Once Upon a Monster – Review
Platform | Release Date
X360 | October 11, 2011Developed by Double Fine
Published by WB Games
The Pitch:
Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster is an Adventure game for young players that combines the hallmark educational themes of the Sesame Street universe with the fun and ease of play of the Microsoft Kinect Sensor.* An Xbox 360 exclusive, Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster is an interactive storybook like no other as children join Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover, Oscar the Grouch and other characters as they meet new monsters and help them overcome their problems. Game features include: multiple ‘chapters’ of play, familiar Sesame Street characters as well as friendly new monsters, drop-in/out 2-player co-op support and active gameplay featuring the controller-free Kinect Sensor.
Being a dad who loves games, it’s been a goal of mine to introduce them to my kids in an appropriate way. I’ve got a 3 and 5 year old pair of girls with an infant son, and I can’t tell you how difficult it is to find good kid oriented games. Most claiming for pre-school age kids force tons of reading on an age where they can’t read, while others go in the complete opposite direction and are just stupid – Dora the Explorer Wii games, I’m looking at you. My hope was that a like-minded Tim Schafer from Double Fine, who has young kids of his own now, would create an experience that would appeal to kids but not treat them like idiots. With their first child oriented game, Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, they certainly seem to have accomplished that goal.
No one has nailed a universally great Kinect interface. Dance Central proves that the “slap” mechanic for choosing menu items is way better than the “hover-hand”, but the fidelity is often way too touchy for less dexterous individuals. With Once Upon a Monster, they attempt to use a similar slap to turn pages of a storybook, which works reasonably well, but their select mechanic was a piece of frustration for my girls. You’re supposed to put your hands in front of you, then spread them apart. At first, my kids just didn’t get it. When they get frustrated, they get whiny. When my kids get whiny, I want to shut everything down and have them go color or something. Thankfully, in the second chapter this was no longer a problem.
What is great about the interface is that OUAM supports drop-in/drop-out co-op for two players. If one kid gets distracted or has to use the can, they can just walk away and the game will adapt appropriately. Best of all, it allowed me to play alongside my kids without issue as well as duck out to let someone else play. The biggest problem came from my hyperactive three-year-old running around the room and past the camera. Sometimes Kinect just didn’t know what to do and decided to drop to a pause menu. Of course, this inevitably led to more whining.
The rest of the game is pretty awesome. The look and sensibility of Sesame Street is omnipresent and lends itself to some striking visuals. Vibrant colors, gorgeous characters, and the real voice actors all make this title a veritable feast, complete with a live action puppet intro that looks like it’s straight out of the TV show. I actually prefer the looks of digital Elmo and Cookie Monster, the game’s primary ‘protagonists’, to their real world puppets. The amount of care that went into everything really shows, and is light years ahead of any other title in the space.
OUAM is broken up into six chapters each featuring a new monster. Each tells a parable with light-touch life lessons told through story and gameplay. You’ll often be helping these monsters overcome their fears or dealing with the insecurity of others. My personal favorite chapter saw the yellow monster Shamus putting on a play with Cookie Monster as the director. Your job was to help him overcome his fear of performing, despite his desire to do so. To assist in resolving issues, some classic characters will peek their heads in from time to time (no Count von Count or Big Bird though).
Gameplay consists of things like mimicking on screen poses, jumping up and down, dancing, and is generally not too intensive in the skill department. There’s no failing if your kids (or you) are unable to do something. This helps keep the story moving but you’ll earn more stars the better you perform. There’s some nice utilization of the microphone as well, though no Grover “near/far” that you may expect. If there’s anything bad to be said, it’s that some of the sections linger too long, asking you to perform the same tasks too many times, and even had my five-year-old asking “again?”. Strange that Double Fine resorted to this overextending considering the game isn’t terribly long to begin with.
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster is a simple kids game, but it’s also a mesmerizing experience that doesn’t pander to its audience. It even throws in jokes for mom and dad like most good children’s media should. If you’ve got Sesame Street age kids and a Kinect, and they’re at all interested in games (or you’re interested in getting them into games), this is a really slick and fun way to get them involved.
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Stuff like this makes me tempted to get a Kinect, but I know my kids. They’d get maybe 15 min out of this -tops.
Maybe next generation?