Just to put your mind at ease, you can still enjoy Slaughter 3: The Rebels if you haven’t played Slaughter 1 and Slaughter 2. That’s the beauty of slaughter – it needs no preamble.
In this latest – and final – instalment, developer Ray Spark has brought the Slaughter trilogy to a roaring crescendo of blood and guts arcade action.
The game is set in a gigantic prison complex somewhere in Russia. This is no ordinary prison complex: it’s an outstandingly horrible one, housing the world’s worst murderers, thieves, and rascals. And, with no hope of redemption, they’re furious.
Their criminal rage is perpetually close to boiling point, until one day it finally boils over into a mass prison escape. Every single member of prison staff is killed in the onslaught, and the residents of nearby homes flee into the freezing night to take shelter in the woods. It’s a gnarly scene.
Your partner went in ahead of you to take out the scum, but he vanished. Now it’s up to you to track him down and kill all the escapees with a variety of guns (at a distance) and your trusty knife (if they blunder too close to you).
Thankfully, you don’t have to do it all alone. As you make your way through the game you’ll pick up allies, fellow heroes whom you can equip with weapons and generally order around.
The story campaign is a thrill ride, with a cast of fun characters, reams of great dialogue, and an undercurrent of black, black humor. And there are two more modes if you ever feel like taking a break.
Arena and Free, meanwhile, allow you to throw off the chains of story and just run around shooting people while assembling an armory of deadly weapons.
Slaughter 3: The Rebels is a polished arcade shooter, with crisp, smooth 3D visuals and a gruesome aesthetic, and it’s out right now on the App Store.