Monster House [PS2]

Here's the problem with Monster House: Assaulting the contents of Home Interior Monthly simply doesn't make for thrilling gameplay. No one in his right mind wants to spend a leisurely hour battling chairs, lamps, television sets, and other pieces of evil-minded furniture. Even 10 minutes is pushing it.

The game takes its plot and characters from Gil Kenan's animated film Monster House. Here, three plucky young children have been swallowed by a house that might accurately be described as monstrous or, perhaps, possessing the characteristics of a monster. Armed only with water guns, a secondary weapon (be it camera, slingshot, or water balloons), and good, old-fashioned sass, these children must do battle with furniture and solve simple puzzles until the credits roll.

To its credit, Monster House is one of those rare children's games that never stoops to condescend to its audience by softening up the gameplay until a chimp could run through it unfettered. Nor does it attempt to draw in everyone under the sun by ramping the challenge up beyond anything a youngster might be able to handle. Hints are provided to the player whenever a puzzle appears, either in the form of a sound bite voiced by one of the game's characters or in-game text. The nudges are never horribly overt, and players, once they've been prompted as to the nature of the puzzle, are left alone to solve it.

Unfortunately, the simplistic nature of the puzzles means players will need to push a lot of boxes and backtrack to a lot of previously explored rooms to recover a key or other doodad. The worst of the puzzles involve pushing two or more boxes in order to retrieve a key or doodad, and this type of gameplay loses its flavor in the manner of dime-store bubblegum. That is to say, almost instantly.

Worse still, the game's control system, to use the colorful terminology of the game's intended audience, blows hot monkey chunks. For the home console versions of the game, the left analog stick is used to move a character. Tilting the stick left and right turns the character, and pressing it up and down sets him/her in motion. It's awkward having to turn a character before moving even when nothing monstrous is rapidly approaching. In combat, which is plentiful, it's a deadly chore. Fighting pieces of home decor while battling House's wicked control scheme should not hold any sort of grand appeal, even for masochists.

Monster House holds some amusing moments, but they're few and far between. At one point, young DJ and Jenny are trapped on other sides of a locked grate. When DJ yanks on it, Jenny smarmily notes that she tried pushing, but hadn't thought to try pulling. More moments like these would have made the game a gem to play, but as it is, it's just one extended chair wrecking, box-shoving session. And that's a house of pain, to be sure.