Monsters Inc. Scream Arena

Published by THQ
Developed by Radical Entertainment
Platform: GameCube
Released - Out Now
Price : £29.99

In Disney's film: 'Monsters, Inc.', the characters learnt the value of laughter and you now have to help them in Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena (SA) with a new game they have created to make children laugh; a monster mayhem version of dodge ball. You always have to be wary of any game that uses movie characters, especially when the audience are children, because they are usually only there to do one thing, gloss over the actual content of the game and sell the product. Is this game any different?

Well, to be completely honest, no. All you have to do in this game is throw balls at other characters and try to dodge the balls they throw back at you with a few variations along the same theme; such as offering you 18 different balls that have special features, e.g., the Sticky ball that glues your opponent to the spot instantly for 3 seconds.

Young children will be attracted to Scream Arena because they will be able to play as their favourite characters, such as Sulley or Boo. At the start of the game, you will only have access to 5 of the 13 characters available including Sulley. However characters such as Boo, will have to be unlocked.

Scream Arena has 36 different levels played in 7 unique environments, such as Mike and Sulley's Apartment or The Laughter Floor, all of which are easily recognisable if you have seen the film. Even if you haven't seen the film each area has a movie clip from the original Monsters, Inc. film. Unfortunately these are not subtitled and would not be of any interest to deaf gamers. You'll only have access to The Simulation Room at the start of the game; the rest will have to be unlocked as you progress. Each environment then divides into a scenario, which again has to be completed before you can go into the next one.

Party and Buddy are the 2 multiplayer modes on offer in SA, Party allowing up to 4 players and Buddy only 2 players. You will have to start again from The Simulation Room and go through the 7 environments to unlock everything with your friends in tow. If you don't have enough people to play Party mode you can choose to have 2 computer players to make up the numbers. The main difference here than in Solo mode is that there are different gameplay styles on offer, such as Ball Tag and Targets.

Although the arenas you play in are rather small, they are all inspired by a scene out of the Monsters, Inc. film and Radical Entertainment have done a good job recreating these scenes and the characters for the most part, too. However some of the characters' textures are poor, for example Sulley, which is very disappointing considering that some children may pressurise parents into buying Scream Arena just because their favourite character is in the game.

There aren't any subtitles in this game for the introductory cutscene, or the movie clips for each area you visit or the little comments that the monsters make when you choose them or they win the game. All is not lost though, as each area has full instructions in text, which are clear and concise and would suit even a young child's reading ability. There is a small cutscene as you enter a level that has no subtitles; just press A to skip this as it's unimportant to the game.

Overall Game Rating: 3.5/10
The gameplay is very basic, and I'm not sure that children will have enough staying power to play through the required levels just so that they can unlock their favourite characters or locations.

Deaf Gamers comment:
Even though there is unsubtitled speech in the game, you are given text instructions at the start of every level so that you know what you're supposed to be doing.