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The
summer is in full-swing now and the blockbusters are coming in
thick-and-fast. Sure enough, quick to cash-in on big screen success,
the Film Licence games are flooding to shelves. From mortally dull
and rank-average to occasionally quite fun, the year has seen a
variety of multi-format Film Licence titles such as The
Da Vinci Code, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s
Chest, Disney/Pixar: Cars and Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.
Despite their dubious quality, no-one should complain, in some cases
they are the only thing keeping certain formats alive! Joining the
pack this week is Monster House, the game of the kid’s film
due  for release on 11th August, 2006.
The
player takes control of the three main characters from the film, DJ,
Chowder and Jenny, although not necessarily in that order. Monster
House follows the same plot as the film, armed with Water
Pistols, three children take on a possessed house that is going to
eat trick-or-treaters on Halloween. This translates into game terms
as a Third-Person Action/Adventure trying to be a Survival Horror
and to some degree, has been successful. The player views the action
from a low angle giving the game an atmospheric feel, although there
are not many shocks, likely due to the target audience. The game
uses standard analogue controls to move with the Face Buttons
dealing with firing and other actions. The game features an
Auto-Lock-On that starts as soon as you shoot an enemy and works
reasonably well, although can become a little unwieldy when many
enemies are present. Each character has a different Primary and
Secondary Weapon, for instance, DJ has a Rifle-like Water Pistol and
a Flash Camera that stuns enemies, whereas Chowder’s Water Gun
functions similar to a Shotgun and also fires Water Balloons.
Despite the games obvious attempts at Survival Horror, each
characters Primary Weapon has unlimited ammunition, although the
player must keep up Water Pressure through the occasional press of
Triangle. Secondary ammunition is limited to five shots, but is not
hard to find. Unfortunately there are also not many different
enemies for the player to shoot, most are either possessed chairs or
lamps. The lack of variety of your foes is not the only issue with Monster
House, and many are those that seem to befall many Film
Licences.
For
a start, Monster House is very short and most experienced
players should see it off in less than five hours, maybe even four.
It also attempts the interactive Cut-Scenes seen in Lara Croft;
Tomb Raider: Legend and originating - in this generation - from Resident Evil 4,
however unlike the aforementioned titles, Monster House does
not place Checkpoints near these locations, nor does it warn the
player in any way, making these occurrences seem a little harsh for
a children’s game. Some of the Weapon Upgrades also seem very
tacked-on, with most offering only a slight improvement in firepower
that affects gameplay very little. There are many other issues
including Chowder’s Water Bomb Launcher firing in a fixed
trajectory regardless of the Lock-On, making it ineffective after
the first shot, Collision Detection is also quite below par making
some enemies very difficult and frustrating to destroy.
Although
the environments and characters certainly look like their film
counterparts, Monster House’s presentation is not
particularly good. There are multiple cases of Polygon
Cross-Pollination and poor animation and occasional Frame-Rate
problems, probably down to a lack of polish in the final stages of
development. Although obviously there are constraints in making a
game the takes place in a single house, it still seems a little
stingy to see the same rooms - complete with the same enemies -
reused several times for each character. Thankfully Monster House
features official Voice Acting and music from the film, so in
principle the game should sound good, unfortunately Monster House
is marred with a glitch that can lead to sound effects being
endlessly replayed, a forgivable bug if infrequent – as in Perfect
Dark Zero - but as it happens almost every Level, can not be
ignored.
Monster
House is a surprisingly atmospheric game and with some polish
could have been up to the standard of it’s sister-rival Disney/Pixar:
Cars. As it stands it’s multiple glitches and the short length
of Monster House has almost certainly doomed it to be
forgotten in the tide of substandard Film Licences.
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