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Techtite's Playstation-2 Reviews! |
----------------- Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted! ------------------ Sidebar:: ----------------- "Scooby-Doo, the movie?" This game is obviously released in May, to coincide with the live action Scooby-Doo movie, coming out June 14th. Which will salute Scooby better? I'd say this game will; the film seems like too much of a "modernization" to be a salute as much as a parody or playful jab (not unlike the Brady Bunch films). However, the film is still two weeks away, so only time will tell. |
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Scooby-Doo:Night of 100 Frights!
Click picture to order this game. A Techtite ReviewAllow me to be blunt; Scooby-Doo's modern direct-to-video incantations haven't been up to par lately. Of course, everyone loves the classic episodes of any TV series, though there was a certain flair that the original cartoons of the early 1970's had, which is lacking in modern versions of the cartoon. Could such classic flair be implemented into a modern video game? Such is the question with Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights!, another admirable descendant of the Mario64 genre, with all the Scooby characters in 3D, and even "guest star" Don Knotts! It's a nice game, as long as your kids love collecting a LOT of Scooby Snacks! The game begins excellently enough, with a brilliantly revised, 3D-polygon rendition of the classic Scooby-Doo opening theme song. From the monster that appears behind a secret bookcase, to Fred falling backwards, Shaggy falling in the bathtub, Daphne being nearly grabbed by the ghost hand, and Scooby running into the robot; it's all here, all within the 3D game engine itself. This is a cool beginning. Equally cool is when the mystery machine drives up to its latest mystery, in a spooky haunted house that looks like something right out of the cartoon. So far, so good. Then Scooby's friends go in the house, only to have Scooby distracted for a few seconds. When he turns to follow them, they're gone! Where'd they all go? Well, that's up to you, as Scooby-Doo, to find out. Along the way, you'll jump, dig, and head-butt your way to all the Scooby Snacks, so you can reach later levels and eventually find your friends. This is actually a little bit more fun (and challenging) than it sounds, with Scooby able to stomp a few spiders, swing from a few chandeliers to get past holes in the floor, wear fuzzy slippers to slip past bigger monsters, and even wear a lampshade to hide from other monsters (complete with laugh track when you do!). The majority of this initial part of the game is largely a scooby-snack hunt, though fans of Scooby-Doo --and Super Mario style gaming-- should have a lot of fun. Of course, littler game players may be a bit frustrated with how long it takes to get the special items needed for Scooby to do more than jump around. You'll need all the snacks you can find before getting items like the lampshade, slippers, and my personal favorite, the football helmet (so you can head-butt those monsters for good...or at least, the duration of the level). While this is not a game you can finish in one night of game play, it's not entirely difficult, either; just lots of huge levels to explore, and lots and lots of Scooby Snacks! Patience pays off, however. Get to the attic with 400 snacks, and it's time for an introduction to the uber-boss, Mastermind, who has captured all your friends and has you periodically saving them, by defeating a mini-boss. First up is the Black Night, which is a nice salute to Scooby's premiere episode! Save Velma from this guy, and you get a pair of galoshes, which allows you to unlock even more areas of the house and hedge mazes. You continue like this --saving your friends one by one, getting devices to proceed further-- until the final showdown, in typical Scooby-Doo fashion. This will take a while to complete, though, so I hope your kids are very patient. Not that the game designers don't cut you some slack with repitition. Find "warp gates" along the way, and you can use any of them to warp to key points of any area map. Don't like that pesky trip over the thorny bushes, balancing atop a truck? No problem; a warp gate later on makes sure you never have to re-live that area again, unless you really want to. Better yet, while this game does have the typical console-itis of games of this type (you can only save at certain areas), these warp gates make saving much easier; all you really have to do is reach a warp gate, warp back to the front of the house (where your gang's mystery machine is parked), save at the save point there, and warp back to where you left off when the game is restored. Of course, people want to know how "Scooby" this game is. Well, aside from Shaggy --who helps Scoob with puzzles that require two people-- you won't see Velma, Fred, or Daphne until much later. Until then, you'll have to settle for two additional staples of Scooby lore: funny guest stars, and classic monsters. For the latter, every other level has Scooby chased by the werewolf, zombie, creeper, and other monsters right from the cartoon. As for guest stars, the groundskeeper looks like Don Knotts, because the voice really is Don Knotts! Additional guest voices include Tim Conway (as the absent-minded scientist helping Scooby along) and Tim Curry as the Mastermind. Fans of the TV series should have a blast. Not that this game is flawless. Worst of all the snafus is no camera control. Just about any third-person Super Mario clone needs this, yet this game thinks the automatic camera angles will suffice. Nope; not when swinging from all those chandeliers, which are difficult to swing to if you don't know precisely where they are, given your current camera angle! On the plus side, Scooby can't die --any defeat means you just start back at the start of any game map-- though starting over and over at the very beginning of a game map can be frustrating, for child and father alike. This isn't made any easier with a potential candiadate for One of The Top Ten Stupidest 3D Level Maps Of All Time: a precarious jumping-bean puzzle over dangerous still waters (apparently, the game designers never heard the term "doggie paddle"), where Scooby must jump back and forth over trampolines (over water...? Don't ask) no less than 17 times before he can reach the other side. Did I mention the ridiculously "average" camera control...? Pray for the level editor who made this game map; he is the sole prson responsible for dropping this game's rating no less than 2 notches (out of a maximum "five star" game). Good job, nerd boy. It almost made it, though: this mere Scooby game, almost rated a solid thumbs-up. Then I remembered this game is by the folks at THQ; the people who couldn't make an award-winning game if the life of humankind itself depended on it. Is that harsh? Well, I'll tell you what's harsher; expecting little kids to put up with the annoyingly complicated (even for us adults) final battle, only to have your kids ask if daddy can do it (or in my case, Uncle), and we can't do it, either. This is from no lack of trying; I've played many a hard game and won. This game is made worse via you-die-you-start-at-the-beginning rules that are just plain aggravating, right down to a "final battle" where you 1) fight 2 tough baddies, 2) fight 4 tough baddies, 3) fight 6 tough baddies, only to 4) get your backside kicked by the super-baddie, whereas you're asked to start again from the very, very beginning. By the 100th time you've seen the exact same mid-way cutscene --which cannot be shut off, or skipped, even if you already saw it 99 times-- you're kicked back to the beginning yet again, and you begin asking yourself if any of this was truly worth it. The kids have already made up their minds; they're in another room watching Scooby-Doo on Cartoon Network. Let the children lead, I say...
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