Following in the footsteps of its feature film counterpart, Hotel Transylvania is a family friendly adventure in the shoes of Dracula’s daughter, Mavis, who is frantically in search of her new-found friend, Johnnystein. At times, while playing Hotel Transylvania, I felt like I was playing a light version of an older Castlevania game. And by all means, this is a good thing.
Similar to older Metroid and Castlevania games, Hotel Transylvania has the main character exploring each room, gathering powerups along the way, and then backtracking to discover new areas or complete new objectives with the new moves learned.
The controls of the game work great as well. Most importantly, the jump mechanic in the game works exactly as it should, and each new move you learn has its own button assigned to it. There are no tricky combos to learn, but if you plan on collecting every single gem in the game, you’ll need to quickly perform a series of maneuvers.
Hotel Transylvania makes use of 2D sprites on a single plane, and the animation is incredibly smooth. The 3D effect used in the 3DS version looks nice, but is just an extra touch and the game still looks great without it if you are looking to conserve battery life. Cut scenes are comprised of still character cutouts and text, similar to many of WayForward’s other games. The music is catchy and gets stuck in your head long after putting the game down.
My one concern with the game is the nature of the fetch quests, which send you from one end of the castle to the other and back again several times. While the platforming itself is excellent, at times the fetch quests can start to feel tedious. For the most part, however, Hotel Transylvania is easy to pick up and play, and although it doesn’t feature any type of score system or leaderboards, the game itself is fun enough to dismiss the lack of those features.
The game is of moderate length, I spent around 15 hours, including collecting all 1400 gems. Every 200 gems collected earns a new heart container, and some of the gems take a little work to accumulate. Most people that will be picking up this game will be picking it up for their kids, and I actually heartily recommend this game to parents.
Overall
It almost seems like a rule in the video game industry that games based on movies are supposed to be plain awful. However, WayForward in particular seems capable of upending this trend, and they’ve done it again with Hotel Transylvania. While it may not be the strongest game they’ve developed, Hotel Transylvania is incredibly solid for a movie tie-in. Parents looking to buy a great family-friendly game for their kids this Halloween can pick up this one with no hesitation.
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Title: Hotel Transylvania Publisher: GameMill Entertainment Developer: WayForward Release Date: September 25, 2012 Genre: Action/Adventure Platforms: DS/3DS ESRB: E 10+ |