Ed Oscuro
07-29-2010, 05:36 PM
First time I've played a console game in aaages, seems like.
I got the Japanese version. So far:
Yea:
Cool graphical style (even if it doesn't always come through)
Awesome beatdowns and the humorous bits never seem stale to me...I love the little scene before the first boss. Nice changeup in gameplay from place to place, though it does throw out the "your controls are reversed!" thing a bit quickly. (That's the only time I hope, though I found myself jumping into the reverser spirits to "lock" in the reversed controls while I went over pits.)
On Normal setting, not too tough, after a couple plays I was breezing through the first three or four levels. I stopped off at the second form of the stage four boss.
Nay:
*Slowdowns! In the underground corridor branch (you know the one) I got it pretty bad when five enemies or so were onscreen. The good ol' Mega Drive is more capable than that!
*Some graphics (swamp forests) are muddy and the color palette seems...kind of bad, though I can figure out what I'm looking at, at least.
*Junk controller I got with the used MD I finally opened up to play the game, since my Mega Jet doesn't seem to be giving a video signal or something. Was a real chore to pull of simple jumps. (On that note, I need to see if I can't find the Jet's power supply.)
*Also, I'm sad that more people weren't able to see the awesomeness that is the original release's artwork.
*But the title screen says: SPLATTERHOUSE Part II, and the "Part II" reminds me of the Ghostbusters logo, blue glow and all.
Overall, often looks hideous (not always in a good way), but it's fun and controls very well, which is what I wanted. A bit of a disappointment visually after how good Naughty Graffiti generally looks on the Famicom. Take away the gore and it's a pretty simple game though. I have been disappointed at times (like in the fourth boss fight's first form) how simple some of the patterns are to defeat; the game feels best when it's faster-paced as when you have to jump over lots of spikes or the screen is automatically scrolling. This makes me interested in checking out Part III again, because I remember that I didn't think I'd like it as much as Part II, but I know that one has a lot more moves and some other ideas going for it.
Checking in with West Mansion, a lot of the writeups (http://splatterhouse.kontek.net/sh2_characters.html) on characters are news to me. Some of the confusion there simply doesn't exist when playing this game. But other stuff strikes me as complexity I've just skipped over: I thought you kicked the fish off, but I didn't try shaking. The difficulty for the hanging babies fight seemed right, but I never used the weapons, just knocked them down the old-fashioned way (haven't you ever had to knock babies out of the ceiling? It's hard to sleep with them mewing and puking). It's also clearly a brain that you have to bash in at the end of the third stage, instead of the weird shrimp fetus thing that shows up in the US / PAL release.
I got the Japanese version. So far:
Yea:
Cool graphical style (even if it doesn't always come through)
Awesome beatdowns and the humorous bits never seem stale to me...I love the little scene before the first boss. Nice changeup in gameplay from place to place, though it does throw out the "your controls are reversed!" thing a bit quickly. (That's the only time I hope, though I found myself jumping into the reverser spirits to "lock" in the reversed controls while I went over pits.)
On Normal setting, not too tough, after a couple plays I was breezing through the first three or four levels. I stopped off at the second form of the stage four boss.
Nay:
*Slowdowns! In the underground corridor branch (you know the one) I got it pretty bad when five enemies or so were onscreen. The good ol' Mega Drive is more capable than that!
*Some graphics (swamp forests) are muddy and the color palette seems...kind of bad, though I can figure out what I'm looking at, at least.
*Junk controller I got with the used MD I finally opened up to play the game, since my Mega Jet doesn't seem to be giving a video signal or something. Was a real chore to pull of simple jumps. (On that note, I need to see if I can't find the Jet's power supply.)
*Also, I'm sad that more people weren't able to see the awesomeness that is the original release's artwork.
*But the title screen says: SPLATTERHOUSE Part II, and the "Part II" reminds me of the Ghostbusters logo, blue glow and all.
Overall, often looks hideous (not always in a good way), but it's fun and controls very well, which is what I wanted. A bit of a disappointment visually after how good Naughty Graffiti generally looks on the Famicom. Take away the gore and it's a pretty simple game though. I have been disappointed at times (like in the fourth boss fight's first form) how simple some of the patterns are to defeat; the game feels best when it's faster-paced as when you have to jump over lots of spikes or the screen is automatically scrolling. This makes me interested in checking out Part III again, because I remember that I didn't think I'd like it as much as Part II, but I know that one has a lot more moves and some other ideas going for it.
Checking in with West Mansion, a lot of the writeups (http://splatterhouse.kontek.net/sh2_characters.html) on characters are news to me. Some of the confusion there simply doesn't exist when playing this game. But other stuff strikes me as complexity I've just skipped over: I thought you kicked the fish off, but I didn't try shaking. The difficulty for the hanging babies fight seemed right, but I never used the weapons, just knocked them down the old-fashioned way (haven't you ever had to knock babies out of the ceiling? It's hard to sleep with them mewing and puking). It's also clearly a brain that you have to bash in at the end of the third stage, instead of the weird shrimp fetus thing that shows up in the US / PAL release.