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.
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.