Monster House
Hey look a game based on a movie!
Tags: Monster House Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Michael Hanning on Aug 11th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Monster House (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Monster House has hit the market with a vengeance, daring four different systems to watergun the hell out of some furniture in the name of stopping a living house. The title’s handheld offerings have taken an interesting turn of events – separate titles for the Nintendo DS and the Game Boy Advance, both with exceptionally different gameplay, looks and style. The Advance title opted for exploration akin to Castlevania and well-detailed pixel art, turning out to be a surprisingly fun title. Will the higher-cost DS version beat its own brethren?
To defeat the Monster House you explore it room by sequential room. Rather than genuinely moving between locations, however, you’re stuck in a room and told to fight in it until the decides you’re done. Moving through the house is handled via an overhead map where you choose your next location, though most of the room layout is sequential and renders all of that pointless. Enemies pour out of the walls in almost endless amounts until you’ve defeated them all, then the game pulls you out of the room and you start again in a slightly different one.
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The only notable difference between one room and the next are a few props and whatever enemy is coming at you this time. Sometimes there’s a small door that opens once you’ve defeated all enemies in room A so you can run into room B and have all the enemies in there come at you. There’s a bit of variation in the three kids, but not a whole lot – they all share a basic weapon and pretty similar range and speed. The only notable part is that the kids regenerate one health for every round they sit out so you’re going to rotate them to keep them fresh, like produce.
Unfortunately, Monster House’s Achilles heel is its control. Your character is moved by the D-pad in any direction while you use the touch-screen to fire in a 360-degree circle, akin to Sinistar. The big problem? All the action happens on the top screen while you’re dealing with the bottom. It takes a long time to get used to and could have easily been fixed by having the action and firing mechanism on the same screen. There’s a steady stream of fire from your water guns so you can get through most of the game just spraying in an arc, but tougher enemies are going to be a royal pain. There are a few small bonus power-ups, but none that last for long (move faster for thirty seconds and the like.)
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Another gripe is that for a title based on a movie, the game’s visuals come off as awkward. Most of the cutscenes of note involve stills of the awkard looking computer-generated kids standing around and talking about whatever’s in the next room before you choose a kid to go in there and shoot in a circle. The kids run into lost cops, burnouts and angry toys in the house. None of the models look particularly good, so maybe not seeing a lot of them is a blessing in disguise. In gameplay you don’t fare much better – everything happens from a top-down view and most things you fight aren’t particularly detailed (see: flying books and dishes, aka little squares or little circles.)
Monster House for the DS is a good example of how not to integrate the touchscreen into a game. It’s an alright concept (we all loved Sinistar), but using the more-subjective touchscreen is a far cry from a joystick and not nearly as intuitive. Combined with the awkward visuals, inability to freely explore and general lack of things to do the Nintendo DS version of Monster House just doesn’t come off too well. Compared to the well-made Advance version this comes off as half-finished at best
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Sinistar control scheme a good idea + Sure does feature some stuff from that movie. |
4.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- The Sinistar thing doesn't work when the control and the game are on different screens. - House exploration isn't any fun when you're not in control of it. - Just not that good looking for a game based on a movie. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you have a choice, play the much-better Game Boy Advance version of Monster House. | |
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Tags: Monster House
Posted by Michael Hanning on Aug 11th, 2006 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
