How ironic that Monster House for consoles is incredibly short, clocking in at four hours, yet it's still a couple of hours too long. It doesn't represent the worst of film and television cash-ins (how many Kim Possible games do we really need?), but it was obviously thrown together without much thought beyond the easy dollars it's sure to rake in. In this third-person action/adventure game, you control the film's three main characters en route to destroying the evil kid-eating abode, fighting possessed appliances and avoiding flying encyclopedias along the way. Monster House's presentation is creepy, but it lacks any sense of urgency or tension and controls poorly, making it both boring and frustrating.

The game's target audience should at least be delighted that they play as DJ, Chowder and Jenny during the course of the game. Each character carries a water gun as a primary weapon, but they have different secondary capabilities. DJ can use his flash camera to temporarily stun enemies; Chowder throws water balloons; and Jenny uses her slingshot to take out enemies from a distance. All three of them perform a melee attack and can crouch, and you may occasionally need to execute context-sensitive moves, such as jumping, climbing, pushing crates, or jumping out of the way of an attacking tree.


To its credit, Monster House does try to mix up the gameplay with action sequences, puzzle solving and stealthy exploration. None of the elements are done well, however, starting with the combat. Most of the combat involves spraying water at chairs, toasters, player pianos, and other odds and ends. You have an unlimited supply of water, but need to pump the gun to keep your reservoir full, and if you forget in between battles, you'll have to frantically pump while under attack, since you run out of "ammo" pretty fast. You'll automatically attack the closest enemy, or attempt to use the horrible targeting system to select one. It's bad enough that you have to use a face button to target when a shoulder button would have made more sense, but it doesn't work half the time anyway, and it was a feature that should have been left out, rather than done so haphazardly.

Other times, you will solve rudimentary puzzles, which entails moving around crates, opening chests, shooting stuff with a slingshot and so on. Monster House makes it easy to identify which items you use to progress by giving them a sparkle effect, although there were times we weren't sure of our objective.