Dom Robinson reviews
Muppet Monster Adventure
for Sony Playstation
Distributed by
Sony
It's not easy being green. Even less so when you're Kermit's nephew, Robin, and you're required to
rescue your uncle along with Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Gonzo round at the creepy Castle von
Honeydew during the horrific Hallowe'en season.
Well, that's the plot out of the way. Essentially, all those who enjoyed Croc or Mario 64 will be in
familiar territory here as you progress by opening caskets or bumping off monsters either with your
laser gun or by spinning round like the Tazmanian devil. Your reward are stars of different colours
and the more, the merrier, points-wise.
Muppet Monster Adventure is set over 18 free-roaming levels such as Peacock Purgatory, Hallways
of Doom, Poker Faces and Nosferatu Bites Back, with six Muppet bosses to encounter and five
magical morphing abilities, each activated by collecting a quartet of their respective amulets. These
include a "Wearbear", which allows you to sprout huge hairy arms and legs in order to climb vines
in certain areas, "Nosferatu" - giving you wings to glide about - and "Muck Monster", providing you
underwater swimming ability.
Other things worthy of note in this wacky world are the need to collect the five letters that spell
"BONUS" for more benefits, flying hearts for extra lives, secret passages to be found, the need to
escape from the evil gardener who wants to chop you up with his shears and you can get advice from
a number of orange-haired goons who tell you to do specific actions that will help you, but they don't
always tell you how to complete the said actions and some aren't as intuitive as others.
The graphics are brilliantly-realised and all the colours of the rainbow are on display as you go
walkabout. The scenery rotates in relation to your position onscreen with, but the camera position over
you is just above and behind, so if you turn too quickly and head back in the same direction its
effective placement will be directly above and the view will be restricted until you've moved on a bit
as the camera pans up to reveal the path taken. Alternatively, stand still for a moment and your
viewpoint will be centred to your destination.
While being a very entertaining experience, it suffers from being way too easy. Then again, it's no
doubt aimed at children for whom the difficulty level will be set just about right and for those who
don't realise it's just Croc with different characters.
Overall: 3/5
This review was on Freeloader.com before they closed.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
