Splatterhouse (Sony Playstation 3)
The certified, 100% Leftover Culture recommended way to wind down Halloween month
Splatterhouse 2 is a game that was on my radar since about June, in a lot of ways it seemed pretty unremarkable but awesomely stylish with one major problem, it is expensive. I picked up Splatterhouse on the PS3 for $15 with unlockable versions of the original arcade Splatterhouse and Genesis ports of Splatterhouse 2 and 3. It suddenly made much more sense to give the series a review instead of singling out one entry, but naturally, that put far greater stress on my time.
This review has far less story than last week’s Halloween review, but basically the slime alien duplicated itself as a game cartridge that Bruiser plays. The alien copies his genetic code and begins to morph into a clone Bruiser, that’s where this review begins. The clone also serves as the reason Bruiser manages to get his hands on 1.) a Playstation 3 and 2.) an ultra-violent ‘adult’ video game.
To make up for the lack of story and special effects, the review segment itself is significantly longer. I’ve tried to cover all the Splatterhouse games available to a Western audience. I’ve omitted Wanpaku Graffitti because even though it was made by Namco, it doesn’t form part of the Splatterhouse cannon and it was only released on the Famicon for Japanese audiences. If you want to learn more about this bizarre parody, check out Hardcore Gaming 101’s Splatterhouse article.
On the production side of this review, there’s far less effects than my previous Halloween episode, Zombies ate my Neighbors, and I even recycled some of the slime alien footage for the final scene. The only original effect is the scene at the beginning where Bruiser shots his clone, done simply using a split screen method.
The game footage in particular was one of the bigger hurdles in producing this review. A bulk of the PS3 footage was captured using a standard USB AV adapter and upscaled. In the end I resorted to filming using my camera because the recording software began to fail. Splatterhouse 2 and 3 footage was captured using an emulator, even though I try to own the original titles in my reviews and play the original games as they’re meant to be played, when it finally comes to recording the footage I just find an emulator provides the cleanest, most usable footage.
Footage for the original Splatterhouse game was captured through USB recording device, filmed and unfortunately, I also resorted to downloading some playthrough footage. This bought up a lot of ethical questions, but ultimately, I didn’t use much of the footage and I was more interested in capturing the look and feel of the environments and monsters, not showcasing the actual gameplay. I’m not proud of my decision to use ‘nabbed’ footage, but in a more general sense, I don’t own any of the gameplay footage in any of my reviews anyway and yes, I do have a version of Splatterhouse that I have played for the review.
Splatterhouse was a challenging game to review for the Leftover Culture Review, we didn’t have the equipment or the time to play and record a PS3 game successfully, let alone 3 other games in the series.
I’ve learnt a lot, worked hard and I’m already really excited about Halloween 2014, I might need to make this a big annual bash backed up with more toy reviews, games, movie reviews and anything else I can get hands on. Stay safe, good luck with the trick and/or treating and goodwill to all mankind.