"Help me Rick!!"

User Rating: 9 | Splatterhouse Part 3 GEN
Wow. That's the first thing I think to myself whenever I think back to the first time I played this game. I didn't get a chance to play it till a few years after it came out and Id never heard of the first 2 in the series. This game was one of a kind to me and it gave me nightmares for years.

Splatterhouse 3 is the third (and at the time) final chapter in the Splaterhouse series. Its a direct sequel to the story of the first two games. So far you play as a man named Rick Taylor. Him and his girlfriend Jennifer decided to study a mansion that was once owned by a parapsychologist named Dr. West. This house was of course nicknamed The Splatterhouse. They come to house for a school project and are forced to seek shelter inside because of a thunder storm. Inside they are attacked and Rick wakes up to find Jennifer was kidnapped and he has a mask that he cant remove. This mask is known as The Terror Mask. He uses the power given to him by this sacrificial ornament and searches the house.

Three months later in part 2, the mask calls to Rick telling him to return to the house. This is all so he can revive someone who was lost in the first game's story ( i don't wanna give away the spoilers). Rick eventually has to fight Dr. West himself and enters the void in the house to rescue who he went back for.

In part 3 you find that Rick's (i think she was his wife at this point) Jennifer and their son David were both kidnapped and brought back to Splatterhouse. This time Terror Mask has his own reasons for helping Rick.

New to this installment was the ability to use a power meter to transform into "Monster Rick". This gave Rick way more power to his attacks and made him the size of the Hulk. This also reduced the time you had to spend on the ground every time an enemy knocked you down. Also new in this game was a time limit in each level. They justified this new feature by having it directly affect the story you would see. Basically, you start a level with a certain time and you are shown a short explanation of what was going on in the room you wanted to reach. If you got to the boss in that room in time you get a good ending to that level. If you didn't make it in time something bad would happen to whoever you were trying to save or if it wasn't a person something equally as bad would happen depending on the story you created to that point.

This game is Hard! Its gets progressively harder as you move through the game. The time limits seem impossible to beat on the first run through the game. You can look at a map once you finish the first room of a level and see where you are and where you need to be. This made navigating the multiple exits to each room alot easier. The problem was, you had to survive the fights long enough to have a chance to leave the room.

The controls were pretty good. You had new moves like being able to pick monsters up and throw them. You also had special super moves in the Monster form. The transformation definitely made it alot easier to deal with monsters on the way thru the rooms, but you could only build up power by beating up monsters or picking up orbs that would fill the meter about 1/4 of the way. The only major complaint i have about the controls was that sometimes you'd think you are able to hit a monster but you are on a slightly different level of the screen than they are so you miss, but they still connect when attacking you. This is a problem i have in all games that are in a beat 'em up style so its probably just me.

The music and sounds were great. Especially the music. For the Genesis this was very good quality. Some of the songs had familiar sounds to them. For example, one level sounds kinda like the doomsday zone music from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Complete. But other than that the music fits the theme and the enviorment perfectly. The sound effects were done pretty well. There was always an echo to Rick's voice when he got knocked down and they mad especial noises for then he'd head-butt monsters. The music would actually cut for a second so you could hear his skull smashing into the monsters. The sounds also kept the feeling of terror and suspense throughout the entire game.

The visuals were great for the time. The gore was unheard of back when the original came out. This series is from before Mortal Kombat and is probably the first game to feature blood like this and to feature decapitation, rotting flesh, and other things that probably would have been baned if any censorship people were paying attention to these games at the time. The animations are a little stiff at times but they are still pretty decent.

The story itself is also very well done. I'm not trying to say it was a brand new idea, but it was nice that it had so many different scenarios to it. The multiple endings and the especially the multiple ends to the levels made it worth replaying over and over just to try and see them all. This was also the kid of game that when you were a kid you'd wait till late at night, shut off all the lights in the house and play it alone to scare the hell outta yourself. The game was so strange and creepy back then. It did have a pretty huge plot twist in the end but i really don't want to give that away to anyone who hasn't finished the game or to anyone who wants to play it for themselves.

Overall, this game was a classic and still is fun to play. Back when Castlevania was the scariest thing out there, the Splatter house series cam along to show us all what a true video game horror story could really be like. The trilogy had a great finish to the story no matter which ending you earned. This game is definatly worth a try if you still have a Genesis to play it on.