Splatterhouse is a classic horror-themed series. It’s highly influential and the first 3 games in the series were great fun. Seeing previews and reviews of this game, I wasn’t expecting it to be really good, but I still wanted to check it out because I appreciate the originals, so I rented it, and played through it, as well as a bit of the extra content.

Read on and see if I enjoyed my time with the game!

Developer: BottleRocket up to early 2009, Namco Bandai Games America afterwards
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games America
Date of Release: November 23rd 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (PS3 version reviewed)

Genre: Beat ‘em Up
Rated M for Mature (riding very close to an AO rating I’d think)

What is good about this game

It’s a classics collection
Easily the best part of the game. Every 2 chapters until chapter 6, you unlock one of the classics. The first Splatterhouse is the uncensored arcade version, and the other 2 were only on Genesis so we get unchanged Genesis versions of those. These version play really well. The games all control very well, I haven’t seen any graphical problems with the emulation, nor have I found any sound problems with the emulation. Other than the actual original versions, this is probably the best way to play the original Splatterhouse games. Don’t even bring up the piece of shit iPhone port of the first Splatterhouse, that thing is barely controllable.

Each of the 3 games are really good. The third game in the series is a departure from the style of the first 2, but it is a good Beat ‘em Up and a big part of the inspiration for this game, at least gameplay-wise. The only thing that kinda sucks here is the lack of Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, the cartoonish Famicom spin-0ff, which would have been a great addition.

It’s actually not a bad beat’em up
Rather than being a God of War/Devil May Cry-style of action game, it has more in common with classic Beat ‘em Ups. If I’d compare Splatterhouse to anything recent, I’d say it’s quite similar to Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad, just much better. And, as a Beat ‘em Up, it’s not bad at all. You have 2 types of attacks: Direct attacks, and Directional attacks. Directional attacks can be charged (this slows down time and enables you to aim at whichever enemy you want), direct attacks cannot. You can dash, and during said dash you can launch a variety of attacks. You can block and roll to evade. And you have “mask” attacks by pressing L1 and any of the attack buttons, which takes one segment of your Necro Meter but they’re more devestating. The only way you can heal yourself is by using the Splatter Siphon attack, which actually drains health from monsters (moreso if you mash the circle button). Speaking of the Necro Meter, if you have at least 3 segments full, you can go in Berserker mode, which fully heals you and makes you a whole lot stronger. Also, killing enemies give you blood, which can be used to buy upgrades for Rick, making certain attacks stronger,  and enabling for new moves, overall adding a bit of variety to the fighting.

The fighting itself is fairly satisfying, if not a bit shallow due to the game being a Beat ‘em Up rather than an all-out action game ala DMC. The action is fast enough, attacks can be blocked and avoided, but, if you get hit, it’s hard to get out of the way of follow-up attacks, so you have to be really careful. If you’re surrounded by enemies and end up getting hit, you’re pretty much as good as dead. You can also pick up weapons, ranging from lead pipes, 2x4s (of course), baseball bats, your own arm if it ends up getting cut off (it regenerates, don’t worry), a shotgun, enemy arms and enemy heads. If your arm gets cut off, you basically become useless. You get very slow attacks, you can’t dodge and it takes a little while to regenerate. You can get it back by using any of the mask moves, but, if you don’t have a segment of the necro meter full, you have to run away for a short while with no means to defend yourself.

The game is quite repetitive, as it’s mostly just “Get in room with monster, kill a bunch of them/places them on spikes, go to next room to do the same thing”. But that’s sort of the nature of Beat ‘em Ups, and here you do gain more moves and powers as you progress through the game, so it doesn’t really get stale. And it’s not long enough to get stale anyways (yes, short length, for this type of game, is a good thing), clocking it at around 6-7 hours.

Side-scrolling segments
A reboot of an old game wouldn’t be complete without segments that play like the old games… right? Well, Splatterhouse delivers, with side-scrolling segments that are very reminiscent of the first 2 games. Other reviewers have actually bashed the side-scrolling segments for fairly stupid reasons like “you have to be precise with the platforming” and such. Yeah, a side-scrolling game with platforming aspects that requires you to be precise? CRAZY CONCEPT… Really though, these parts are simple fun. Nowhere near as hard as the original 2 games, but very interesting nonetheless.

What some people might like or not like in Splatterhouse

Story
I like the story. It’s not that deep and involving, but it’s still interesting. It’s a reboot of the original, so it starts with Jennifer and Rick going to West Mansion to meet with Doctor West about school. They get attacked by monsters, Rick is left to die, Jennifer gets kidnapped, and Rick dons the Terror Mask (voiced by the awesome Jim Cummings) to revive and become super huge and powerful. The rest of the game is spent chasing after Doctor West, through time portals and to different places. As you progress through the game, you learn about the game’s world and Henry West’s past (why he became a mad doctor and such), and a few really strong moments. I’ll say at the very least that it actually goes a lot deeper than the previous games in the series, and you actually get a good idea of Doctor West’s motivation.

One thing that made the original Splatterhouse so great is the ending, it wasn’t just a twist, it was downright fucked up, and probably one of the most disturbing game moments ever. Here, you also get a twist ending, but it’s not really creepy or disturbing, it’s just “oh, okay, that sets up for a sequel”. Not a great ending, but if it sets up to a good sequel I don’t mind.

Gore
The game is quite gory. I think people have overhyped the gore though, it’s not nearly as “bad” as we’ve been hearing both in previews and reviews. But there’s still some pretty violent stuff. Ripping people in half, ripping heads off, ripping out anuses… It’s not SUPER graphic, but it is fairly violent and there’s always blood flying everywhere. If you’re in for violent stuff, this is fine in that aspect. Not overly gory like so many people have been claiming, but it is amongst the more violent games this generation. I’ll say it’s about on par with its predecessors in regards, just a bit more since the graphics are technically better and more detailed.

Presentation
I like the graphics. Now they’re not great, definitely not. The shadows are pretty bad, the lighting is really weird (and sometimes downright terrible), the hair looks really strange, some of the textures are low res… Yet I like how the game looks. I think part of that is due to the fact that it doesn’t go for grey-brown gritty “realism” and instead goes at it in a fairly wacky look. Or the fact that it looks very B-movie-ish. It’s actually really colorful and fun to look at, which really contrasts with all the violence going on.  The look has a very subtle semi-cel-shaded look which actually looks really nice. Tons of things are clearly based on the previous games in the series (as well as all the great influences the series had before).

While I was okay with the graphics, the musical choice is a bit weird. Splatterhouse had fairly haunting and creepy music in previous games, though the tunes were also fast-paced and exciting. They were really good and really fit with the environments and story of the game. Here, you have really bad metal. Don’t get me wrong, I love metal, I listen to it all the time, but the metal here… wouldn’t be really good outside of the game. It’s a screamy type of metal that I really don’t like, and I feel that it doesn’t go well with the feel of the game. Heck, I think my problem here is that there’s lyrics in the songs, if it were just instrumental metal I’d have less of a problem with it. But there’s still a massive lack of haunting/creepy music here.

What sucks about the game

Technical problems
The loading times, holy shit. Loading before starting the game being 25-35 seconds long isn’t too bad, if it happens only when you start playing. Here, you have at least 25 seconds long loading every time you die, and every time you get to another level/part of a level. If you get to a part that repeatedly kills you, you’ll be waiting more than you’ll actually be playing. It’s annoying.

Other technical problems like the lighting in the graphics  fucking up during splatterkills, or the final part of the game where I had to reduce the brightness because it was blindlingly white. And there’s glitches. Really weird glitches. 2 I got had me killed for no reason. One was at the end of a boss battle, where I got a game over screen during the cinematic, and another part had the camera moving to highlight certain things in the room, but it got stuck in one position and monsters started attacking me, killing me because I couldn’t do anything about it. There’s probably more, but I haven’t experienced it. Still, it’s really bad when a game has completely random glitches like that.

No horror
The previous Splatterhouse games, especially the first 2, had some scary and disturbing moments. This one? Well, there’s one jump scare. It comes out of nowhere, makes no sense, looks stupid and there’s nothing else like that random jump scare afterwards. And the metal music really downplays any kind of horror there might have been. There’s some mildly creepy scenery and stuff, but overall… kinda disappointing in that aspect.

Splatterkills
The splatterkills aren’t really interesting. There’s only like 6 of them (some repeat on different enemy types), so it gets really boring to just see the same splatterkills through the game. You can use them when an enemy is near death as a finishing blow. It really screws with the pace of the battles, it gets annoying. Oh, and the splatterkills are QTEs (AKA the laziest, lamest gameplay mechanic in modern gaming), so that’s not a good thing. But, while the splatterkills aren’t interesting, sadly enough they’re actually useful. You get more blood in the Necro meter when you kill that way, so you can get to Berserker mode faster or you get more uses for Mask moves, and more blood to buy upgrades. So you have this clearly bad and annoying mechanic, but it has a use so you feel like you need to do it from time to time to fill up your Necro meter and get more points for upgrades. It’s optional, but it’s so annoying.

Difficulty
The difficulty here isn’t bad, and I wasn’t sure if I should have put this in the “suck” section of the review or not. The gameplay is simple enough to be easy to pick up and play. But it’s also really damn easy. The Necro Meter fills up pretty fast, so you can almost always use the Splatter Siphon move to get health back, and you can power-up your moves to make things even easier. It’s really easy and never really tries to pose a challenge. That is until you get to a part near the end where whether or not you live is determined by LUCK. It’s a huge difficulty spike, pitting you against a bunch of really strong enemies one after another, where the first wave of enemies in that part can kill you in less than a second at full health (no, really, you get hit once and you’re 100% sure to die), with no checkpoints through that whole segment. And then the game goes back to being easy… WTF was that all about? I’m sort of fine with the game not putting up any challenge, but having completely random brick walls when the rest of the game is easy is just really stupid.

There is another difficulty level though, which makes things a bit harder in general, making the brick wall a bit more on level with the rest of the game, but still… wow.

Overall

Splatterhouse is a fairly competent reboot. The gameplay, while not perfect, is fairly good if you look at it as a Beat ‘em Up rather than an all-out action game like DMC. The story is interesting enough to care about, and simple enough so that it doesn’t take more importance than the gameplay. But the most important aspect here is that you have access to the 3 original Splatterhouse games (though sadly no Wanpaku Graffiti), which are great games.

It does have problems, like the terrible loading times, the QTEs, the lack of horror elements, the metal music which I didn’t appreciate (despite me being a big fan of metal), really bad glitches at parts, and the graphics aren’t as technically good as they should be (though they do have a nice style to them).

If you liked the classics, get this. Otherwise, I’d suggest to rent it first. I liked it, but most people probably won’t.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- It has the classic Splatterhouse games
- A fun Beat ‘em Up
- Simple but fun story
- Fairly good side-scrolling segments
- Nude pics of Jennifer…. hey, I had to mention them at least…
- There’s a bit of extra content with the nude pics to find, difficulty levels and survival arenas…. and of course the 3 classic games

Cons
- The splatterkills suck and are QTEs
- There are QTEs other than the splatterkills
- No horror
- The metal music ruins the mood and isn’t really good
- Long loading
- Glitches
- It’s overwhelmingly easy, other than one brick wall near the end of the game… sort of inconsistent

The Save Factor

Let’s look at it this way. This game has the classic Splatterhouse games on it. Splatterhouse on TurboGrafx-16 costs around 25$ now, and that’s an inferior version to the one in this game. Splatterhouse 2 and 3 on the Genesis cost around 35$ each (sometimes more depending on where you look). So the classic games cost around 90$ altogether, usually more. You can spend 90$+ on the classic games (IF you have the consoles to play them on) plus shipping, or pay 60$ to get them all in addition to a fairly fun modern Beat ‘em Up on your PS3/360… Looking at it that way, it does seem very well priced.

If this didn’t include the original games, I’d say the Save Factor for this would be around 20$, but, with the classics here and very easy to unlock, around 50-60$ is a very good price… If you care about playing the classics at all. And, considering how this will probably not sell too much, it will probably go down in price fairly fast. So yeah, no Save Factor here.

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Well, I could just say “O_O” and be done with it for this mini-review, but that wouldn’t do the film justice. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but I did hear lots of great reviews on this, so I went in there knowing it would probably be okay. But I was wrong… it was GREAT.

So let’s go just a little bit more in detail and talk about one of the weirdest people in the world of cinema!

Read on! (Yeah, I know this movie is 15 years old, but I just saw it for the first time and I thought I should share my thoughts with everyone)

Who was Ed Wood and why should I care?
Ah, Edward D Wood Jr. He was kinda like the Uwe Boll of his time, except less of a douchebag, and funnier… And his movies were so bad they were funny, while Uwe Boll… just sucks.
His most renown film is “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, which is considered one the worst films ever. He was a director/writer/producer/actor that never shot retakes, wrote completely weird scripts that made no sense and had total disregard to the negative criticism and didn’t care if there were errors in his movies, like actors making the sets wobble by hitting them, or bad special effects(Octopus fight!)… stuff like that. He was also well known for having famous Dracula actor Bela Lugosi in his movies. His career eventually(well, not very long after Plan 9 pretty much) degenerated into making lame softcore porn-horror films, like Orgy of the Dead.

Needless to say, he was a weirdo, and no good at his job at all, but at the same time he had a love for what he did, and movies in general. And this is what this movie is all about. And I’m sure he was a big influence in the industry as well, still having a fanbase up to this day. There’s even talk of a remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space (though it just looks like a random zombie flick according to the trailer)…. OH by the way he was a transvestite.

“I thought you were a fag.”
“No, I’m just a transvestite!”

What about the movie?
The movie is directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp. We’re off to a good start. Also, the movie was filmed fully in black and white.

The movie details part of the life of Ed Wood. It shows how he met Bela Lugosi (marvelously played by Martin Landau), how his first movie, “Glen or Glenda”, came into being, the various complications of “Bride of the Monster” (previously named “Bride of the Atom” but changed to have more appeal), the death of Bela Lugosi, and finally the big thing: The production of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”.

The events are told partly factually, though some things are changed, some things are exaggerated, and some things a. The characters are marvelous. Not only do they look exactly like their real world counterparts Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, Lisa Marie as Vampira and Jeffrey Jones as Criswell are particularly convincing. Johnny Depp as Ed Wood looks a bit different from pictures I’ve seen, though he looks exactly the same when he wears women’s clothing. And all of them act more or less accordingly to their real life counterparts. The casting was fantastic to say the least, and there isn’t one character that really feels out of place.
Some events were skipped, some of his productions weren’t shown in the movie, like Jail Bait (before Bride of the Monster). Some other minor elements were changed, like the scene where the final filming of Lugosi is done. But I think the movie goes through most of the important parts of his career.

It was a bit unreal to hear Bela Lugosi swearing all the time, and I don’t know if he was like that when he was alive, but I think it adds realism to the character. We see the end of his life and his last filmed moments, his addiction to morphine and his detox period. He was definitely well portrayed and Martin Landau’s performance couldn’t have been better.

But the one who steals the show is definitely Johnny Depp as Ed Wood. Every time he’s on the screen, it’s marvelous. The way he moves, the expressions on his face at all times, how he looks in women’s clothing, and his overall acting…. it was perfect. When he said something you really believed it, and HE really believed it as well. The way he said “Cut! This was perfect” no matter how bad the scene he was filming was awesome. I’ll say that this is easily my favorite Johnny Depp performance.

I haven’t actually seen any of Ed Wood’s movies, but I saw multiple scenes of most of the more popular ones, and most of the scenes I saw before were shown here, but remade with the new actors, and all of them were perfectly redone. They couldn’t have honored Ed Wood’s pictures any better than they did here.

Overall
This movie is incredible. The acting, the portrayal of everyone in Ed Wood’s life up to Plan 9, the actors looking almost exactly like their real-life counterparts, the story, the comedy, the drama, the very few romantic moments… Everything was perfect. And there’s never a dull moment. I’m having trouble finding anything really bad about the movie. Some might complain that some events were changed or completely omitted, but I find that the parts that were removed weren’t incredibly important either. Oh, and the ending was a bit lame. There was no closure really. They showed a bit of the Plan 9 world premiere, and then showed everyone going out of the theater, and then… just showed every character, with a small text saying what happened to them later on in their lives. I was just expecting more of an ending.

For anyone interested in film-making, this is a must watch. Otherwise, I think it’s still worth checking out.

Ed Wood: He might have been the worst director of all time, but he was passionate about his work, and this is what this movie really wanted to show: That he was, despite his flaws, a fascinating person.

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I haven’t exactly played this enough for a full review, But I still wanted to do a quick post about it.

I’m not exactly the biggest Soul Calibur fan, and I haven’t enjoyed a Soul Calibur game just as much as Soul Calibur 2 on the gamecube. Maybe the series just felt stale afterwards, or maybe I just wasn’t really into it anyways.

So, and I’ll be quick on this, here are my impressions of the PSP version of Soul Calibur!

Developer: Namco
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Date of Release: September 1, 2009
Platforms: PSP

Genre: Fighting
Players: 1-2

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Looks and sounds
The game uses the same graphical style as previous SC games. It’s set in a fantasy world with magic and swords and shields and stuff. It still looks really good, even on the PSP. The characters are very well done, their animations are nice, and they look just like the PS3 versions. They have a lower polygon count and lower-res textures(of course), but they still look quite close to their console counterparts.

Sound-wise… well I frankly paid no attention to it. There’s still the weird narator saying non-sensical stuff before each battle, and the voice acting is the same quality as in SC4. Sounds the same as usual I guess.

The presentation is really good, and for a PSP game to look that close to the console versions it’s quite nice. There’s some graphic glitches here and there, with clipping and such, but nothing big.

Gameplay
The gameplay… well it’s exactly like in Soul Calibur 4. The same controls, same combos, seemingly the same gameplay engine, it has the armor-breaking element (though I don’t think it has the cinematic finishers).

It’s basically a stripped-down version of SC4. There’s fewer modes, the create a character mode is far from being as deep (there’s no stats on different clothes, and different weapons don’t have different effects), no arcade mode, no story mode. If anything, it’s a big tutorial for SC4.

You have Quick Match, Trials and Gauntlet. Gauntlet is pretty much a tutorial, starting you with beginner stuff and then easing you in the rest of the gameplay by gradually teaching more moves and combos and techniques. Trials is basically arcade mode but with a minor twist. If you choose Trial of Attack, you have to be agressive and you get points for big combos(5 fights in a row). Trial of Defense is similar, but it encourages defense(duh) and counter-attacking(8 fights in a row). Endless trial is a Survival Mode. Quick Match is just a quick match! Choose a character, choose your opponent and fight. There’s also a Versus mode, which is Local only.

I barely touched the new characters, but I found that Kratos was bland and nothing really special(just like in his own games, surprising), and Dampierre was a more gay version of Voldo(different attacks and all, but a similar style).

Overall
It’s not as deep as SC4 and cuts many of the features from it. But the basic gameplay is still intact. It’s also pretty good for beginners with the Gauntlet maode which shows you everything you need to know. Basically, I’ll agree with everyone saying this game iss a big training mode for Soul Calibur 4 which you can bring anywhere with you.

I’m not a huge fan of Soul Calibur, so this didn’t really appeal to me, but for any fan of Soul Calibur who wants to practice on the go, it’s a fine buy.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Great presentation
- Same gameplay as the console versions
- Good for practice

Cons
- LOTS of stuff cut from the console versions
- Character creation is now only for the looks, since the equipment has no effect anymore
- Kratos

The Save Factor
Well, I can’t find much reason to spend more than $20 on this unless you’re a big SC fan. The starting price of $40 is a bit too high.

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The Bleach DS series is a weird one. The first 2 games were straight up fighting games. Really well done too. And made by Treasure. There were some balancing issues, of course, but overall they were quite good. The third game in the series was a Strategy RPG, and made by Sega. And now this new one is a Beat ‘em up. 1 series, 3 genres. Really strange.

So, is it a good beat ‘em up, or is it just a lame cash-in on the Bleach name? Read on!

Keep in mind, this is a Japanese game, and I have no Japanese knowledge, so there are certain things I can’t explain/know. (and this is a pretty shot review too)

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Date of Release: August 6th 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Players: 1

Looks and sounds
The characters look really good, they’re completely recognizable from the series and their animations and attacks look quite good. But one thing to note here is that the sprites are mostly just recycled from the previous leach DS games, or just mildly changed from them. The enemy design is lame at best. There’s just a few enemy types and some are just upgraded versions of older ones, either bigger or with different colors. The environments range from random areas in Karakura village, some random areas in Soul Society and… randomness! Nothing inventive and not much that really has to do with the series.

Sound-wise… It’s nothing great. The voice-acting is fine, using the same actors from the show. The music is very forgettable, and the sound effects are either completely normal “hit” or sword sounds. Don’t expect anything ground-breaking, of course.

Gameplay
It’s a platforming Beat ‘em up. It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Y attacks, pressing different directions change what attack you do. B jumps. X does you special attack, and if you press X and Up at the same time you do a bigger special that takes more SP. A uses your currently-equipped assist character. Holding R pauses the action and let’s you change assist character if you have multiple in your deck. L let’s you stand in the air. It’s useless(or at least i never really found a use for it) and takes up SP. Double tapping a direction makes you dash, and pressing an attack button during the dash, no matter the direction, makes you do a special dash attack.

So the basic flow of the game is ” Select a level, See a conversation, Go to the end of the level, Get a Rank up to S depending on various variables, Repeat”. It gets repetitive after 2 worlds, and there’s 8 worlds in total. Levels play out in a simple “kill everything that gets in your way” manner. Heck, you can skip most enemies. There are some sections in stages where you have to kill everything that comes at you, but the rest can be skipped. At the end of each level, you get one of 2 things: a boss battle, or a “bonus stage” where you have to attack some… flying ball with tentacles, which gives you money for the shop.

The difficulty level is pathetically low. There’s only one level, based on platforming, which was able to kill me. The rest of the levels, even the tougher bosses, are really easy to beat. The only “difficulty” is finding everything. Each levels have 1 collectible to find: Hell butterflies. They’re hidden through the levels (1 per level), and they give you a boost to your SR meter. Also, getting S ranks everywhere might offer just a little bit of challenge (though I never got under an A rank so it’s really not that tough either).

A different element here is the Support Deck. Using cards you either find in stages, or buy in Urahara’s shop, you set a deck of sorts, in a grid. Each card takes either 1, 2 or 4 spaces in the grid (and you can get extra grids for different kinds of decks, i guess).  From what I understand, the ones that take 1 or 2 spaces are stat boosts of sorts. And the 4 space cards are assist characters (which I explained earlier, they all have different effects like healing, protection, or attacks).

Oh, and the character list is a bit lame. Ichigo, Rukia, Uryu, Renji, Hitsugaya, Yoruichi, Byakuya, Young Byakuya… Why is Byakuya in there twice? Aren’t there enough Bleach characters not to have to use the same one a second time, but younger? Not a big problem, but it’s a bit strange.

One thing I have no idea about is the SR stat (under SP), and I have no idea what Oversoul is (when the SR meter goes at 100% or above). I know higher SR gives you more points in the end of a level(which makes it easier to get a high rank), and if you get hit by an attack that knocks you down your SR goes down to 50, or lopwer if you’re at 50% or below.

Overall, the gameplay isn’t bad. But it’s awfully simple. And there’s little to no difficulty.

Import-friendlyness
Can you press buttons? If so, you can play this game. The basic gameplay is really simple, and just randomly fumbling around the menus you should be able to shop and build support decks without much trouble. There’s not much of a big community for this title, but you can surely find places on the web where people can help you out here. It is Bleach after all.

Oh, and for modes, Ichigo (and i guess you can change the character) tells you what each option in the main menu is, so the menus are simple enough to navigate.

And you’ll miss the story, but you can fast-forward through the conversations so it’s not a burden to the gameplay.

Overall
It’s a competent enough Beat ‘em up. It’s incredibly easy, but it works. But if you’re not a Bleach fan, skip on it. Heck, even if you ARE a Bleach fan there isn’t much of a reason to get this. If you can read japanese, the story is just random filler junk so you’re not missing much here. It’s pretty much a cash-in on the Bleach name, nothing more.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Nice Graphics
- Simple gameplay
- Import Friendly

Cons
- Way too easy
- Could use a bit more character variety, the only character that plays different from the others is Uryu
- Get repetitive FAST, there’s no gameplay variety at all

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $48.90 on Play-Asia, the Save Factor for Bleach DS 4th: Flame Bringer is:

$10 (only for big Bleach fans)

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Well, I’ll start this review right away by saying that I’m not a Mortal Kombat fan. I’m not a huge fan of the fighting system, thus the reason it took me so long to check this out. That being said, such a random mix of characters was interesting enough for me to want to check it out.

The idea of Superman fighting Scorpion indeed made me quite curious, but does it work? Read on!

Story
They managed to make the story here relatively interesting. Divided in 2 “sides”, the MK and the DC side, with 7 chapters in the MK side and 8 in the DC side(1 character per chapter, with a few you don’t end up using in the story mode), each side gives you that “team’s” point of view on the events.
The story starts similarly in both side. Superman is fighting Darkseid and Raiden is fighting Shao Kahn, and both open up a portal, at the very same time, and at the very same time superman uses his heat vision on Darkseid and Raiden shoots lightning at Shao Kahn. Obviously, this screws up stuff and both worlds start merging. As a result of this, characters from both sides think characters from the other side are invading them. At the same time, characters are consumed by “Rage”, which makes them more violent and sometimes delusional. This results in multiple fights between characters from both sides and amongst each other.
The story works relatively well. It’s nothing incredibly good, but it does the job very well, and makes both universes work relatively well with each other, despite being quite different. The only “problem” is the T rating that DC imposed, making it a lot less violent and bloody than MK normally is.
One thing I’ll mention is that the cutscenes transition from to battle really smoothly. At first it felt almost seamless. After a while you see that it’s not entirely seamless, but it’s really well done.

Graphics
The characters look great. They’ve never looked better. Very detailed, and they really look just like you’d expect them to. There’s other fun details like cuts and bruises appearing on characters during fights that carry on to the next rounds. The animations are also relatively nice, I have no problems with them at all.
Otherwise, the environments are… okay. Nothing special. Really not much more to say here. They’re appropriate.

Gameplay
Okay, like I mentionned before, I’m not really fond of the usual Mortal Kombat fighting system. Usually because I find it to be too stiff. While this does not completely correct the problem, I find this to be a lot smoother than previous MK games. Maybe it’s because I have more experience in fighting games than before, but I have a lot less trouble pulling off combos and special moves. The movement and jumping and such just feels a lot betterr than what I’m used to with MK games. Now, there’s still some stiffness and still has ways to go before I get comfortable with the fighting system, but this is a good step forward IMO.
 So the fighting itself is pretty much the same as in previous MK games. The basic combos are simple enough, and higher-level players(AKA not me) can experiment to make their own combos, the special moves are simple, mostly requiring tapping 2 directions and then an attack button. Fatalities you have to figure out the motions and distance, but they’re relatively easy to do when you get the hang of them. Fun little scenes, but nothing as brutal as you’d expect.

Some new stuff
New things here including the close quarter combat mode and the freefall mode (don’t know if those are official names, but I don’t care). Close Quarter happens when you do a certain grab, and it becomes a sort of button mashing thing, where the attacker presses a button, and before he does so the other must quickly guess when button he’s gonna press, otherwise he gets hit. If he guesses it right, he counters the attack and you get out of close combat. The freefal works pretty much the same way. For each attack the attacker lands, a bit of a bar on the left goes from green to red.  If the defender guesses the button the attacker will press, the positions are changed, and the defender will bethe one doing damage on the landing. That’s the annoying part, 30% damage for that is quite a lot. 

There’s also a “mode” in certain stages where there’s no freefall that goes on when you small an opponent against a wall, and then you’ll charge into them and have to button mash while crashing though multiple walls, acucmulating damage on the way. Not great, but whatever >_>

Added to that is Rage mode. This is a bar that fills up when you attack or get attacked. When it’s full, pressing L2 and R2 at the same time will initiate Rage. Rage raises your attack power, and if you do multiple hits while the opponent is blocking, their block will break. Also, you get a super armor. This makes you pretty uber, but it only lasts around…4 -5 seconds, so it’s not too long, but it can change the pace of the fight pretty easily.

Characters
There is a slight balance issue. Mostly having to do with The Flash, who is really fast and has lots of cheap attacks, and a few characters are a bit weaker than the other, more particularily The Joker and Catwoman according to “pros”. Overall though I play just about as well with each character.

Speaking of characters, that’s one of the big incentives here: the DC characters. And overall I find that they did a good job here. Their movesets are pretty nice, giving a few of them moves similar to what you’d expect from them. Some I’m not too sure because I’m not too familiar with them (Wonder Woman, DeathStroke, Catwoman), but overall they’re pretty cool and fun to play as.

Games modes
Other than story mode, there’s the usual arcade mode and practice mode. Added to that is the Kombo Challenge mode, which gives you different combos you can do, and doing them all gives you a trophy… Yay. It does help in knowing the different things you can do with each character.
Otherwise there’s Versus and Online modes, which are just as you’d expect. I get my ass kicked online so I can’t REALLY say how good it is, since I just spend my time getting killed on there.

Overall
Surprisingly, I think this is a good game. Still not a huge fan of the MK fighting style, but this is one of the better incarnations for me. The T rating is a bit disappointing though, the violence you’ve come to expect from the series is nowhere to be found,, most is censored.
Overall this is a fun game, the DC characters are cool and it’s a random mix of characters that they managed to make work well.

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Oh, I think I linked to a Death Note image by error.... sorry about that... oh wait, it does say Castlevania Judgment.. weird...

A Castlevania fighting game? Inconceivable! But it’s true. And despite all low expectations, this is actually not too bad.

Though I’ve only rented it, I’ve played a substantial amount of time and went through most of the story modes(and a few “True” story modes),  lots of VS(tried all the characters) and a bit of Castle mode. Read on for more info and my impressions.

Graphics
For a Wii game, this looks great. The textures aren’t that good from too close up, but when you’re fighting it will look very nice. The environments are pretty varied, the character models are really good, the animations are pretty smooth. Overall this game looks very nice. If i had one thing to complain about, it would be Death. He looks awful. Or at least he doesn’t look like Death at all. Death isn’t Death without his badass cloak.
Otherwise, by Wii standards, this is a very nice looking game. It obviously won’t compare to most PS3/Xbox360 games, but for Wii I can’t fault the graphics much. 

Sound
I’m a junkie for Castlevania music. And this doesn’t disappoint. Taking music from the older games and giving us remixes/remade version is awesome, and in general they sound great. A Castlevania fan will definitely be all over the music in this game. 
Otherwise, the voice acting isn’t bad. Not overly good, but satisfying enough. Some of the voices are a bit emotionless, but overall the VAs do a good job.

Story
The story(or any semblance of it) is nothing to write home about. Each character has his own story, and it’s never really strong. They all start exactly the same way: Character goes somewhere, Aeon (a new character exclusive to this game) tells them they entered a time rift (whatever that is), then they fight other characters for seemingly no reason, and sometimes said characters come from other time periods. Some fights are predetermined, but others seem random. The stories are mostly just.. wacky and out of place. Maria’s story in particular is pretty stupid. She fights Shanoa because she’s hot (and she called her a little girl), she fights Sypha because she has big boobs, and she fights Carmilla because she has big boobs. Pretty ridiculous stuff.

After finishing all the story modes (except for Aeon, since you get his story later), you get the true story for each character, which is… exactly the same thing, except it adds a second battle against Aeon, and a boss battle against the Time Reaper, who is actually pretty hard to beat(pretty easy with Dracula though). There’s no real explanation as to who the Time Reaper is, what he does and why he wants to kill your character, but I guess that it’s besides the point……. yeah…

Overall, don’t get this game for the story, you’ll regret it. 

Gameplay
Fighting (NOTE: I ONLY PLAYED WITH GAMECUBE CONTROLLERS, BECAUSE I DIDN’T FEEL LIKE FLAILING MY ARMS AROUND FOR HOURS, SO I CAN’T COMMENT ON THE WII CONTROLS, ONLY GC CONTROLS)
Fighting here I would compare to Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm or Power Stone, but a bit simpler.
You move around freely in a 3D arena. To attack you either use subweapons or attacks. There are a few types of attacks: Normal attacks(B button), special attacks(A+B at the same time), Charged attacks (holding A until your character flashes a bit, and press B while still holding A), Block Breakers (L+B) and Ultimate Attacks (X).

Attacks change depending on if you’re pressing in a direction while pressing the button/button combination or not, so in the end there’s a good variety of attacks. Don’t expect to do huge combos here, but you can link various normal attacks to special attacks and such, so the combo system, while a bit limited, isn’t too bad. Like in all fighting games, there’s priorities on attacks and suck, but in the end it’s all pretty simple, making this a great pick up and play game.

Another interesting thing is the stages. In VS mode you have the choice to set on or off Stage Hazards. Each stage, except the throne room, have some kind of hazard. Not sure about the clock tower, but others can have monsters appearing, parts of the stage breaking, molten lava coming up at times, blades and spikes impaling you. This again adds lot of variety to the game, and if you don’t like it you can just turn it off.

Ultimate attacks (Finishers)
Now Ultimate attacks. These are actually a bit annoying. You have a bar at the bottom of the screen that fills up as you attack or get hit, and when it’s full you can use an ultimate attack. By pressing X, your character will launch his attack, and if it hits a cinematic starts with the character’s attack, and in the end it removes around 45% of the opponent’s life bar. These wouldn’t bother me much, but they last up to like 20 seconds, they can get pretty long, and watching them all the time gets tedious. And you can’t skip the animation. And they’re pretty overpowered too. Overall, I think they just needed ot be implemented better.

Subweapons
Ah, subweapons. A staple of the Castlevania series and they’re back here. Also comes destructible stuff that gives subweapons and hearts. In every stage, random boxes/candles/other stuff will appear that you can destroy and get hearts to use your subweapons, or other (randomly chosen) subweapons to replace your current one.

There’s a good variety of Subweapons. Most are ranged weapons, but some have other functions. Knifes go straight, axes move in an arc (not vertically), the cross works like a boomerang and can hit twice,  Holy Water stays on the ground a bit and hurts anything that touches it and finally the stopwatch. Other than the normal subweapons, there’s earth magic that makes spikes come out of the ground, bats that make opponents stagger, a gravity circle that hits everywhere around you, birds that pierce (i see little use to that though) and poisonous gas that does damage overtime. 

The subweapons add some good variety to battle, and each item has a super move which takes a few more hearts.

Modes
There’s a few modes here. Story is pretty much as explained before: randomly fight a bunch of people and… that’s it. The battle in the middle will be against one of two types of minions: Merman or Zombies, and after fighting a few of those you’ll either encounter a Minotaur or an Iron Gladiator, which are pretty much the same.
Arcade mode is pretty much the same, just a series of battles.

Then there’s the Castle mode, which is strangely reminiscent of Soul Calibur 2. You have a bunch of missions to get to the end of the Castle. Missions mostly ask you to beat your opponents, but sometimes they have boosted stats, or you have lowered stats, or you just have a certain condition to complete, like winning with an ultimate or landing an high number of hits in a combo, or doing a ring-out. This is a very fun mode, and it gets you accessories to change the look of your characters for their third and fourth costume.
Yeah, you can accessorize your characters to really make them look like you want to… or at least put on cool accessories on them, so your Maria can look different from your opponent’s. 

Added to those are Versus, tutorial and training modes. Overall there’s a bit of variety, mostly to be found in Castle mode.

Overall
This is really not a bad game. But it’s also not worth buying at full price. It’s nice to be able to play as all those Castlevania characters, the gameplay is good, if not a bit too simple. Don’t get this expecting a really deep fighting game, just something to pass the time. It’s not even really balanced(Dracula is broken).
Castlevania fans will probably like this, non-fans should at least check it out. And if you have Order of Ecclessia, you can get extra stuff in both this game and OoE by wirelessly connecting your DS to your Wii. 
My suggestion: RENT IT (or wait for a price drop)

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