Splatterhouse in Australia?

[Nocta-Aeterna]

Spoiler: This description sounds like the ideal next-gen Berserk game, minus character development/internal conflict

Let's count the way in which it works:
1) Protagonist has a ridiculously over compensatory sword which he swings in wide arcs and usually leaves non-demonic foes in a mushy pile of intestines.

2) Has a prostetic left arm which also doubles as a blackpowder cannon (cannot be seen in this picture due to magic armour).

3)Magic armour deadens the pain (and other senses), enabling the protagonist to use moves that otherwise would hurt way to much use ánd can take more trauma before fainting/dying.

4)Magic armour occasionally enables a berserker-modus, removing any sense of pain from the protagonist, and greatly increasing his strength ánd automatically sets broken bones straight by piercing the body with metal shards to reinforce his skeleton.

5)Using the berserker-modus eats at the soul more or less: with each consecutive use, the Protagonists loses some control over his inner beast.

EDIT: In fact.. they already made it... twice. Once for the Dreamcast and once for the Ps2, neither of which got an export.

Spoiler: Intro cinematic to the ps2 game

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

I stopped doing splatterkills once I got sick of them over and over. And then I started to enjoy the game a lot more. Too bad the game turned to easy at that point...
I loved Splatterhouse, but I also think a lot could be improved with little dedication.

 

[FollowUp]

How about being able to choose and customize your weapons and (own) character design? Like in AC:B multiplayer? That´d be awesome.

This is more so about the gore.

But different weapons should cause different effects.

 

[braincore02]

I agree with most or all of your points regarding gore. It definitely is less fun to gorify something that already looks like a bloody mess before you touch it.

Kudos for the Tintin mention lol

 

[chopperman]

a Fine list you have there I would only add to the body destroying part the face should have various parts to damage like the jaw, when its hit hard enough it should break and leave the mouth open and blood oozing out, also if enough damage is done it can be removed all together and the enemies tongue just hangs out which you can then cut off.
The eyes should able to go black, be stabbed and removable. The nose should be break able as with the cheek bones so the enemies face looks sunken in
The back of the skull should be a large target that when hit with a weapon hard enough takes and holds the shape of that weapon

that and add the corny deaths physics from fallout 3 so they bodies fly around on death

 

[KDR_11k]

So something like stuffing Prototype, Painkiller and Zangeki no Reginleiv [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI4K6hVURpg] into a blender? That last one is a Wii sword combat game with strategic dismemberment, e.g. do you aim for the giants weapon to get some rare extra gems or do you lop his arm off at the shoulder to make sure he doesn't hit you? Some enemies get much more painful if you de-leg them since that means their hand is much closer to you while you work on sawing their head off...

 

[ProtoChimp]

Didn't Dead Rising 2 already do all of this, except the grappling hook? Maybe thats part of why he liked it so much.

 

[Magnesium360]

I felt that something Dead Rising 2 got right was how you can carve through hordes of enemies like death incarnate. For me the combat worked well, despite how easy it was, because it was fun. It was fun because you could pick up a shotgun and a pitchfork and run into a nearby tool shed, only to emerge five seconds later with a vicious weapon complete with unique animations. It was fun because every weapon was different to every other weapon, and not just in that it looked different and did more or less damage. The spear may not be as poweful as the defiler, but you can throw it further, and nailing a zombie to a wall is just funny. It was also the only game I'd ever played where weapon degredation was actually enjoyable, usually it's a challenge or it's just annoying, but in Dead Rising 2, seeing your machete is going to break is just an excuse to hurl it through some guys head.

 

[squidbuddy99]

I think blood and gore should be better put into the game mechanics. When the floor is literally caked in human Kool-Aid, the enemies should react; weaker fodder would run screaming, while others would become slowed down by the excess. I also enjoy games that use human remains for weapons, as it's more satisfying to kill an enemy with his own arm than any ordinary stick.

 

[bobthedeadly]

A lot of those points fit perfectly with what Fallout did. Honestly, the gore in Fallout 3 & New Vegas is some of the most terrifyingly realistic shit I'd seen in a video game. It left an impact, particularly because of it's sheer realism. The thing is that people didn't just randomly explode when you shot them (unless you had the Bloody Mess perk), their arms and legs actually came off in a realistic manner if they take enough damage. Shooting some dude's leg off and watching him topple over is some of the most terrifying and satisfying violence in recent memory.

 

[mothmantis]

I've always found the most satisfying violence, although not necessarily gore related, involves wielding obscene amounts of power.

This happened more in older games like Rampage and Blast Corps, which still stroke the conquering barbarian part of my brain. The challenge in those games didn't necessarily come from being overwhelmed by bad guys, but by time limits, logic puzzles and strategy.

I've seen this done more recently to varying degrees of failure with games like the new Transformers and Front Mission. I say 'failure,' because they feel like little more than Final Fight 10: Giant Robots Edition, and not Holy Crap I'm A Giant Robot!

I also like the investment idea, although maybe use it to unlock new attacks, a la Double Dragon or River City Ransom. For instance: tearing off 50 arms allows you to choose between wielding severed limbs as clubs OR grabbing an enemy by the arm and throwing them at something. Seems like it would help with the whole 'repetition' problem.

 

[DanDeFool]

Cortex Command, an indie game packaged with the Humble Indie Bundle #2, does this (for the most part).

It's currently in beta, its AI is currently shit, and the controls (at least the mouse and keyboard controls) are way too clunky to effectively handle the incredibly realistic physics.

However, its dynamic sprites do almost exactly what Yahtzee lists in his hypothetical fun-with-gore game. The surrogate bodies the game's protagonists control get shot and dismembered realistically, if a humanoid body gets damaged it bleeds and loses health, and parts of your body can get shot off and the rest of your body can still work (although you'll start to lose health very quickly).

I once had a basic soldier body that had its legs shot off. I jetpacked it, torso oozing out the last few bits of its health, over to a healing bot. The body recovered all its health before it died and stopped bleeding, but its legs didn't come back. Therefore, I flew the dismembered torso over to the enemy stronghold, picked up some grenades that had been left lying around, and suicide-bombed a bunch of zombies (which also splatter into giblets, and if you don't get them in the head, they keep crawling towards you).

Bottom line, Yahtzee and other readers, I'd recommend you check out Cortex Command. It's still in development, and (due to the AI and gameplay issues mentioned above) isn't quite ready for prime-time, but it's still fun to dick around in and the dynamic sprites and realistic physics are fascinating to say the least.

 

[RollForInitiative]

I've got to be honest, Yahtzee...as a designer, I cringed repeatedly at the thought of the underlying tech some of those bullet points would require. Not that they don't sound interesting, mind you; just grossly unfeasible.

It's an interesting exercise you've put yourself to, however, and I applaud you for taking the time to do so. It's one thing to fire shots across the bow of every game you see and quite another to stop and think for a while about the nitty gritty details of what constitutes "fun" in one sense or another.

Good on you.

 

[RetroMenace]

I had a thought, what if your character's power and concenquentley his ability to kill enemies was influenced by momentum. Sort of in a Mirror's edge like fashion, running or scoring succesful hits increases your momentum, higher momentum allows you to move faster and get in stronger attacks, so it will easier to take out enemy limbs. However jumping, dodging, or getting hit lowers you momentum. Higher momentum could also lead to gorier finishing move / attacks. Like say when you have low momentum you regular punch is just a regular cross punch or something, then with full momentum it becomes a haymaker or another punch which lets you gain additional range. Also a regular grapple kill would be just punching their head off, while a full momentum one would have you rip off their head and kick it through their torso, while the head comicly rebounds off of several enemies damaging several more and adding to the fun gore / addition range with momentum ideas. Also if he killed enough enemies he could get a power that would allow him to completley fill his momentum, probably using the same bar as your invincibility idea, but costing far less.

 

[The Noble Shade]

I think he'll definitely like Bulletstorm, provided its ambitions are executed well.

 

[Kededro]

The only one I disagree with is the "swarms of enemies" one. Maybe occasional swarms, but I would think the focus should be on smaller groups, like 3 or 4 at a time at most, Condemned style. This would both prevent repetition and make the gore a lot more noticeable, closer to an actual murder than a zombie splatter-fest. This would make kills a lot more personal, allow for the engine to render more detailed gore effects, and emphasize slower, more brutal kills.

Why slash mindlessly through waves of enemies when you can slowly bash a single target into a bloody pulp with all of your hate and rage directed solely at them?

 

[octafish]

Splatterhouse seems to be the same kind of violence as dead rising i.e child friendly cartoon violence.

No one seems to cater for the ultra violent fans from the late 90's.

Remember in the original Solider of Fortune when you gutted your first enemy and they bellowed their lungs out and thrased about on the dirty concrete floor and blood spurted black up the walls, their screams would echo down the maps until finally with one last shout they would gurgle out their death rattle and choke on their own blood. You could nearly feel the warm blood run over your hands and smell the sticky rusty stench of your character quickly trying to rub the blood off on his jeans in time to gut the next civilian...I mean bad guy *shifty look*

Where are these games now? Even GTA has been reduced to basically Crazy Taxi with side missions that involve going out to dinner or 'comedy' shows.

Unless Manhunt 3 is released for kinnect and I am then convinced that not all modern game developers out there are ex-children's TV presenters then I am going to sit in my corner and sulk (more).

Ahh, see as I read the article I kept thinking SOF and SOF2. Such guilty fun, and to think it had a stealth component as well. Did anyone actually use stealth when they could be dismembering bad guys with a shotgun? And I like stealth games.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

We'll definitely need internal organ models. I want to pull someone's pancreas out and smash it through the back of their skull.

Also, corpse fade can't occur. It completely ruins any kind of fun whenever you notice bodies disappearing.

At this point, this game probably won't even be possible for a few years. Well, at above thirty FPS that is.

 

[lostzombies.com]

Splatterhouse seems to be the same kind of violence as dead rising i.e child friendly cartoon violence.

No one seems to cater for the ultra violent fans from the late 90's.

Remember in the original Solider of Fortune when you gutted your first enemy and they bellowed their lungs out and thrased about on the dirty concrete floor and blood spurted black up the walls, their screams would echo down the maps until finally with one last shout they would gurgle out their death rattle and choke on their own blood. You could nearly feel the warm blood run over your hands and smell the sticky rusty stench of your character quickly trying to rub the blood off on his jeans in time to gut the next civilian...I mean bad guy *shifty look*

Where are these games now? Even GTA has been reduced to basically Crazy Taxi with side missions that involve going out to dinner or 'comedy' shows.

Unless Manhunt 3 is released for kinnect and I am then convinced that not all modern game developers out there are ex-children's TV presenters then I am going to sit in my corner and sulk (more).

Ahh, see as I read the article I kept thinking SOF and SOF2. Such guilty fun, and to think it had a stealth component as well. Did anyone actually use stealth when they could be dismembering bad guys with a shotgun? And I like stealth games.

There was stealth in SOF lol?

 

[Sparky12]

Melee attacks and weapons should NOT scythe through everything in a preset path, but react to physical bodies at least semi realistically.

Personally, I'd like to see a game where if I swing a sword at, say, a cluster of five enemies, then maybe it'll scythe through the first one it hits, but number two? Maybe they'll get away with moderate damage, maybe very little, but the attack wont just keep momentum through the entire group. And while you're busy down at numbers 1 and 2, enemies 3, 4 and 5 either flinch away or move in to attack.

When the attack runs out of momentum, it would add a little more challenge if there were the chance of the weapon becoming embedded in the enemy, or being jarred from your hand by the impact. In the above situation this would mean having to make the call between trying to recover your weapon while the remaining enemies whale on you, or to back off to re-arm yourself. This could make good use of force feedback from the controller, a sharp blast when the weapon is jarred and a drawn out rumble when trying to dislodge your broadsword from someone's ribcage.

Then there's the issues of wide swinging attacks throwing you off-balance momentarily, possibly the option to switch between a one handed and two handed grip on weapons, allowing for a power versus speed trade-off, and just about any other beef I have with this type of game that I cant recall right this moment.