Monster House, developed by the experienced team of Artificial Mind & Movement for power-publisher THQ, is a survival horror game based upon the animated movie of the same name. What the game has going for it right off the bat is that it is good clean fun for the kids. The graphics are solid for a PS2 game, and the controls are responsive and easy to master. This is a game that any young child can quickly pick up. Will they enjoy it though? That all depends on the gaming experience and tastes of the child.

The game’s pacing was, in a word, flat. There are nine chapters to the game, the last two of which are very short, involving the three stars of the game & movie being chased by the house down a street and ultimately fighting it with a large construction backhoe. So there are really seven chapters in which you run around in the house fighting off living furniture with a water gun, the meat of the game. To give you an idea of how flat the game’s pace is, I did not have my first death until the beginning of chapter five – obviously not much challenge there. After that, the game suddenly became much harder, and death was a frustrating event, prompting me to hiss under my breath and ask myself, ‘I have to do that all over again?’ The designers apparently felt that adding a boatload more monsters around chapter five was the answer to adjusting the gameplay challenge.

Gameplay in a nutshell involves alternating between playing the three main characters as they make their way through the house, attempting to escape. All three are armed with water guns and a secondary weapon, as well as the ability to perform a seldom used or needed melee attack. The waterguns all function pretty much the same, save for an upgrade that each character can find which gives the watergun an alternate fire mode. The main character’s secondary weapon is a camera which you can use to blind/stun monsters. I used this maybe three times in the entire game, and still managed to beat it with ease. The female lead’s secondary weapon is a slingshot, which you can use to attack a single target, or to break through locks on doors. Her secondary weapon I used maybe a dozen times, half of which were to break through locks. Finally, the third character, a chubby sidekick, uses water balloons – a sort of grenade weapon which is good for attacking groups of monsters. The story was the same for all characters – I used the watergun almost exclusively, and hardly even touched the secondary weapons.

About halfway through the game, they give you the ability to call a buddy using the up directional pad button for advice. I forgot I even had that ability a few minutes after they gave it to me. Consequently I never even used it.

Littered through the house are scripted events requiring a quick button press in order to avoid certain death, such as a monster tree branch smashing through a window to grab you, or a living heating duct crashing through the ceiling in an attempt to swallow you. These events were typically easy to pass; however, sometimes they were placed toward the end of an area, ten minutes away from your last save point. In these cases, if you accidentally press the wrong button, you will find yourself hissing at the screen, knowing you now have to redo the last ten minutes of gameplay because of one simple missed button press. This is bad game design in my opinion. You should at least give the player a second chance button press to still succeed. Instant death because of one missed button press is never fun, especially in a game that uses save points rather than permitting unlimited saves no matter where you are.

The game puzzles were as simple as they come. Find an easily findable key and open a door, etc. And the boss monsters were just as simple, requiring little strategy beyond rapid fire of your trusty watergun to beat.

The game has a few ‘bonus’ features. The designers placed 32 toy monkeys throughout the house. If you find them, they unlock concept art in the extras menu. I managed to find 25, and probably could have easily found the remaining 7 if I had spent a little more time looking. You will also find video game tokens by breaking open vases and barrels (nothing ground breaking there), which may be used to play an old school arcade scroller called ‘You Are Dead’ from the main menu.

My conclusions? The game has so little variety to it, that most kids will probably find themselves getting bored with it before finishing. Even if they do play it all the way through, it will only take them about 6 hours to do so, and replay value is at about as close to 0% as it gets as far as I’m concerned. If you still want to give Monster House a shot, I recommend a run to your favorite game rental shack first