It’s not every day I get to refer to my wife as perfectly reasonable but yeah—this is all her fault.
Those of you who know me or follow my Toy Time video series know that I am a collector of shiny plastic things. Transformers, LEGOs, Skylanders, Disney Infinity—the odd Amiibo here and there—I loves me some toys.
I can often be found at Walmart or Toys’R’Us or Target, hunting for new items to add to my collection. Or at least I could often be found doing that. Lately it’s been all about her collection.
See, in a fit of feeling guilty about buying all of the things, I picked up one of Mattel’s Monster High dolls for my wife. If I recall correctly it was Avea Trotter from the Freaky Fusion line. I think it was the combination of the body of a doll for little girls with a horse that tickled us. How strange!
She was the beginning. Soon we grabbed the moth girl on the right. And then, since she already had those two we might as well get her the ghost mermaid to complete the set (we’ve still not gotten the unicorn skeleton “manster” doll, as we’re sticking to girls or “ghouls” right now).
After that it’s all a bit of a blur. I hunted dolls for her on eBay and Amazon, refreshing the latter endlessly the day the latest line (Great Scarrier Reef) went on sale. We hit Big Lots, where older dolls show up at a discount. My wife watched all of the cartoon tie-ins on Netflix, often with me working on LEGO sets in the same room.
I know most of the Monster High doll names. I recognize their voices. I’ve got a couple living in my office for some reason, though most of her collection is either in our bedroom open...
...or on a shelf in our dining room I purchased specifically to hold her collection.
So when I heard there was a new game called Monster High: New Ghoul in School coming to Wii U, 3DS, Wii (really), Xbox 360 and PS3 from developer Little Orbit, I requested a copy. I figured Emily could play it, maybe write up a quick review. She is an authority, after all.
Unfortunately the Wii U has been in my office since the game arrived, so she hasn’t been able to play. Maybe if I had a more comfortable chair for her in here, but alas—it fell to me to create my own “ghoul” and explore the halls of Monster High.
It’s not an incredibly bad game, for a TV show/toy tie-in. It’s all floaty platforming, collecting random things, fetch quests and shopping, but that sort of thing should keep the target demographic happy for hours. Fans would probably have preferred the game be fully-voiced instead of having the show’s voice actresses only handling major story points, but I’m guessing the budget of this $40 budget title couldn’t handle it.
With Christmas just around the corner, it’s something for the game-playing husband of the fan who already has most of the dolls.
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