Music Reviews of Videogames, PS2, XBox, Gamecube

Music Reviews of Videogames, PS2, XBox, Gamecube, Dreamcast

Scooby Doo : Night of 100 Frights — PS2 Buy it at Amazon

Buy it from InSound

Kid's game? Maybe. Will adults like it? If you're a Scooby Fan!!!! This game IS the cartoon. Bottom line. And, it’s based on the cartoon, not the movie.

You play as Scooby, wandering around in a Haunted Mansion (and the area around it). The game play is just like every typical platform game. Collecting Scooby Snacks instead of coins, timing jumps onto various objects, jumping on enemies to kill them. It's all there. While the game play isn't at all original, the fact that it is the original cartoon captured perfectly into a game is where the appeal of it all is. All of the classic villains from the shows are here: The Creeper, The Black Knight, and The Headless Spectre. And they all look exactly like their cartoon counterparts. Speaking of graphics, while not coming anywhere close to pushing the system to its max, they represent the artwork of the cartoon to a tee. The animation of Scooby is perfect (down to his hiding with a lampshade on his head, knees trembling). The environments are very detailed, being very bit even though they are extremely linear.

The only complaint I have about the game is the lack of camera control. This is a 3-D platformer, but most of it plays like a 2-D platformer. You don't get huge 3-D areas where you explore. You get linear paths that you have to take, and the movement along these paths is very limited. Now, this is fine, but the lack of camera control means some very frustrating times when you have to jump to different objects while trying to figure out how far away form the object you are. Because of bad choices in camera views this becomes very difficult to judge distance. In other words you fall A LOT!

Overlooking this flaw and and its unoriginal game play, if you are a fan of the old Scooby cartoons then you owe it to yourself to try out this game.

- Wayne

Technorati tags: Scooby Doo : Night of 100 Frights, PS2, Videogame Review, videogames, review

comments (0) | Permalink