Wii Preview: Monster Lab

by Jonathan Zungre on August 13, 2008 at 4:54 pm

Monster Lab is special, but it seems that every time I try to tell this to a cute gaming chick, they lose interest after the words “mini games” and start staring at the moustache I’ve been growing all summer. And I’d be like, “Listen, we can talk about how manly my Daniel Day Lewis mustache is later, let me tell you about how clever Monster Lab is.” So stay with me, because Monster Lab has some incredible promise, especially for those who are mostly disappointed in Nintendo’s first party holiday line up.

Monster Lab puts you in the lab of a mad scientist, and gives you the opportunity to create your own Frankenstein monsters. There are three schools of science (Mechanical, Biological, Alchemical) and you piece together monsters from bizarre and menacing heads, arms, legs and torsos.

Attach that mechanical buzz saw arm to that fire breathing skull head! Who says you can’t? You are the fourth member of a prestigious science society, working to take down a member who has gone rogue and violently mad, and you can do whatever you please!

Professor Fuseless: Your mentor the and coolest Eastern European since Niko Bellic.

The game’s charm is in its quirky, fun presentation. As a young apprentice you are mentored by a very Eastern European sounding mad scientist, who reminds me of the colorful characters that populated the Lucasarts adventure games of the 90’s like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. Very whimsical, very fun.

Burn Goofus’ legs off! Yeah!

The game revolves around you stitching together a macabre monster creation, letting him out to beat the bolts out of other monster creations in turn based combat, bringing the scraps of the defeated monster back to your laboratory, and completing science mini games with the Wii remote (like welding) to fashion new and stronger body parts. Each body part has an attack and takes damage individually. Have a body part take too much damage, and wham, you lose that part.

Whimsical Welding.

Each attack takes battery power, and after several attacks a monster will need to recharge their battery, leaving them vulnerable for a round. Timing when you recharge your battery seems to add depth to the turn based combat feature. After combat you will be given an opportunity to repair your monster with other simple mini games that use the Wii’s motion sensing functionality.

One feature, the Madness Level of your monster, was axed from the game since I saw it at GDC. The Madness Level was something that accumulated as you used your monster. If your madness level was too high, your monster would go crazy and you would lose control of him. A great concept, but probably not so super-fun in execution. Having things taken away from you is never all that great of a time (for example, GTA has you stealing cars, not having them stolen from you).

As you can see, the above screen seems to be from an earlier build of the game, with the Madness Level still in the upper left corner. Please, don’t ax the pirate hook arm, Eidos.

Now with a more finely tuned, streamlined experience, Monster Lab looks to be one of the most unique, quirky, and charming games on the Wii, a console that has a variety of titles with quirky, charming ideas.

Share This: