Hollywood Monsters Review

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            Hollywood Monsters

Review by Jen

Hollywood Monsters is a little-known and much sought-after (if that’s not self-contradictory, I don’t know what is) adventure game by Pendulo Studios. Pendulo is a Spanish game developer that was planning to bring out the game Runaway, but at the time of this writing (December 2001) it looks like the English version of Runaway may never see the light of day due to the bankruptcy of Dinamic Multimedia, Pendulo’s publisher.

Hollywood Monsters is a traditional type of point-and-click adventure game, with no dying, no timed puzzles, lots of inventory items, and lots of locations. Not only that, but it is cartoon-style animation and you get to play as two different characters. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, maybe …

You start the game playing as Sue Bergman, Quill reporter. You are assigned to cover the annual Hollywood Monsters award after-party at the mansion of movie mogul Otto Hannover. You must solve puzzles to dig up some dirt on the monsters, and ultimately you stumble upon some sort of evil plot and are kidnaped by the as-yet-unknown bad guys. The Quill’s editor then sends reporter Ron Ashman to find out why Sue never turned up the next morning, and you play nearly all of the remainder of the game as Ron. Turns out that Frankenstein knew too much, and he was cut up into several pieces.  His body parts were hidden inside the award statues (the “Oscars,” if you will), and you must recover all of Frank’s body parts.  The story is great—it’s entertaining as can be, and you get to chat with all of the Hollywood movie monster greats—Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy, and several others.

The graphics are all quite well-done, too. The game is pure 2D still scenery with the characters and items on top, and occasional moving creatures create a sense of aliveness in the various locales.  Care was obviously lavished on dreaming up the ideas and rendering the artwork. I’ll let the screenshots speak for themselves.

However, that is about where the good stuff ends. The first part of the game, where you are playing as Sue, is really promising.  You always have a pretty clear indication of what to do or what you need to accomplish a specific task and how to go about getting it. She doesn’t have very many locations available to her, so there’s not a lot of traipsing back and forth.

But when you play as Ron, you very quickly end up overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of inventory items and locations, and you must travel back and forth continuously to all of these places in order to use items from one place in solving a puzzle in another place. And the inventory item uses are worthy contenders for the “Huh?” hall of fame. Sometimes you must combine two or more items from two or more different locations to get another new item that you still can’t figure out how to use. There are seven or eight major locations, and while some of these comprise only two or three screens, others have upwards of twenty. This is the kind of game where, in frustration, you wind up trying every inventory item on every other inventory item, everything and everyone onscreen in every location, and with every command (use, look, talk, give, etc.) at your disposal. And this is an unbelievably daunting task given the almost infinite number of possibilities.

Also, there were several puzzles of the “guess what the game designer had in mind” variety. You know the kind—the ones that you can only solve by sheer luck or by walkthrough because nobody in the whole wide world would ever figure out the puzzle premise on his/her own.

Luckily, the developers included the walkthrough right on the game disk. Guess what I wound up doing? That’s right, using the walkthrough for every move I made. But how fun is that? Not very.  Despite this, it still took me at least 20 hours to finish the game. I bet it would have taken until the end of time without that walkthrough.

On top of all of that, there were big chunks of dialogue throughout the game that were never translated to English. Including the entire (fairly long) ending custcene, which was a pisser and a half. Needless to say, the Spanish parts did not do anything to dilute my general sense of cluelessness or add to my gaming experience.

It’s obvious that a lot of hard work went into Hollywood Monsters, and the quality is definitely there in many areas. But ultimately it falls flat in the fun department. I think it shows a lot of promise, and I would hope that Pendulo would have learned some game development lessons and not repeated the same mistakes in Runaway. But as things stand now, we’re not likely to find out anytime soon, which is a shame. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Pendulo Studios Publisher: Dinamic Multimedia Release Date: 1996 (Spanish); 1998 (English)

Available for: Windows

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Screenshots

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System Requirements

Windows 95 DirectX 5.0 Pentium 75 MHz 16 MB RAM

Where to Find It

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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