Monster House is yet another movie-themed game that has been released on all the consoles. Most of these games are rather insipid and don’t inspire much enthusiasm, but this effort is actually pretty good. While much of the game relies on standard dungeon crawling through room after room in this very large house, it’s well-designed dungeon crawling.

Yep, it’s called Monster House and its goal is to eat you and your buddies. Bats, bees and mutant chairs are just some of the enemies that it calls forth. Luckily, DJ, Jenny and Chowder are equipped with a water gun and camera that will take out these bad guys with some judicial aiming. These three characters all have special abilities that allow for differing approaches with their water guns, and to interact differently with their environment. Jenny can crawl through small spaces, DJ can climb and Chowder can move heavier items that the others can not. Players can toggle through the characters at any time. Each character also has another weapon along with the water gun: DJ has a camera, Chowder a water balloon, and Jenny a slingshot.

The main goal of the game is to reach the basement and take out the furnace. However, in order to get to the basement, certain items have to be found first, such as blueprints and flashlights. In order to keep up with the current objective, the kids can talk to Skull via the walkie-talkie. Each room has items that can be blasted with the water gun to uncover powerups like candy for energy, water for the water guns and other items that the characters can use.  These objects can also be picked up and thrown at enemies, although good timing is required. Upgrades to the water guns can also be found.

Most of these rooms are also replete with enemies, who aren’t horribly difficult to beat because of any awesome fighting abilities, but can sometimes be hard to defeat because of the way they’re placed in the room. For instance, many times when a character first walks into a room, the enemies are right on top of him before players can react. A few hits, and boom, you’re dead. This wouldn’t be so bad if the save point was right before the room, but the game only allows saves in certain rooms, which have to be visited in order to activate a save point. If players forget to save frequently, this save point can be quite a ways back in the game.

But for those who plan ahead and save often, just a few visits to the more difficult rooms is all that is required to figure out how to defeat the enemies.

This game is all about dungeon crawling. After awhile, going from room to room and blasting enemies can get a little tedious, but fortunately A2M has done a great job making the rooms and accompanying enemies pretty fun to defeat. There are plenty of logistical puzzles to change the pace a bit, and there is a good variety of differing baddies.

The game is attractively drawn. The rooms are designed with lots of detail, and the characters are richly colored and animated well. One good thing is the brightness of the game; many times a game that is supposed to take place in a creepy house would be darkly lit, but that’s not a problem in these rooms.

The music is one of the weaker features, and is unmemorable. This game should be full of creepy music!

Overall, this is a fun and entertaining game. There are lots of goodies to pick up, which is always a good thing, and the enemies aren’t too difficult to beat, but aren’t wimpy, either. In fact, this would be a perfect game for all ages except for the awkward save-game design.  Having to save just in certain spots manually makes it harder on the little guys. Having the enemies all pile on the character just as he walks through a door is a bit harsh, too, but this only happens in a few of the rooms. And, to be fair, there is a judicious amount of health collectibles lying around. Switching between characters adds depth to the action and puzzle-solving aspect, and really adds to the fun. A good choice for a summer game!

Gameplay: 7.5
This is a well-designed crawl through lots of rooms filled with items to pick up and enemies to blast. Sometimes the action can get a little tedious, but there is enough variety and things to do to keep interest until the end.

Graphics: 8.0
The graphics are very good and show off the GBA nicely.

Sound: 6.0
The music is not anything like it should be for this type of game.

Difficulty: Medium
The game itself isn’t hard to play, but the few save options and slight unfairness of enemy deployment can make things harder than they should be.

Concept: 7.0
There is nothing new or different, but the treatment is pleasing and well implemented.

Overall: 7.5
A nice diversion, and one that is better than most movie-themed games. As stated previously, this is mostly a dungeon crawl, so players who don’t enjoy those types of game won’t like this one.  However, if you do like searching room to room and fighting frequently, then this game will be a lot of fun. Kids and adults alike will enjoy playing Monster House.