Price: £39.99

Players: 1

Monsters Inc. is the latest money-making franchise... er.. I mean animated movie with tie-in games and franchise options from Pixar, creators of the two Toy Story movies and released via Buena Vista, like every other Disney venture. The film itself finds Sulley (John Goodman) and Mikey (Billy Crystal) working at Monsters Inc., the utility company that generates energy from the goose bumps of children. Sulley's the No.1 scream-generator there, but after letting a little girl into the plant things go downhill because monsters are actually terrified of children. So, in Scare Island, you get to play either of the two characters and go round collecting various icons and tokens in order to aid you along in the game, retrying certain sections if required and picking up Primordial Ooze which is used to do the scaring. Kids might enjoy interacting with Sulley and Mikey especially if they've seen the film because it delivers to their generation, but more experienced gamers will see traits of previously-released games.

There's no doubting that Sulley and Mikey look fantastic here. It's a shame I couldn't find any screenshots to go with this game but on initial looks it delivers everything you'd expect on a Playstation 2. The colours are rendered beautifully and to pin-point one moment where you fall into water and sink, the ripples of the liquid are splended. What is bad, though, is in the execution of moving your character when the room isn't even particularly busy. The training missions posed no problem, but in the main game one of the first rooms I entered saw slowdown kicking in to an absurd level. Imagine trying to play the PC version of Half-Life when you hadn't quite got round to upgrading your machine and finding that in all the moments where the FMV ran like the wind on those clips shown on TV, on your PC things slowed down unbearably. *This shouldn't happen!*

On the plus side, the music is reasonably jaunty and definitely atmospheric so there's no question of it maintaining a child's attention with typical sound FX. As for playability, it's not too difficult for youngsters to get into, but more mature gamers will find many an homage (or should that just be "copy of") to the moves from Tomb Raider, as you run and jump up onto platforms, climbing onto some of them - and Crash Bandicoot as you swipe your tail at crates on the ground and jump up in the air before crashing down on others to destroy them and open them up. Of course, while I found this a depressingly pedestrian existence, it's not made for adults at all so my opinion doesn't really count. Give it to a child and they'll no doubt scream at the TV and laugh at the jumping antics of the film's two heroes.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.