Latest Timewasters

Well, seeing as it's a New Year and all (Happy New Year everybody) I decided to find some new ways to waste time. Well, that's not actually true, I've had these ways to waste time for a lot longer than the past 3 weeks, but I thought I'd put some of them down so that other people, who are perhaps just as awash in free time as I am (or perhaps, more honestly, more willing to give up sleep) could try them out.

Today's waste of time is (rum roll please) ... Monster Lab. Now because I like it, and I have a minute here, I'm going to try to describe the game. I'm not a game reviewer (that will become achingly apparent in a second here) so bear with me.

Monster Lab is a Nintendo Wii game in which you play the role of a mad scientist's apprentice (which makes you a Mad Apprentice I suppose) who goes on missions, fights monsters, and eventually learn to create better and better monsters yourself. It's reminiscent of one of my favorite, least played, and most coveted games; a game called Mail Order Monsters on the C64. It was least played because I did not have a Commodore 64 so I played it a few times at a friend's house in about 7th grade and wanted wanted wanted it but never got it. Mail Order Monsters was similar in that you created your own creatures (monsters) with different powers and stats and then fought them in an arena. I have not looked up Mail Order Monsters in the Abandonware sites because I'm afraid if I did I'd find it kind of sucks (now) and I'd rather live with those fond memories of all that potential.

But I digress. Endlessly. Did I tell you about the new tattoo my friend got? Just kidding. I mean she did get a tattoo but I wasn't actually going to tell you about it. I was making a reference to digression. Trying to kind of catch you off guard. Not that it's not a hysterical tattoo. More impressive, in fact, because it is a joke tatoo. But I digress. No the tattoo...

See how I did that, with a whole paragraph devoted to digression? Pretty cool huh? A veritable technique! Mind you, I'm not very familiar with writing conventions but ...

Sorry. I know that's annoying but I kind of had to play around. I actually won't make a habit of it because that particular kind of humor gets old really really fast. Especially when you're just dying to hear about Monster Lab!

So Monster Lab is just a lot of fun. That's it. It's not really all that deep. You go on missions, you don't pick em they just give em to you. You fight monsters. The combat is entirely turn based and so the skill is picking which parts to attack with and which parts of the enemy to aim at. You get lots of components that you then turn into parts that you then use to build your monsters. All really straight forward. And it's just really fun! I like the colors, I like the corny voice acting, I like the monsters! I partly like it because my 7 year old can play it with just a little help, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't put in many more hours than her in the game. I am actually not much of a console gamer (I'll babble about that in another post, perhaps, unless I get a bunch of verbal tomatos thrown at me for this post - feel free to comment with tomatos) but this one I hope to try to finish. Which would make it only the second console game I've finished in the past, oh, 18 years. I think I'm enjoying it because it is simple. I don't have to spend hours mastering a byzantine control scheme or learning to ride a freaking horse on the Wii before I can start a real mission - I can just play.

In case you are actually reading this, and actually interested, you could always check out the reviews here. They are mixed and I can totally see why. If you're a hardcore console gamer looking for the next Halo, of Final Fantasy, or whatever, you will be greatly disappointed. If you just want to play around with something where you build your own freaking mosters though, you'll like it :o)