N-Philes

Monster House

Posted August 22nd 2006 by Curtis Brunet.

Old man Nebbercracker's house has always been scary, but when the house itself begins eating children and parents alike (take that, Atkins diet!), three brave kids step up to save the neighborhood. Armed with water pistols, you control D.J., Chowder, and Jenny - three unlikely heroes who venture inside the Monster House to try and stop it from destroying their quaint little community, and quite possibly, the world.

Dubbed "Resident Evil for Kids" by our very own N-Philes co-Editor Adrian DeHererra, Monster House is based on the hit film directed by Gil Kenan and executively produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. The film itself is a decent kids' flick, delivering whole-hearted laughs while being scary enough to make even the most mature 8-year-old sleep with the light on – and the video game is also quite scary. Sadly for the game's publisher THQ and developer A2M, it's John Goodman in a thong scary.

Using a short screen-by-screen introduction, the lead character gives an overview of the story so far, and then proceeds to split up all three characters into different parts of the house. You switch between these characters randomly, delving deeper into the house fighting pretty much the same enemies throughout; chair monsters, furnace monsters, lamp monsters and other creatures from your local Sears outlet to name a few. During their exploration, the protagonists find upgrades to their water pistols, gaming tokens and a history of the house they're inside of. Eventually, they find each other in the heart of the house, and begin a race to escape its evil clutches, running through a context-sensitive (time-sensitive scenes that force the player to take action by hitting certain buttons) urban jungle before a final showdown between the house and a bulldozer.

Even from the start, the player is given ominous signs of trouble (not including the giant Sony logo that shows during the game's start-up). Along with a pitiful lack of options (don't expect much more than autosave, brightness and rumble), the controls are unresponsive to say the least. While the A button fires your primary water pistol, the R trigger will unleash a melee attack onto approaching enemies... sometimes. On more than one occasion when being cornered by multiple chairs, your best bet is to unleash your melee attack to bat the entire onslaught back - only problem is that the attack only successfully fires off about 60% of the time, leaving you cornered and open to plenty of attacks from the possessed furnishings. Not only is this frustrating when trying to defend yourself, it also doesn't help the fact that your main weapon uses a lock-on feature that cannot be shut off. You need to be locked on to attack anything and, at random intervals, you will be locked onto an enemy you don't want to attack. Sure, you can cycle through enemies, but when there are 10 enemies advancing, the controls become useless.

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