Honestly, with Splatterhouse you'll walk away with what you take from it. The bottom line to this game is if you're a fan of the originals or just love mindless Horror film-style zombie slaughtering, you'll love it (That's 2 for 2 for me). I felt it was a fitting rebirth of the franchise even for all of it's shortcomings. The wonky camera, the loading times, the anti-climactic end boss are really all I could find wrong with it. Anyone who thinks the controls are clunky, well, you fail at adaption. I had no trouble with them.
If you're squeamish or a prude, you're obviously not going to like all of the blood, gore & tits, you don't have to let us know, just keep walking. No one made you look at it. If Video Games as a medium are to be taken seriously as an art, yes, you even have to make room for the Horror/Slasher genre.
Contrary to popular belief, every game is repetitive on some level, not just button-mashers. It's just one style of gameplay with it's roots in the arcades when games were made to eat quarters. Some IP's today still demand this gameplay style because of what they are like Dynasty Warriors.
The key to making a modern button-masher appealing is the rest of the factors in it's presentation. Are the story and characters compelling, are the goals meaningful to the plot, are the boss fights well made, etc. Splatterhouse, for me, accomplished a good bit of this but definitely had room for improvement.
