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Beat up the meanies Final Fight-style, locate the power-ups and 1-UPs and then defeat the numerous bosses. Fascinating...

It is the fourth anniversary of Rick's worrisome and terrible four year relationship with a girl named Jennifer, and he is gradually realising that the whole charade is growing rather stale. In fact, rancide might be a better description, especially when rotting corpses and horrific mutants are becoming more and more a part of everyday life for the couple.

It seems that Rick cannot turn his back for fear of Jessica or their young son David being mercilessly subjected to all kings of ill-mannered activities and this all started on the day that Rick discovered a strange mask buried beneath their garden. This enchanted artifact now has a hold over Rick and, for the most part, he is able to ignore it.

However, the mask acts as a receptive for anything most people would do well to stay clear of, yet somehow Rick and family are now irresistibly guided to fighting evil wherever it may dwell with this mysterious mask at the helm.

This cart tells the tale of Rick and co's third involuntary, holy mission against evil and, as is customary for most evil forces these days, takes place in a huge mansion. Evil forces appreciate a roof over their heads just like anybody else! Splatterhouse 3 is a 16-meg, gory beat-'em-up venture on behalf of Namco aiming to better the previous two parts of this gruesome saga.

The player now has control over Rick's vertical movement as opposed to the limited horizontal only method of before, for example. Somewhere in an expansive house both Jennifer and young David are held captive and so it's up to you, as Rick, to follow the terrible whim of the mask and exorcise the evil that is restraining them!

Since Rick's last dealings with the mask this persistent item of head gear has grown in power. Now the mask isn't so much worn by Rick, rather it wears him! Unfortunately, Rick has no choice in the matter but this involuntary collaboration certainly has its advantages.

Although Rick is a mighty strapping lad to start with, the mask provides him with extra power should he supply it with the required fuel - one or more crystal ball is all that this required at which point the mask's power is represented by a meter at the bottom left of the screen.

As long as there is an evil presence in the room the mask's power is available at Rick's bidding. However, the mask doesn't see the funny side of calling for assistance just for a laugh and promptly wastes all the collected power if there is no threat. Spoil sport!

Being surrounded by living things that resemble a Chernobyl butcher's shop window is a dangerous situation indeed and so Rick is constantly open to some kind of nasty injury or another. For this reason extra energy and power for the mask is found lying on the floor of the mansion in the form of beating hearts and crystal balls respectively.

Rick is also able to steal such power-ups by defeating the larger, more grotesque creatures that are shuffling about such as the enormous, walking stomachs.

The mansion is constructed with six floors and Rick 'cleanses' them all one at a time. Each floor is a sprawling maze of rooms and only the mask knows the exact layout. For this reason, Rick consults the mask for directions and the player is rewarded by a map on screen that shows everything he needs to know!

There are some rooms that give the appearance of being inaccessible, but Rick needn't worry because there are doors marked in yellow which invariably lead him to them. Though the route to these rooms is often more dangerous than others, the journey is usually worth it for the bonus items, such as extra lives, found there.

What do masks do on their days off then? Well, it would appear that they all enjoy a good book, so this particular haunted mask rewards Rick with an extra chance if he finds any good reads lying about for him.

Splatter House III promises 16 megs of gore, superb gameplay and suggests massive game area in which all this takes place, but delivers none of this. Instead we are presented with a series of featureless rooms that host a shameful example of how boring beat-'em-ups are with enemies that hardly ever attack and follow highly predictable patterns when they do!

The music hasn't improved much over the last game, neither have the sound effects considering that there is so much memory space available to improve their clarity. Many of the screams from the ugly sprites sound like they're coming from a portable radio whose batteries are running low, they crackle so much!

When all is said and done this game is a waste. It hasn't improved on the original and is worse, in my opinion, than Splatter House II. In fact, I'd much prefer it if Namco released an arcade perfect rendition of their classic coin-op instead of producing these poor sequels.

Rick's transformation into a hulk-like super being is great but it's mostly to no avail seeing as the enemies fall so easily anyway. Also impressive is the way that the enemy sprites materialise in different ways onto the screen instead of just strolling on, stage right.

However to experience any enjoyment at all the game requires playing on Game Master difficulty setting, but even then it is only the bosses and time limit that are affected to any degree by this. I wish that the situation were different and that all the impressive attract sequences and digitised, mid-level screens hadn't gone to waste but this they have, so save your money and save your soul too because it is all very boring indeed.

I love the Splatterhouse coin-op, and with this Megadrive sequel appearing on a massive 16-meg game cartridge I was expecting Splatterhouse 3 to be a huge game packed with horror, gore and variety.

Imagine my disappointment when I found it's not that huge, isn't particularly horrible or gory, and variety is distinctly lacking. It's rather like a crap Streets Of Rage II with few moves and some gruesome-looking, but easy-to-beat opponents. Much of the gameplay boils down to simply wandering from room to room encountering the same baddies over and over again.

After a while it quickly becomes dull - there's little difference from level to level, and the game simply isn't challenging enough. Bah!

Presentation 91%
P. A long intro sequence greets and lures the players into believing that the game is something exceptional and the choice of difficulty settings is needed.

Graphics 87%
P. Anything that moves is large and quite gruesome in a comic book kind of way.
N. The backgrounds amount to static representations of rooms with very little interaction with the surroundings.

Sound 84%
P. Musically the cart isn't too bad and the many tunes enhance the doom and gloom nature of the storyline.
N. The sound effects are good and loud but sampled terribly!

Playability 81%
P. Beating up a few monsters is entertaining for a short while.
N. However going through the same motions for room after room soon becomes dull.

Lastability 74%
P. It takes a special kind of person to dedicate an extended amount of time to this rather limited beat-'em-up.

Overall 77%
Though it may look and sound okay, Splatterhouse III offers nothing new except a wild imagination with nowhere to go. Beat-'em-up and gore fans alike should find this a disappointment.