Splatterhouse

Above: "I've got some bad news..."

For all the talk about cross-cultural development, Japanese publishers seem to be struggling with working out how to make games overseas (as in, anywhere not in Japan). Following disappointing sales of Western-developed games such as Enslaved, Splatterhouse, and Dead to Rights: Retribution, Namco Bandai Games has made the decision to severely scale back all development of games outside of its Japanese studios...

In recent years the term “Easter Egg” in games has been used fast and loose- like your mom- but in the recently released remake of Splatterhouse there are some true Easter Eggs to be found.  There are also a load of homages to horror movies and the writings of HP Lovecraft. If that wasn’t enough, there are also tons of in your face references such as those in the titles of the achievements/trophies that have nods and winks towards horror movies and Cthulhu Lore but those are easy enough to discover on your own, so we won’t be wasting our time with those. These are the more clever and out of the way Easter Eggs and references for your enjoyment. So get enjoying!

Nudity and violence go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Splatterhouse definitely has its share of peanut butter and thanks to the torn up naughty pictures of herself that Ricks girlfriend Jen leaves behind, the game also has its fair share of chocolate. Since no one should be denied the visual of computer generated boobs, we have put together this guide to help you complete your album of images. Throughout the game some of the boobs photo pieces are right in your face and hard to miss, like Hooters, while there are some that are hidden behind some rather tricky puzzles, like a regular date. Not all of the pictures are of the naked variety– as a man named Willie dressed up as Santa once said, “They can’t all be winners.” Of course that doesn’t matter because it’s all about the achievements and trophies and not the actual images. Right? Maybe not.

Maybe you've heard of Splatterhouse. Maybe you know the original 1988 arcade game or the Genesis/TG-16 entries in the series. Maybe you've heard about how gory it is. Maybe you've heard it's the goriest game of E3 2010. Maybe, in light of all these things, you think you know what to expect.

You don't...

There are two kinds of good game. There are the good games that come out, get fine reviews, sell adequately, and then fade into well-regarded obscurity: your Vortex, your Space Station Silicon Valley, your Land Stalker (a perplexed, blank stare is the correct response here). And then there are the good games that have a lasting impact on the medium. These games aren't necessarily any better, but they get talked about more often because they defied – and redefined – our expectations. Red Dead Redemption may be such a title. It's the first time a cowboy-themed game has transcended the resolute OK-ness of Sunset Riders, Mad Dog McCree and their ilk, capturing audiences without compromising its sand-and-saddles chops to prove that Westerns were a viable game genre all along.

But now that that point's finally been made, there are plenty of other film genres for games to try adapting next. Some haven't been touched since valiantly failed lo-fi efforts; others have never really been given a day in court. Maybe it's time to put the next Space Marines In Space title on the back-burner and try plugging a controller into one of these under-represented movie styles...

Way back in January, we did what a lot of other tech and gaming websites do, and published a list of predictions for the then-new year. In this case, we predicted the games that we thought – for a variety of reasons – wouldn’t see the light of day until at least 2010, and published it under the somewhat inflammatory headline No Heavy Rain until 2010?

Forgotten violence and depravity from a supposedly more innocent age.

Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Uncharted 2 made 2009 a year of epic sequels. Too bad none of the studios in this feature will be releasing any sequels, ever… at least not in their original forms. 2009, like 2008, was a rough economic year, and lead to the demise of multiple influential and promising developers.

Back in January of this year, we switched on our doom-and-gloom machine and predicted which of 2009’s most anticipated titles would inevitably be pushed back to 2010. We didn’t want to be right. In fact, we spent the next six months wishing, hoping and praying that the industry would prove us wrong. It didn’t.