Haunting Starring Polterguy

"Even though its a 7, its still a great game"

Haunting. A game with an incredible concept that was executed pretty well, but could've been a classic if done better. The point of the game is to scare the family that was responsible for your death. Apparently, your character, Polterguy, was killed in a skateboarding accident because of a poorly made skateboard. You go around scaring Vito's family, the guy who is in charge of the skateboard company (or so I've comprehended the story)

Gameplay/Controls: 7/10

You go around the house, looking for these little dots on objects to start flashing. You press a button and your character goes into these dots, and ''activates'' the objects with his ecto. The object starts shaking, and one of the 4 characters goes over to check out the object, which then does something to scare them. For example, a dart board turns into an eyeball with darts in it, and blood drips out of the eye. You can activate a poster of a ninja, and the sword from the ninja flies off the poster. And my personal favorite...you activate the wife's bunny slippers, the slippers come to life and you see these cute little bunnies hopping around (awwwwww)...until an ANVIL FALLS FROM THE CEILING AND CRUSHES THEM! MWAH HAHAHA! Sorry about that, but there are so many cool things that you activate in this game...the best part of this game is just seeing how messed up somethings really are.

The game isn't without flaws though, the control is very stiff, and it can be annoying to activate certain objects. This games also pretty frustrating at parts, sometimes the people don't run out of the house (you need to scare them out of the house, and there are about 2-3 doors that lead outside in every house) when you've been working hard to get them in a room with an exit door, and you've been running low on ''ecto''. Between a new level, and when you run out of ecto, you're brought into a ''dungeon level'', where drops of ecto fall on the ground and you have to get them to fill up your ecto meter. There are arms that go out and grab you, and damage your health. The only time you can truly ''die'' in this game is if you run out of life in the dungeon. As long as you have life, you're fine, you can run out of ecto as much as you want. But these dungeon levels aren't really that fun, and the stiff controls really stand out here.

graphics: 6/10

The character models aren't really anything special. The house has some pretty nice detail in it with a bunch of household things you would see...but the camera is zoomed out too far to really notice anything great about the graphics.

Music/Sound: 4/10

There isn't any music during levels, there's hardly any music at all, and its just *ok*...the sound effects are decent, but the screams are pretty bad. The overall ''sound'' is pretty lacking...and greater sound could've really added to the atmosphere...oh well...but sometimes its freaky when its real quiet...

Lasting Appeal: 6/10

It's a really short game (4 levels), but you'll want to play again to see all the different animations, cause they pretty much all rule...and you'll want to see them over again, too (especially the bunny one)...but once you've played it a couple of times, you might only pick it up once in a while and play it for about an hour at most. The game definately needed more levels, and more reasons to play through it again. This game could be made so much better if made on a next-gen console. The concept is great, and they can do so much more with it: make it last longer, make it crazier, add atmospheric music...just do everything better.

Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/02, Updated 11/17/02