Monster Lab (Wii) - A Halloween Hidden Gem?

you know the hardest thing for me about the Halloween season is trying to figure out which game you want to play yeah I remember this game it's monster lab I used to play it a lot as a kid such a fun game I guess my decisions made this is what I'm playing this year [Music] monster lab described by Wikipedia as pokemons meets Tim Burton was developed by backbone entertainment and published by Eidos in 2008 for the Wii PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS the version I'll be playing here is the Wii version it's the one I used to play as a yuengling according to the forums on the internet the DS and Wii versions are better than the PlayStation 2 version because the DS makes use of the stylus and the Wii version has motion controls for the multitude of minigames the opening pre menu cutscene is an advertisement encouraging you to join the mad science Alliance an organization in a place called the uncanny valley and it is shown to include such recognizable figures as the Walmart bargain bin Doc Ock generic man with hood and a space woman now that is progressive the actual opening scene shows you that the leader of this operation is bargain bin Doc Ock who does not introduce myself yet as the trouble scope an invention that is not explained at all has picked up trouble in Cobble Shire the first of the six areas in the game this man who has yet to introduce himself to you now hands over control of his proudest creation Thor balk after getting to Kabul Shire you meet mayor nadir vote in him whose name is his entire joke this joke is repeated very very frequently something about those creatures they'll be lucky my path to reelection I mean my bad holy cobble Shire is under attack by monsters fortunately since you are controlling Gore Bach a powerful mechanical monster this will not be difficult for you to handle the turn-based combat system is relatively simple but it is interesting for the first couple hours your monsters body parts all have different attacks each part has its own health points and two moves that it can do not only does the damage that each part does differ but they attack different parts of the enemy monster as well your own torso has two functions both of which are very important to the combat system your torso is what determines how much energy storage your monster has each attack takes energy more powerful attacks typically taking more energy when you don't have enough energy to attack your options are to recharge which fills your energy entirely but makes you vulnerable to enemy attacks or to dodge which refills only some of your energy but gives you a chance to avoid taking damage clearly making dodging the way of doing things and therefore the option I chose for the second half of the game you win in combat by either destroying the enemy's torso or destroying everything around their torso including one set of legs two arms and a head after you win a match you can repair your monster in a minigame that demands you jerk-off the Wii Remote combat in monster lab often feels too drawn-out first there's the starting animation then a loading screen then a thankfully skippable wrestler style animation the plays for both your monster and the enemy monster and then the unskipable fight animations that occur after you choose your attacks the worst animation is to recharge animation which you will be seeing a lot of since every monster has to do it at one point and it's the same animation for every monster in the game up to and including the final boss after defeating your first enemy you will receive ingredients ingredients of which 300 varieties are used to make monster parts professor fearless formerly nameless tells you to bring Gore back back home so he can finally ask for the name of the person he's put in control of his pride and joy and so he can teach you how to make your first monster part at first you're only able to make mechanical arms which is done through a fairly simple minigame I'll talk more about that later after completing quests you gain the ability to create different types of parts in an expositional cutscene useless explains that there used to be four med scientists masters of the three mad Sciences which are mechanical biological and alchemical the extra scientist Baron marty is the one that tore apart the group and when he left so he can become the villain of a game that appears to be designed for the sort of kid that says Halloween is their favorite holiday despite doing absolutely nothing different on Halloween than on any other day few slits lets you take the arm you've made along with some spare body parts he had laying around so you can make your own trash heap of a monster I decided I needed a name that was powerful and ready to strike fear into the hearts of any enemy who heard I was on my way and thus chunga's or was born [Music] you'll now spend some time going back and forth between Kabul Shire and the castle the pattern is simple you go to Kabul Shire get a quest from the mayor come back and few slits teaches you how to make a monster or something repeat with minigames sprinkled throughout you're done in Kabul Shire for a while once you defeat the boss played by the titular star of the classic film Monster House as the game has suggested this is all barren Marty's fault the game encourages you to stray from this goal to participate in minigames which allows you to get more ingredients most of the minigames are avoidable and not super noteworthy I'll run through the ones I encountered most often angry mob slap away tomatoes and an oh no you didn't motion and slap pipes towards the mob bug mashing smash small bugs avoid big bugs quick and easy unless your hand disappears which is also a bug making it physically impossible to complete the minigames electro trace it's the tracing game from the first two Harry Potter PC games except it has motion controls and is very bad now that you're a mechanical wizard fusillat says it's time to head to Florida so you can meet the mad scientist who studies biology unfortunately you begin this area by meeting an alien named Zig who constantly speaks and made-up words like a Jen's ear getting through them is easy we just have to trace the right symbols on them of course if we use the wrong symbols will be blown into tiny business particles to progress here you have to do some unavoidable electro tracing which is a pain in the dick and travel through crowds of feisty seniors which are pain in the ass until you eventually reach your goal of dr. sandy Bahr this mechanical monstrosity stinks of useless she tells you to collect some from trees you were taunted by potential assistance from a senior who has already collected shift from some of the trees because he is senile Oh turns out he's a bad guy one of Baron Marty's minions now you have to beat the out of Marty's minions minion and move on with your life after you've got all your tree samples sonder bar goes back to the castle with you and you can start learning about biological parts the game goes back to the old cycle of doing a quest going to the castle for a lesson in bolstering the length of your Wii game and returning to do more quests again the monsters here have an assload of health and do more damage to your monster than ideal to my own dignity every time I record a new let's play video fortunately there's basically no consequence for losing a match and you can always upgrade your monster between quests Zig draws out the length of time you spend in Florida with a game of Simon Says before you fight the Florida boss a hand-tied monster the hantai monster is a little tough so I built a new monster who I've named Ashley on account of a mildly chainsaw like hand Ashley's real trump card though is his cinderblock hand which can knock out many enemies torsos with a single punch further making combat feel very pointless you are then sent to Tombstone rise to find the master of alchemical mad science sambar overwatch this part includes one of the spices not included in Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices and it's called to get sambar overwatch to come home with you you have to fight his monster which the game does not tell you until after words is not possible no matter how hard you try the game sends you back to Kabul Shire to collect ingredients so you can make two items that are supposedly required to defeat zombies monster you waste time doing this and then what do you know it's still not possible but sambar decides to go home with you anyway for some reason that wasn't a waste of time at all somewhere at this point there's a cutscene where Marty's minion sneaks in and steals a book containing recipes for every monster part the mad science alliance ever made which is bad for him to have since he's the bad guy the remainder of tombstone rise follows the same basic pattern as Kabul Shire in Florida not much to mention here with how many of the quests in this game are just go here killed that comeback you'd be forgiven for thinking that you're actually just playing World of Warcraft which game might make you want to die more is simply a matter of taste you'll soon have unlocked the ability to make any type of monster part in all three mad Sciences here's a little rundown of those minigames each of which has four difficulty levels your goal is to gain quality the mechanical parts are not too hard to make arms have a welding minigame where you just point and hold heads you have to pick the right robots to crush legs are like that weird cow game on we play and the torso involves hammering down screws and skipping screws that are already down biological parts are a little less fair arms have an arm-wrestling minigame where you jerk up the nunchuck and remo the head you throw brain into a skull it's tough to line up your shots it's kind of like weave sports resort basketball with the legs you have to staple on the seams and also staple bugs that are crawling into the seams it's hard because you got to rotate your arm in a way that's not super easy body is you shoot the falling seeds it's vaguely possible on level 1 difficulty but beyond that the seeds fall too fast and create plant monsters that attack your heart you need to have pixel perfect aim to take out the seeds and you only get a few shots before needing to real now chemical parts though hold those the arms are nearly possible on the lowest difficulty you have to go through holes and avoid walls it speeds up when you make it through a hole and you can freeze all the walls but it doesn't mean anything the game doesn't make your hitbox very clear and the motion controls don't really work very well for this sort of game in my opinion for the alchemical head it's dance dance revelution except the time you have to hit the organ doesn't line up with the song very well despite the fact that the rhythm game doesn't have good rhythm it's the best mini game in monster lab difficulty one legs are super easy but as you go on it gets even more ridiculous you have to collect shapes there are three good ones and the higher the difficulty is the more negative shapes there are to make a body it pisses me off because it feels like even if you do everything humanly possible you don't get a great score ghosts appear and throw their balls at your chest you have a shield deflect the balls at the ghosts sounds simple right the game has one thing to say about that and that is go yourself here's my analysis most of these minigames are absolute garbage but get used to them because you're gonna need to make use of them very soon if you want to make it through this masochistic nightmare the next location you're sent to is the junk stack or as I like to call it New Jersey adding to its uncanny resemblance to New Jersey the junk stack is inhabited by revolutionary robots not revolutionary as in these robots are amazing revolutionary in the sense that the developers thought it would be funny for the robots to be cuban they were wrong New Jersey is not fun to be in and you've already unlocked all of the part crafting stations there's not much to say the next area Wildwood puts you up against some racist trees our sister must be desperate to grant access to the forest to this fleshy thing that's cool well let's move on this brings us to Marty Manor you've traveled through five other areas and worked your ass off to get to this point you're filled with this feeling that you've accomplished something but first you must approach Marty's minion Eve or who has apparently been imprisoned wrongly by his master in demon chains please help Marty I'm just be imprisoned me in these demon enchanting chains to free him you must collect cubes and decipher some glyphs spelling out the name of a demon that means doing some combat and some minigames and then going back to tombstone rise to decipher glyphs with very little direction unsurprisingly this was all a trick and you now must fight the demon savate it isn't very hard immediately after this you have to travel into a labyrinth full of portals and enemies because the devs still felt like they didn't make their game long enough but though initially intimidating me and making me want to put my ass through some drywall the maze is not that hard to navigate after googling a let's play and watching someone else navigate for me this likely saved me at least an hour of my life if not more after travelling through the maze to a certain point you fight Gore bak which is fuses monster that you played as during the tutorial apparently Baron Marty stole gore bak and turned him evil or something I'm not sure and I haven't paid enough attention to care you would think that now after defeating Gore bak few sis's pride and joy surely the final boss is next the game however chooses to write out in bright red letters you gore bak is the pre pre pre pre final boss as there are three more unnecessary bosses bolstering the length of the game basically Baron Marty put some towers up around the uncanny valley in the area as you thought you would never have to see again you have to blow them up with rockets that you have to go get from the Cuban revolutionary robots in New Jersey getting the Rockets takes about twenty minutes or so and then you have to make three entire new monsters each one based on one of the mad Sciences to counter the Sciences of the bosses guarding the towers you must now take down in Kabul Shire Florida and tombstone rise that takes a hot minute after this you're in the final stretch which for me meant two and a half more hours prepare yourself a new monster now because you're gonna need a tough one I appropriately named my final monster hunch the final boss who is according to urban dictionary named after either a punch in the throat or the act of your oven to orgasm is at the end of the maze which includes at least one unavoidable fight just quit if you don't fully repair yourself afterwards as you'll need every drop of health you can hold on to thrush is no joke you will likely fail a number of times and you will have to walk through the maze every time one thing that I didn't realize until after a few attempts and checking the monster lab wiki out of frustration is that the master strategy is to take out the wrenches left arm first this makes life easier as a reward for defeating frunch you get his head which is very weak Baron Marty being defeated by a newbie screams at the sky and goes away to presumably cry and jerk himself off until he finishes on the floor out of a complete lack of complex human thought beyond the two main emotions sad and horny the final cutscene has professor few slits and the rest of the mad science alliance declaring you to be their new leader Marty's minion Eve or is also there and now you can see that without explanation there is more than one of him you also own the castle now you're free to roam the uncanny valley and do whatever the hell you want at this point the only thing you might want to do is a few online battles yes this game had online multiplayer combat unsurprisingly no one is playing today and support for the server's has been dropped what a bummer I went back through the entire maze thinking something would be where threats used to be but alas nothing was there and I cut power to my Wii U never turning the game on again well when I played this game as a kid I like to eat these I liked all the wrong things in closing I would like to rape monster lab with a solid six point five out of ten mellow cream pumpkins while that might sound like a higher score than you may have expected realize that Mel green pumpkins are horrible and even a ten out of ten would not be a good score the game is most certainly drawn out and it becomes much less entertaining to make progress to reach level and go through combat once you've already unlocked all of the crafting stations but I did have some fun with it up until that point it's a decent game to try for the right price if you have to come across it one day but only for a little while I would not recommend trying to complete the game unless you a want to become a Hellraiser Cenobite or B are a child for a youngling monster lab is a decent game for the Halloween season one thing that I think we can all agree on though is that you should like and subscribe thanks for watching and have a wonderfully spooky Halloween

Channel: Captain Breadbox

Views: 4,381

Keywords: Captain Breadbox, Monster Lab, Wii Games, PS2, DS, Game Grumps, Horror game, kids horror game, halloween, halloween game, monster lab gameplay, gameplay, let's play, hellraiser, smoking baby, professor fuseless, thrunch monster lab, thrunch, game review, horror game review, halloween 2019, game grumps monster lab, jontron, avgn, retro, retro game review, funny review, ssethtzeentach, breadbox, funny, wii games, top 10 wii games, nintendo, playstation 2, bad game, bad game review

Id: rXsNMKyGaZ4

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019