Pandora's Box: The Ultimate GameCube Tier List

#113: Monster House

Rating: E10+

Players: 1

Price Range: ~$14 USD

A game based on the animated film of the same name.

A childhood film that is actually decent, and although the game isn't anything to ride home about, it is actually unique by being a third-person shooter.

Now, not a good one, but an alright one, especially given the standard of games based on a property.

Like all licensed video games, this one takes an absurd number of liberties, but here, it isn't too bad.

Here, in the namesake monster house, the three children, D.J., Chowder, and Jenny, are separated, and have to fight the house's monsters to progress into the house using their water guns (which somehow destroys literal creepy crawlies made out of wood and steel).

Now, unlike the lower tier games, this game is actually okay.

You see, it is a mostly linear fare in which you play as the main characters, drenching the house's monsters, and the gameplay in a vacuum isn't half bad. Some variety is made with the monsters themselves, including board spiders, chairs, lamps, TVs, and furnaces among others, along with the different playstyles of each character.

While it is a bit distracting that the kids get their water literally out of thin air given that they just...pump the toy to magically get more in their tank, which is SpongeBob levels of logic, their differences keep the game from feeling...too repetitive, for a bit anyways. Each character has a different water gun, a side weapon with limited ammo, and a melee attack.

D.J. is the more balanced out of the three, having a single shot water gun that does medium damage and a moderate amount of water, a camera with limited film that can stun enemies, and a short ranged, but wide sweep of a melee attack. 

Chowder has the most powerful water gun out of them all, acting as a sort of shotgun, along with having a number of strong water balloons to launch as his secondary attack towards a single enemy and a power, if sluggish swipe downwards with his massive toy in exchange for a very low amount of ammo, constantly needing reloading, and no wide-range options. 

Jenny has easily the weakest water gun out of them all, and a very weak short-range kick, but she has rapid fire on her toy, the largest amount of ammo out of all of them, and her kick can be spammed. Her side weapon is a slingshot that, unlike Chowder, balances out her weaker damage output while being able to deal with multiple weaker enemies.

The similarities of base mechanics and alterations of their gameplay is at least something to commend, even if the concept of "one weak but fast, one balanced, and one strong but slow" concept is a little barebones.

Also, another concept that is something to at least appreciate a little is the interactions with the environment.

You see, the characters are in a living house. There are, let's say, vases. Now, while some vases will literally fly at you like a poltergeist possessed them, others are stationary. Now, something happens if you were to, say, knock one over by accident and break it. If that happened, then the house will rumble and get upset and spawn in enemies to deal with you now that the building knows your location, which is an admittedly cool idea. There are also vases and other breakables that may house goodies, like healing items and ammunition for secondary attacks, so there is a bit of a risk and reward system.

Low on hit points? Well, you could break a vase or two, but that means that you could spawn in more monsters. The choice is yours.

While this is actually underutilized in the end, I'll get to that in a bit.

Also, the atmosphere for a kids game, at least in the first half, is actually decent.

I remember this game being unsettling to me as a kid, with D.J.'s walkie-talkie conversations with Skull, who just spouts out useless quotes and worthless philosophy, feeling so off and out of place, it actually unnerved me when I was younger.

Unfortunately, there are many game design decisions that are just baffling to say the least, and is why the game is here.

For one, the controls.

The game has a tank-control style of movement, with you being able to strafe around enemies once you shoot at them and lock onto their frame. This makes movement rather...uncomfortable to say the least. Imagine dealing with these controls, in a third-person shooter, and try to scour for ammo or health items while you are being harassed by enemies. What this does is make it more difficult to really deal with tense situations unless you are locked on, which is not good.

Unlike games like Resident Evil in which the tank controls are an intentional part of the design to create tension by always making the player vulnerable, here it is just annoying.

Also, besides D.J., Chowder and Jenny's weaknesses don't mesh well with their encounters.

Jenny's kick is absurdly weak, and while it is quick, it's low damage output means that its only real use case is if you are cornered by weaker enemies like plank spiders or damaged chairs, and her water gun is absurdly underpowered against multiple stronger enemies despite a larger amount of ammo.

Chowder is also probably the worst out of the three. While he can easily wipe out weaker enemies, since he has the least amount of ammo, it makes situations where there are multiple monsters a hassle, especially if you are wasting your water on the smaller ones. His melee attack, while the most powerful, is a straight slash, and is slow to recover from, and the congestion of enemies doesn't help his situation either.

This makes the basement portion of the game with Chowder utterly ridiculous. There are one or two encounters in which they throw an absurd number of enemies at you without much respite. It just goes on and on, straining you on your resources and healing items to the point that destroying breakables is necessary to survive regardless of risk or if you're in a fight, and it just gets nauseating as to how many enemies they force you to encounter in this section.

Easy one of the worst parts of the game.

The other terrible part?

The endgame.

By the time the kids regroup and severely damage and escape the house, they are then chased by it on the street.

And the escape from its gigantic form?

Terrible.

The kids are on three parts of the street, fleeing from it, and the only thing you do is simply push a button corresponding to each character to jump over or dodge something in the road for what feels like five minutes.

That's it, and it gets old and boring very fast.

The final boss is also atrocious, as it not only ends by a quick time event, but the fight itself should be cool, as Chowder, like the film, takes control of an industrial excavator and tries to smash the house the pieces. The problem is that the hit-and-run strategy that the game wants you to play in order to take it down is so bland, slow, and shocking unexciting, that it was a rather bitter ending to an alright, if just competent game.

Inexpensive, so there is no risk involved, and some will find genuine value in this, and I do, but the problems I have with it, along with it being some standard licensed fare by the second half prevents it from getting any higher. Overall, it is fine, but it unfortunately falls under the usual trappings of licensed games at the time.