Gory New Splatterhouse Is Slightly Kinder, Gentler Than Planned

Before the upcoming game Splatterhouse let players choose a “coward” difficulty setting, the game’s developers were going to call their easy mode “pussy”. This is no gentleman’s game.

We’ve already called Namco’s revival of Splatterhouse the bloodiest game we saw at the big E3 show last June. During a demo of the game shown to Kotaku last week in New York, I learned that it could have been more graphic

There had been plans to allow the player to make the game’s hero, Rick, rip his arm off his body and use it as a weapon. Those plans were left on the cutting room floor, one of the game’s developers told me. In the November game, players must settle for allowing at least one enemy to rip Rick’s arm off for him. Bloody but not slowed, Rick can still use it as a weapon.

Oh, but if Rick could do that at any time, it might make the game too easy? The player would essentially always have a potential weapon handy? The naive games journalist is answered by the developer who says that wouldn’t have been the problem. Organic weapons in Splatterhouse tend to fall apart quickly.

You can rip enemies apart in Splatterhouse. You can brawl and slice through them. Their body parts will be weapons. The Namco developer estimated they can be chopped into seven pieces, three pieces usable as weapons.

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