Completion Time: 3h:27m:00s
Rating: 5/10

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Houses, Houses and More Houses!

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Well, the actual month of October got away from me a little bit, and so this final entry in my spooky month games is coming about a week later. Long story short, I had a ton of problems getting Eternal Darkness to work, because it doesn’t like wireless GameCube controllers it seems? And also, the disc was scuffed. I could’ve just done it emulated, but you know that’s not how I like to do things! So, I finally scrounged around for something else to fit with my intended theme and came across “Monster House”. What do you know, three horror games about houses/mansions on the GameCube! I could’ve saved Luigi’s Mansion for this year and things would’ve gone a lot smoother, but live and learn I suppose.

With characters like these, how can we lose!

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Venturing Inside

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Monster House is an ugly, ugly game. No real surprise there, because the source material is even worse. I’ve seen folks in recent years pining for its art style, which I don’t believe I’ll ever understand as anything more than nostalgia. At the very least, the game does manage to keep some of the more twisted sensibilities in tone and environmental structure as the movie, which I appreciate. Still, I can’t think of any licensed games from this timeframe specifically that LOOK particularly good, even if they’re fun to play. You gotta go stylized to get things like this to work, cut it out game studios!

Damn, I've been thoroughly roasted

You play as each of the 3 main children, whose names I refused to learn, as they venture across the various rooms and floors of the living mansion for… reasons. I’m sure this is elaborated on in the opening cutscene and the movie itself, but I don’t remember and I’m not rewatching that for this. As you go, you solve puzzles and beat up bosses while firing slingshots and water balloons at parts of the house as they come alive. The bosses are some of my favorite parts, as they are just iterations of the house come alive and they all take different forms. Like a chandelier spinning around, or ductwork coming down from the ceiling and trying to suck you up..
.

Help! I'll never use A/C ever again!

The controls, though, are a tad unfortunate as they’re rigid and at times completely nonsensical. I can’t begin to explain how you’re supposed to take out books that are firing at you from across the room, because the game doesn’t really care about you understanding how it works. Likewise, ducking didn’t always seem to function appropriately either. The worst offence might just be the inability to jump though. The game operates like a 3rd person shooter in a way that it isn’t well equipped to handle. Hell, it might as well have just gone for the stock and standard 3rd platform adventure model all of these games go for and it would probably at least feel better. I can totally get behind trying new things out, but only if you’re gonna go all the way. Not half-assed like whatever this was trying to do.

Do quicktime events count as riveting gameplay?

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Completing the Game

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So, completion, eh? Well, make it through all of the levels, that’s the first thing. And as always, it’s the most important thing anyways. The next bit that comes is… also the final. There’s really only the one collectable in the game, and these unlock concept art in the main menu. These are the clapping cymbal monkeys. If you stand still and stare in their general direction for a bit, they’ll clap and disappear, adding to your total. This is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, you just so happen to get one while wandering around and you don’t even notice it, but the game THINKS you did and counts it towards the collection. Other times, you’re rushing a bit like I am and you think that you got one, but you don’t wait for it to clap and so it doesn’t tally. What’s even worse is: no level select. You’ve gotta play the entire game over again to get to that one section where the cymbal monkey was, and the game itself doesn’t really keep track of what you collected where. This is a complete nightmare, and entirely unfriendly to players going for this sort of thing.

These might be the most terrifying things in the whole house

Nothing warms my heart quite like a full art gallery

Monster House is yet another in a long line of GameCube licensed games that I’ve added under my completion belt. And it’s unfortunately a bit of a whimper to the 2024 spooky month of GameCube games I had lined up. I do have a working rendition of Eternal Darkness, so maybe I’ll do that early next year to make up for it? Worst case scenario, I just wait around until October 2025 and play it then. It’s not like I’m lacking in GameCube titles here.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 28/652