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Goosebumps Horrorland Review for Nintendo Wii

Goosebumps Horrorland Review for Nintendo Wii

The Goosebumps series of books have been around for over a decade now and have rightfully garnered quite a following. Their mix of child-friendly horror and quirky humor has made them unique as well as enjoyable for a plethora of younger readers. The series has already spawned a couple PC-based video games, with fairly mixed results. This time around, it’s setting its sights on home consoles. Unfortunately, the outcome is pretty horrific, and not in a good way.

Goosebumps Horrorland screenshot

HorrorLand starts off by having you choose a character, with your only two options being either a boy or a girl. Once this incredibly difficult decision has been made, a horror (a green-colored demon) drops a ticket on your doorstep and runs away. Despite the fact that the words “HorrorLand, where nightmares come to life” appear directly on the ticket, you and your overeager friend somehow still think it would be a great idea to check it out. Upon entering the park, another horror takes your ticket and tears it to pieces, effectively trapping you in the park forever. You eventually find out the only way to escape HorrorLand is to find all the pieces of your shredded ticket and reassemble them.

This is the loose story and overall objective for the game that attempts to disguise what is otherwise just a compilation of mostly-broken mini-games. Starting off in the Carnival of Screams, players are given twenty tokens and very little direction. Upon wandering around a bit, you will eventually realize the only thing you can do is participate in various mini-games in an attempt to win frights. Depending on how well you do in each mini-game, you can win a bronze, silver, or gold skull, which will provide you with one, two, or three frights respectively. Most of the mini-games in HorrorLand, as well as all the additional areas which contain new mini-games, will require a certain number of frights to unlock.

Goosebumps Horrorland screenshot

However, I have a hard time saying new because many of the mini-games in HorrorLand are either complete copies or just slight variations of former events. Expect to play miniature golf at least a couple times as well driving bumper cars, spinning and hurling objects, cart rides that involve shooting, swinging wildly to hit incoming creatures, and this list keeps going. Considering there are only thirty mini-games total in the game, it is truly sad to see so many repeats. This becomes especially annoying when you are forced to replay so many of these mini-games to earn frights, so you can progress through the game.

As I mentioned earlier, each area in the game will require a certain number of frights before you can gain access. You won’t be able to play specific mini-games in each area until you’ve met the prerequisite number of frights either. Because of this, you’ll find yourself replaying the same mini-games multiple times to squeak a couple extra frights out of them just so you can get to some new ones. Early in the game this isn’t as big of a problem, but to finish the game, players will need at least sixty frights, meaning you’ll need an average of silver in each event. This kind of forced repetition is maddening in and of itself, but becomes even more of a hassle when you throw terrible motion controls and needless token collection into the mix.

Goosebumps Horrorland screenshot

While a few games like the bumper car variants do handle respectably, most are all but broken. For instance, when playing miniature golf, players will need to hold the A button on the Wii-mote and then swing it like a golf club. The problem with this is that slight motions can cause the ball to react as though you were trying to knock it out of the park, while trying to actually hit the ball hard often results in a barely tapping it.

Goosebumps Horrorland screenshot

There is absolutely no way of knowing how the game will register your motions, so you can’t even adjust for it. All that is left is just swinging and hoping for the best. Generally, any game that requires precision movements, speed-based swings, the Nunchuk in combination with the Wii-mote, or quick motions of any kind are exercises in frustration. Unfortunately, this makes up most of the mini-games included in HorrorLand.

As if poorly implemented motion controls and forced repetition weren’t enough to make players angry, the game goes that extra step and makes each mini-game cost a differing amount of tokens to play. Players will start off with twenty of these and can find more by pointing and clicking on garbage cans, light posts, trees, and other random moving objects found in each area. Some mini-games will only require a few tokens to play but others can eat up over ten per try. Sure, these tokens aren’t incredibly hard to find, but having to constantly run around and click on everything just to get enough tokens to replay mini-games that you are already frustrated about having to replay due to their poor controls is borderline obnoxious.

Finding the somehow meticulously hidden pieces of your ticket (even though the horror ripped it and threw it onto the ground directly below him at the entrance of the park) is also made unnecessarily annoying. Instead of just searching each area and finding the ticket on your own, you will need the help of a young girl. This girl, who you save on a ride fairly early in the game, has some unexplained magic ticket finding ability that you happen to lack. As such, you’ll need her to follow you to every area in the park, wandering aimlessly until she finally tells you where the ticket piece is hidden. While this is a tedious enough process on its own, each time you find a ticket piece she returns immediately to her hiding place in Vampire Village. This means you have to return to this area, fetch her, and then walk to the next area every time you want to find a ticket piece.

Despite the game’s great sense of humor, respectable graphics, and well crafted child-friendly horror-themed atmosphere, frustrating and monotonous gameplay make HorrorLand virtually unbearable. While being forced to replay mini-games multiple times and having the ability to square off against another player does add longevity to the title, this is one experience you’ll want to be over as quickly as possible. It is truly sad to see such a beloved series of books turned into such a broken and awful game.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.4 Graphics
Well done characters and environments are one of the few upsides of this title. 1.6 Control
While a few mini-games manage to have working controls, most are unpredictable at best and broken at worst. 3.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The soundtrack is good at setting the mood for each area of the park, and the amount of quality voice work included is a pleasant surprise. 1.8

Play Value
Replaying broken mini-games multiple times will make this game, and the resulting frustrations it causes, last much longer than your interest in actually playing it.

1.8 Overall Rating – Avoid
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • 30 bone chilling rides and attractions.
  • Five terrifying park areas to unlock – Carnival of Screams, Vampire Village, Mad Labs, Fever Swamp, and Terror Tombs.
  • Trademark Goosebumps twists and cliffhangers.
  • Play in story mode or arcade mode.
  • Multiplayer options.
  • Three fast, fierce, and fun Multiplayer modes: You can compete against your friends in three exciting Multiplayer modes: Free Race, World Grand Prix, and Survival mode. In the Wii version, you can also download ghost data to hone your racing skills and beat the top riders.

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