game where I performed a QTE and my Significant Other left the room after I literally fisted a giant monster to death in front of him. Truly the finest moment of my gaming career.

It's so sad the game got cut basically in half and the ending was a cliffhanger, because we probably won't get anymore of this insanity any decade soon. There was a lot of potential to be something excellent and it's a great lot of fun as flawed as it is.

It also comes with the three old-school games as a nice bonus.. These glowing claw skeletons can get fucked, though.

Another game for the 2010 Retro theme, and although it's a repeat, it's been over 8 years since I played it last. It's a game i remembered fondly and had been meaning to play for a few months now, and a friend of mine in America was nice enough to track down a copy to give me when I came to visit (the game never came out in Japan ^^;). I thought I'd remembered a decent bit, but I had forgotten a TON about this game. I went in expecting something just okay, and a decent portion of that my nostalgia, but I left with something better in many regards than I had originally given it credit for. I beat it on normal mode and it took me about 8 or 9 hours.

Splatterhouse (2010) is a reboot of the series that brings it into the 21st century. It's a reimagining of the original Splatterhouse story, as Rick and Jennifer go to visit the creepy Dr. West. Dr. West kidnaps Jennifer, Rick is left for dead, and Rick has to use the Terror Mask to get hella jacked and go beat up a bunch of monsters to get her back. Those are still the broad strokes of the story, but Splatterhouse actually surprised me a decent amount with the level of substance it has to its narrative.

A lot of the dialogue in the game is Rick and the Terror Mask (delightfully voiced by Jim Cummings) chatting as they go through their quest to rescue Jen and save the world. A lot of their conversations at least begin with the Mask taunting Rick for being unused to horrific violence and generally not being super manly. The Mask has a lot of one-liners or snide comments that are occasionally 4th wall-breaking, but I was either neutral or positive towards most of the humor in the game ("Let's show him why we call it 'SPLATTERHOUSE'", was one of my personal favorites X3). One line of taunting in particular is how Rick secretly loves all this and how he isn't grossed out at all, although it eventually escalates beyond simple taunting. The Mask saying how Rick is really a killer and always has been, "in another game, in another life." "You've been secretly wearing a mask your whole life." Rick even begins to start getting wrapped up in just how visceral everything is and how good all this revenge feels.

The game has a lot of broader strokes around analyzing the macho, aggressive aspects of toxic masculinity, but the most focused aspects of it revolve around that line of thinking. Is Rick really a violent person, or is he just doing what needs to be done as a victim of circumstance? As Rick insists to the Mask that he's actually a good, peaceful person despite all the horrible violence he's clearly enjoying partaking in, the game poses the question to Rick, and by extension the player: are who are actions portray us to be, or who we internally insist we truly are?

That said, the game doesn't really go quite far enough in a lot of its other comparisons to really mean much. It tries to compare Dr. West and Rick's goals in a way that could make Dr. West sympathetic, but it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny despite working in the moment. Particularly, the way it sexualizes Jennifer seems to be at least partially in an attempt to dissect Rick's macho, protective attitude towards her, but especially with the collectibles being her nude photos, it's really hard to argue that a lot of her presence isn't just T&A XP. Regardless, while it isn't exactly Spec Ops: The Line, it's a fine commentary on violence in games, and it's something I have to give credit to the game for doing (even if it kinda fumbles the landing).

Aesthetically, it leans pretty hard into being a schlocky, B-movie sorta horror. There's tons of blood (like, a LOT of blood effects), some pretty grotesque glory kills, and the collectibles in each stage are pictures (often topless) of Rick's girlfriend Jen. If you are at all squeamish about blood, gore, dismemberment, then I would say this game is probably going to be a very hard sell for you. The main saving grace for me is that everything you're fighting (in true Splatterhouse fashion) are monsters and not humans, but they are often still humanoid, so it's not exactly like it doesn't look like tearing off a head or an arm XP. I'm not really a metal fan, so I didn't really care for the vocal tracks, but the instrumental and retro-inspired themes are pretty good. Nothing mp3 player-worthy, for the most part, but something I noticed beyond the gameplay and thought was nice (which is a heck of a lot more than I can say for how I feel when I play most other games where the music just blends into the background for the most part).

The game looks pretty good for a 2010 game, and BOY does it suffer for it. The game has some ever-present framerate issues, at least on the PS3 port. Perhaps they're a little better on the 360 version, but I wouldn't count on it being a huge difference. It doesn't usually hinder gameplay to any significant degree, but there are some fights where the game does chug to a near unacceptable level for brief periods. Definitely far from a deal-breaker on a mechanical level, but it really makes it suffer in the visuals department.

SPEAKING of the gameplay, it's Splatterhouse, so it's a brawler. It's certainly not Bayonetta, but it's certainly better than Darksiders despite still feeling a little repetitive at times. The game does a good job of varying up the conditions of when you'll fight enemies so it doesn't feel like exactly the same fight yet again despite the overall enemy variety being decent but not exactly huge. The game is fairly difficult, so you're often on your toes as Rick can't take THAT much punishment despite a generous ability to heal. You have light attacks, heavy attacks, grabs, and a super meter. The super meter allows you to do your health siphoning move, do special super attacks, as well as activate your invincible super form. As you kill enemies, the Mask absorbs blood points which can then be spent on new abilities in the pause menu. Combat flows well and feels nice and meaty despite not being super deep, which is exactly how I like my brawler combat. People who like something a bit more technical will likely feel bored by it by the end, but this was exactly my speed when it comes to this kind of thing.

The game also has a fair bit of platforming, but it often is either pointlessly easy or frustratingly difficult. In addition to 3D platforming sections where your exact position can be difficult to judge, the game also has 2D sidescrolling segments in an homage to the old Splatterhouse games. The 3D platforming sections are definitely the most frustrating, as Rick's jumping doesn't really feel super great, your windows on when you can jump are often not that huge, and the loading times are not exactly short when you die (like 10-15 seconds) (and on that note the loading screen is also this really obnoxious loop of a monster freaking out at the camera and I have no idea who thought that was a good idea but they were VERY wrong). I don't remember being nearly this frustrated with the platforming in my last playthrough, so maybe I was just more unlucky than usual this time through the game, but that was my experience through the game this time nonetheless.

Verdict: Recommended. I wasn't sure how well this game would hold up upon replaying it, but it was actually very pleasantly worth my time. I still hold this up among Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom as Namco's 3 forgotten gems of last gen. It's certainly not perfect and its certainly not going to abide by everyone's sensibilities for gore, but it's a well-realized product and also a great home-collection of the other three retro Splatterhouse games to boot! (no Wanpaku Graffiti, unfortunately). It's getting harder to find (and a bit more expensive as well) these days, but if you can find it for cheap it's definitely worth picking up.

This is a bit of a disappointing game. It looks pretty fine at surface level, there's the bloody presentation, a charming Terror Mask and you gotta go save your girlfriend from this house of horror. However, the presentation is a bit odd to me. We got the gratuitous amount of blood and gore, but we don't really have the clear homages to the slasher films that Splaterrhouse started with in the arcade, there's a bunch of meh licensed music and the framerate is constantly dipping. That said, they really tried to make a complete story for this game and the characters have great voice acting with Jim Cummings as the Mask being the highlight, but I really appreciate Josh Keaton's Rick too.

The gameplay starts out HORRIBLE. The start of the game is probably the least polished, poor performance combined with mechanics that are explained well after you need the explanation really sour the beginning of the game, it takes like an hour to really pick up. However, when you figure out how to make combos and guarantee your glory kills it becomes pretty fun!

You get upgrades to expand your moveset and get more health or better weapons, which does help the game keep the fun alongside the introductions to new environments and enemies, but that really slows down when you're around the middle of the game and there's barely much of it by the end.

You'll get thrown into areas with unexplained mechanics or forced platforming without warning and probably die because you don't know what you're doing, then wait for loading screens that can take entire minutes to finish, and the game starts to become a chore. The final stage has a horrible objective that I had to do by turning the game down to easy to tolerate it and I was just tired. This is one of those games that really needed some more polish and time and maybe it would have been great, but as it is, its saving grace is that it's short enough for the flaws to not accumulate so much that you REALLY want to quit, and I still felt like quitting when there was just a few minutes of game left.

I really want something that can follow up on what Splatterhouse was doing in the 80s-90s, a homage to some horror and slasher classics, but without the average game design and unfair difficulty. This game isn't quite there, but it gets close to having the right attitude at points, and I still had fun through most of it but really wish another chance for something like this could still happen. If you do play this, please set it to easy during phase 11 or 12, but also look into its development and cut content. Some of the cut dialogue is great, and it helps contextualize where this game was on the right track but why it didn't get there. I really do recommend it if you're interested, but it won't win you over if you have no tolerance for the issues I brought up.

Incredibly gory, violent, has a cool aesthetic and presentation, but is dragged down by technical issues and a combat system that doesn't have too much depth.

The game, even on a lower difficulty can keep you on your toes and present a challenge. Brute forcing your way through encounters doesn't work well. You'll have to quickly learn how to dodge properly, otherwise you'll find yourself dying pretty often. Add to this load times that are on the longer side, which additionally encourage you not to die as often.
I found upgrading health, light and heavy attacks to be your best first investment.

The story was fine for what it was. You won't lose much by not paying attention to it.

The combat is more spectacle than depth and I found it fun for the first half of the game, but after that it became a little monotonous. Enemies having a lot more HP than they needed to contributed to that as well.
The platforming and 2D sections can be hit or miss. In the first half of the game, they're both fun and frustrating, while in the second, they felt more like filler.

The biggest issue is that this game just lacks polish. It doesn't seem to be properly optimized and there's always a small amount of lag that doesn't go away. The camera angles can be a little awkward at times. As mentioned previously, loading times are quite long as well.

The 3 classic Splatterhouse games are included as unlockables, which is a nice addition.

Despite its flaws, the game has a certain charm to it and it could've been great had it not been for its technical issues and rather basic combat system.

Hear me out, but this is one of the best games you can buy for the sheer value of what's included. Not only do you get the 2010 reboot game on the disc, but you also have access to the original 3 Splatterhouse games just by playing through the main game; amazing.

It's also really nice to say that the actual game itself is rather decent; nothing amazing, but certainly better than many people have led you to believe; there's a reason why this game is going up in value with time. Additionally, most mainstream critics have never really understood the value in most "cult media," so if this even somewhat seems up your alley, you should totally get your hands on this game.

Anyway, for a standard action brawler, Splatterhouse isn't bad, but not particularly great. Devil May Cry/God of War comparisons are nowhere near warranted as Splatterhouse is far more obsessed with the spectacle rather than crafting complicated gameplay. There's certainly a challenge to be had in this game, but seasoned action game players will largely breeze through the game (I played on normal), say for a few difficulty peaks (ESPECIALLY Phase 11). Nevertheless, the action feels meaty, and the obsessive amounts of blood and gore are simultaneously comical and rewarding for playing the game well; a very nice touch.

Combat pacing is largely rather decent in Splatterhouse, but there are a few issues that could've been ironed out, even with its hellish development cycle in mind; execution animations are way too long, it can sometimes be rather difficult to throw enemies where the game wants you to, and the sidescrolling bits really should've had an extra dose of polish touched onto them before the game shipped. Of course, I understand that these issues come from a seriously troubling development, and it's bizarre that we even got the game in the state it's currently in, but it also really could've used some big quality of life improvements along the way.

Simplistic gameplay aside, the game has not aged particularly well visually, with many weird textures and graphical glitches, not to mention the audio can get really wacky (it's recommended to play with subtitles on). All in all, the game is still very sturdy, say for some painfully long loading screens, one soft-crash, and one weird bit towards the end of the game where my "activate the super meter button" wasn't functioning; that - as well as any other issue I was having - was simply solved by just going back to the main menu and loading the game again.

Mediocre gameplay and performance don't sound like a great selling point, but I promise you that if you enjoyed the other Splatterhouse games, generally like the beat-em-up genre, and/or have an affinity for cult horror movies like Re-Animator, The Evil Dead, and so on, you'll have a great time with this game. It's just a shame, though that people are really seeing the value in this game, and since it's the last real Splatterhouse game we're honestly ever going to get, it's going to just rise in price, more than likely. Either buy it while you can still find it reasonably (definitely not the PS3 port), or just emulate it when 360/PS3 emulation gets in a better spot.