E308: Monster Lab blinded me with science
by JC Fletcher 
{ Jul 26th 2008 at 12:00PM }
My demo at E3 took me through most of the steps to monster-fighting success: creating parts, building a creature, and fighting. Parts for the monster are made in minigames, and come in three categories of mad science: mechanical, alchemical, and biological. Mechanical parts range from gear-covered steampunk-looking stuff to futuristic robot parts; biological parts are your basic gross monster stuff, and alchemical parts are magic-themed.
Gallery: Monster Lab
An example of the type of minigames involved: to imbue a mechanical head with intelligence, I played a game in which three robots, each with a different symbol on its head, appeared, and I used a giant hammer to smash the two whose symbols didn't match an onscreen prompt. The better you do in these minigames, the more intelligence that part will have.
These parts can then be added to your monster to strengthen it in random battles and give it new attacks. The battles follow the same kind of rock-paper-scissors balance found in something like Pokémon or Magic Pengel: certain types of attacks are stronger against certain types of parts.
The interactivity of the part gathering and the strategy involved in creating your monster make Monster Lab pretty interesting for an RPG. The pseudo-1950s mad science theme doesn't hurt either!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lord Bowser @ Jul 26th 2008 12:20PM
"my demo"
Who exactly?
Anyway, this is an Eidos game which doesn't fill me with much confidence. And the headline screenshot screams "more time, please."
Everyday a new screenshot appears of yet another new Wii game I lose my tolerance for its graphical limitations. I look, this game for example, and I see Dreamcast. No joke. Why don't developers go after stylised visuals?: Viewtiful Joe, Super Paper Mario, No More Heroes. Games like Monster Lab, The Conduit, the port of Dead Rising comes to mind as well, just don't work. Man, I hope I don't sound like a graphics whore.
lobotomies4free @ Jul 26th 2008 12:24PM
how did you feel about Metroid Prime 3?
And I believe the conduit is lacking in art style, though i don't necessarily want it stylized how you are suggesting. I just wish it was less generic and perhaps more unified towards one particular mood or another
jughead789 @ Jul 26th 2008 12:28PM
From what I read in an article the other day on ign the graphics for The Conduit are quite impressive, they even compare them to 360 graphics. heres a link to the article (it's under best graphics technology) http://wii.ign.com/articles/893/893266p3.html ...I think this game has potential but i'll wait for some reviews before I go out and buy
Lord Bowser @ Jul 26th 2008 12:55PM
I just want to be clear: games such as Viewtiful Joe, Super Paper Mario, No More Heroes are positive examples of what the Wii should do. While games like Monster Lab, The Conduit, the port of Dead Rising comes to mind as well, don't work.
My initial comment seemed a little muddled, grammatically.
As for the Metroid Prime series...it seemed a little clean for my tastes. Is polishy a word? But I liked the look. I liked it because it was a Metriod game and that's how Metroid games are supposed to look. It has a history which can be traceable back to the NES. That makes it unique.
The same cannot be said for The Conduit. It's a mish-mash of odd styles and devices (that HUD is straight from Halo 2) that leaves the game lacking character. This in turn renders it generic. Big statement to make having not played the game, but sometimes you just have that nagging feeling, and I've got it with this game.
I have a 360 so I have access to a world of generic shooters. Once the gloss wears away the shallowness creeps in. I understand we all have Wii's and we knew we brought a system that has a certain limitations, but attempting what the 360 does is not the answer. We should play to the Wiis strengths and frankly that is not visuals.
But it's good to see High Voltage move away from their shovelware legacy. We should always offer second chances, turn the other cheek, even if they are responsible for such gems as Family Guy, Harvey Birdman, and the PSP 50 Cent game. A game I got with my PSP: terrible.
guttertalk @ Jul 27th 2008 4:18AM
I have a 360, and I agree that the games tend to look alike on that platform. The games sometimes have a monochrome look to them, like in the blues and greys or in the browns.
In your first post, you said focused on the Wii's "graphical limitations." In this post, you are focused on something quite different, the lack of (unique) style of many Wii games. Both are valid but different.
I'm not really interested in this kind of game, but, when I look at this title's gameplay video (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36577.html), I see stylized graphics whose models and textures look better than most Wii games. But I also see things like a robot's foot moving through the floor as it rocks in battle. And there seems to be a bit too much light reflection off the robots . . . at least they have too much white area. Still, while graphically are okay, the style is nothing that pulls me into the game, although it doesn't put me off. I get that it's supposed to be about monsters so they went with a darker palette (although I don't think of robots being created in some dungeon like Frankenstein's monster but in science labs).
Overall for the Wii, I agree that developers are not taking advantage of the Wii's graphics abilities (which are superior to a PS2, since the Gamecube itself had more graphic capability--see below). I also think there is something to be said for the stereotypical bright colors of Nintendo games.
CPU / GPU / Memory
Wii - 729 mhz / 243 mhz / 24 MB - 64 MB (1TSRAM GDDR3) - 3 MB cache
Gamecube - 485 mhz / 162.5 mhz / 24 MB - 16 MB (ARAM) - 3 MB cache
Front-side bus bandwidth / main memory bandwidth / CPU DMIPS / cache
Wii - 1.944 GB/s / 3.888 GB/s / 1691
Gamecube - 1.3 GB/s / 2.6 GB/s / 1125
Texture cache bandwidth / framebuffer bandwidth / z-buffer bandwidth
Wii - 15.52 GB/s / 3.888 GB/s / 7.776 GB/s
Gamecube - 10.40 GB/s / 2.6 GB/s / 5.2 GB/s
Soiden @ Jul 27th 2008 1:35AM
Sounds very interesting. I hope it hs a good depth and a wide number of variables to make monster very different.
Al3xand3r @ Jul 27th 2008 8:01AM
It's not a matter of stylising it's a matter of actually putting some extra effort. Look @ Resident Evil 4, it's a GameCube game and it still looks vastly superior to most Wii games. Similarly for Twilight Princess, though that's also stylised a bit. Only the likes of Mario Galaxy have managed to suprass the graphical qualities of titles like these, and that's because Nintendo put that much extra effort to not only achieve effects the GameCube couldn't do, but also top it off with fantastic art direction of (and this is VERY important) consistent quality throughout the whole game.
Monster Lab does look like a PS2 game, but it's not ugly enough to be bothersome (it is a bit cartoony actually) therefor if the game's actually good, it'll be worth a purchase regardless. Not every 360 game looks like Gears of War 2 after all. I doubt that if these guys made a 360 game on equivalent budget and time frame it would look so hot.
Al3xand3r @ Jul 27th 2008 8:06AM
What I tried to say is that, while stylised games like No More Heroes and Mad World are more than welcome, it's not the graphical capabilities of the Wii that should dictate what kind of visual style you're going for. Non stylised, realism-esque games like Resident Evil 4 can also look sufficiently pretty if enough effort is put into them like many GameCube games have proven. Fatal Frame (Project Zero) IV is also looking quite good on the Wii, though I'm not sure if it surpasses Capcom's efforts yet.
Tim @ Jul 28th 2008 7:15AM
Scrap this crud and give me another monster rancher title...