The Lacerator Review — My Third Leg (Minus Two)

With the current state of horror, where ideas once thought to be silly (haunted animatronic mascots, a cursed Sesame Street set, or “what if Mickey Mouse was creepy,” as just a few examples) have garnered mainstream success for their genuine scares and playing-it-straight nature, you would think that horror comedy as a genre would be one that is also exploding in equal kind. Yet, I feel like it’s so rare that I actually see this attempted, much less pulled off successfully, to the point where I wonder if people have forgotten the outright corny roots the horror genre was born from. Sure, you will see a tongue-in-cheek joke in your horror games, but there is rarely a title that is, from start to finish, an outright parody of the genre, let alone a successful one.

Enter The Lacerator.

The Lacerator is a horror parody that, from the very beginning, pokes fun at both the horror movies of the 1980s as well as the classic titles that spawned the horror gaming genre. Silent Hill and Resident Evil are playfully mocked by a title that simultaneously pokes fun at their core mechanics and uses them incredibly well.

That is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of a parody. If you are simply making fun of something, you’re not making a parody so much as you are… well, mocking it. To properly parody something, you have to show that you have an understanding of the foundational aspects of the thing you’re making fun of; you have to do what the thing is good at, and poke fun and/or criticize it in the process.

The Lacerator parodies the core mechanics of foundational horror games that built the genre and inspired so many others. Ominous writing on the wall, fixed camera positions that obnoxiously change direction as you pass corners, creepy and corroded sets that require you to backtrack plenty while solving weird puzzles strangely left in place by your captors to allow you to move forward, with notes and journal entries throughout that conveniently explain the game’s lore for the player. The Lacerator pokes fun at these elements by implementing them well, with great level design, creepy locations, and good puzzles, only to crush your expectations by taking the piss out of the tone. There are hints of a “serious” horror game hidden beneath bloody writing that says “don’t escape” and journal entries of the killer going “hahahaha I will lacerate him!”

The fact that The Lacerator can feasibly pass as a legitimate horror title both adds to the comedy and is a testament to the creator’s talent and understanding of the genres they are parodying. Players who pick up the game expecting a scare are going to be in for a surprise when met with the game’s comedic writing and atmosphere. They will, therefore, be even more surprised when they find themselves chased by the titular villain and realize that the game still manages to build real tension between all of the jokes. A good horror parody, after all, should still be a little scary.

More than just a parody of classic horror games, The Lacerator pokes fun at the tropes and characters of campy 1980s horror films. I shouldn’t really have to explain the joke here, as our main character, Max, is a pornstar who, quote, “loves sex,” and has a constantly lit cigarette throughout the game.

The humor in the game, beyond simple parodies of the genre, is genuinely good. Perhaps it won’t be for everyone, but it was just my brand of straight-faced ridiculousness that kept me laughing throughout. I need only point to the scene in which Max, our protagonist, was rendered as standing up in a cutscene, despite the fact that I was playing with just one leg.

Though the comedic elements of the game are obvious and work well, The Lacerator is more than just a parody that does nothing to reinvent itself within the genre. The titular mechanic of the game, laceration, uniquely changes how you play the game based on how many (and what) limbs you lose to the game’s many deadly traps. More than simple debuffs, losing some limbs can actually open up options for you; getting your leg lacerated, for example, allows you to crawl under certain traps while removing your ability to jump to reach higher areas.

For all the good in The Lacerator, the game is not without its bad—and by that I mean the unintentionally bad elements, not the comedic ones.

As you might expect in a game like this, you can find yourself aimlessly exploring and backtracking a lot to solve room puzzles and progress. This becomes more of a problem when you realize that the game’s save points are not great, and an untimely death can often send you way back in progress. Even worse is the fact that The Lacerator is not free of its cheap kills; one such moment that comes to mind was when I found myself crawling through what appeared to be a secret area, only to emerge in front of a monster with a mine strapped to its back, instantly killing me and sending me back about fifteen minutes of gameplay.

The game’s tank controls are also obnoxiously bad and lead to many near misses with traps (though, shockingly, were never actually the cause of any deaths or lacerations on their own, even if they came so close so many times). This, I believe, is actually a parody in and of itself, but the option to disable them, like you can with the fixed camera, would have been very appreciated by this reviewer.

If this review and the attached screenshots haven’t sold you on The Lacerator, then it isn’t for you. Some people have an exclusively earnest appreciation of horror and thus aren’t attracted to the kind of parody The Lacerator has to offer. For those whose interests have been piqued, however, I cannot recommend the game more. It is a brilliant, if utterly nonsensical parody of multiple horror mediums and one that I feel hides a brilliance and masterful understanding of its genre beneath some enjoyably stupid humor.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of The Lacerator. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! The Lacerator is available on Steam.