Slaughter 3 is about as to-the-point as a game title can get, as it gives you all the information you need: There are 2 other Slaughter games before this one, and the entire trilogy is about brutally killing people. That’s it.
Like its predecessor, Slaughter 2: Prison Assault, Slaughter 3 takes place in a prison compound. The criminals locked up there have broken out and are now killing the staff and the civilians living in the nearby village. Naturally, it’s your task to put an end to the carnage.
Following a short opening cutscene in which your character arrives by boat and scales the prison wall to get inside, you are delivered straight into the action. You’ll slide your finger around the left side of the screen to move while the right side is for controlling the camera. There’s a crosshair for your right hand as well. If you hold this button while hovering the cursor on an enemy, your character will automatically shoot at that target. All in all, a pretty standard setup for a third-person shooter game on mobile.
The combat is, for the most part, hectic and messy. Enemies will charge at you with reckless abandon, and you must put them down before they get close. If they do, the fire button will change into a stab button so you won’t be entirely defenseless, but still, it’s best to avoid getting into that situation in the first place.
Danger can come from any angles, especially when you’re outside, so you’ll have to stay on high alert the whole time. In this regard, Slaughter 3 feels a lot similar to Doom or Wolfenstein, which is to say, it’s quite primitive.
The main campaign is divided into several missions. Every time you finish one or die, you’ll return to a cabin with a sarcastic dude named Nick, whom you can engage in conversations with for some dark humor. That said, the dialogue is all in Russian, so unless you speak the language, you’ll have to rely on subtitles.
The cabin comes equipped with a laptop too, which you can use to access missions, purchase guns, equip allies when you’ve recruited some, and so on.
Missions are relatively straightforward at the beginning. In fact, the first one simply requires you to search around for gun parts. And even later on, everything can be summed up in 2 words: fetching and killing. Anyway, your objective is usually presented on the screen in white, but you’ll have to find a way to reach it on your own.
That will be more difficult than it sounds, as the map is pretty complex, and a lot of times you’ll find yourself hitting a dead end. It’ll require a few tries before you figure out the way to progress.
Some doors are locked, others aren’t, and certain areas can only be accessed once you’ve reached a specific mission. Moreover, there are also gateways that can only be unlocked by a specific party member, introducing some Metroidvania elements to the experience.
Slaughter 3’s overall arc mostly involves unlocking additional weapons and allies until you have access to everything. You’ll do so by completing mini-missions and rummaging through bins. The premise is decent enough, the dialogue is pretty entertaining with plenty of black humor, and the Metroidvania elements add some spice to the endless action.
Slaughter 3 does a good job on the graphical front as well. The 3D visuals are smooth, the models are sharps, and there are some nice little details that make things a bit more realistic, such as how you can explode an enemy’s head with a shotgun at close range.
All things considered, we feel that Slaughter 3 still has some rough edges, but its frantic action and mildly disturbing aesthetic makes for a cool game that’s worth checking out for fans of the shooter genre. It is available now on both Google Play and the App Store.
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