Splatterhouse

 The blood-soaked orgy that was this 16-bit series is given a much-surprising rebirth in this generation. A game that that is more infamous than fondly remembered is not the usual target for such relaunchings of series (do you see people falling over themselves to remake Carmageddon or Postal?), but perhaps the nearly 20 years since the series was remotely relevant to now can help people ignore some of the flaws the original games had.

You play Rick, who might be Gordon Freeman's lost love-child. The developers have basically given him Dr. Freeman's face, which was an odd choice. He and his hot girlfriend, Jen (who, as you learn during the game, is fond of taking NSFW pictures) are visiting a mysterious Dr. West, who kidnaps Jen to replace his wife who has been missing for 140 years. Rick is killed and a mask gives him the option of allowing the mask to heal Rick's wounds with blood and save his girlfriend, or to die. Rick takes the mask up on the offer, does a decades worth of steroids in apparently one shot, and transforms from winner of "Most likely To Resemble Shaggy" to Freak of Nature in moments.

And, thus, the bloodshed begins. In earnest.

You will kill enemies in some amazingly...well, wet ways. You will hear squishing to a level that you will either become desensitized to it and find it borderline humorous...or you will become nauseated. Not a lot of middle ground here. Me? I was OK with it. My wife? No, not so much. Over 12 levels, you dismember people, disembowel enemies, have your own arm torn off and use THAT to kill people. The developers, for the flaws that the game clearly has, clearly had a blast thinking of new and intriguing ways to cause bodily harm to moderately living creatures.

The mask is your companion and not your best friend. He will call you a "pussy" a bit frequently. He will comment on how hot your girlfriend is. He will ask you to take people's insides and make them their outsides. He is your partner and worst enemy, all rolled into one.

Now, in this game, blood is major part. Blood heals your wounds, blood powers up your attacks....blood is your currency. The blood flows in what I can only imagine is a realistic manner (having never torn anybody's arm off and beaten them about the head with it, I am in poor position to discuss the real ways blood would move in said situations. If you can provide concrete examples of how it looks...please do not).

Not to say the game is perfect. Collision-detection is WAY too temperamental. Sometimes, when you swing a chainsaw at a dude, they will be hit by it. Others, even if they are no further away than the previous guy was, they won't be hit by it. It's too much of a crap shoot. The shotgun is not terribly useful as it lacks any type of a targeting reticle to line your shots. Clipping seems to happen a lot and, visually, nothing really looks that good close up. I do like that Rick can lose chunks of his body, but the character model still looks a bit dated. Your collection of combos is nice, but the camera can make lining up some of them an exercise in frustration.

There are also some odd additions. Why are they shredded up nude pictures of Rick's girlfriend all over the game? You'd think he'd eventually assume she was unfaithful given how many times you can see her tits in pictures left at a house you certainly have never seen before. They also give arena battles that are decent, but the camera never seems to give you a great vantage point for actually doing the damage needed to kill enemies quickly and generate high scores for you.

It's not a terribly long game and the plot keeps going at a good pace. There are brief side-scrolling levels that are an homage to the original series (all of which are unlockable content) but they seem harmlessly pointless. The brief 3-D platforming areas aren't great, again, thanks to the dodgy collision-detection. The game gives suitable closure and all of your upgrades transfer over to a new playthrough (needed, because the hardest difficulty will make you cry otherwise).

This is a fun little romp, but is does reside on the lower-tier of third-person action titles. For $60, it is a difficult game to justify. For $40? Sounds much closer to being right. Give it a shot because it is better than I expected it to be.

Not saying it is great...just better than I expected.