Home Alone

"Bliaaaaah!"

Based on the 1990 suck-fest of a movie, Home Alone the game for the SNES is almost like watching the move: a tedious experience. The film highly depended on scenes where two adult burglars would be hurt and injured by a young boy. And this happened over and over and over again. Pesci slips on the ice. Stern gets hit with a paint can. Pesci touches a hot doorknob. Stern is scared by a spider on his hand. Just multiply images such as these by a hundred and you got yourself an accurate picture of the movie. The game on the other hand brings its tedium from something slightly less exciting: finding valuables around the house and throwing them down the laundry shoot.

The game follows the same storyline as the crappy movie. Little boy Kevin has been left home alone, and the bungling Wet Bandits have come to rob the household of all its great stuff: jewelry, toys, electronics and . . . . pets (Oh yeah, the nefarious Black Market of Pets!). This time they've brought along a bunch of friends to help them loot the home and get that dopey kid out of the way. These friends (Or should I say fiends?) include such villainous scum as fat mafia guy that runs into Kevin, ugly guy in white suit that throws his hat like a boomerang, and well-dressed man that throws baseballs. Thus Kevin must elude the criminals, save the valuables, and lock up his precious stuff in the family safe.

Home Alone's premise depends on young Kevin to run around and collect items for a mere four levels of gameplay. Each level lacks any real logic as Kevin traverses to a different wing of the house with an entirely separate bunch of valuables to grab. I mean seriously, who in their right mind would decide to put all their electronics in one area of the house? So anyway, Kevin must walk into these valuables and stuff them into his backpack. Some of the valuables are right out in the open: on the floor or lying on top of a desk. Other times they're hidden in obvious places such as in the dresser drawers or in a box. But then mostly there is crap hidden in bizarre parts of the house like behind a painting, in a potted plant or inside the toilet. Basically, Kevin's valuables could be in any object you see. This means that most of the game is spend running around the house, walking into tons of miscellaneous rooms, jumping into objects, and holding “up” on the d-pad in hopes of finding a ring, candelabra, or Welch Corgi. Needless to say, the entire search for items is boring. However, Kevin must watch out for the Wet Bandits during his exploring.

While running through the long-ass hallways, Kevin may encounter one of the Wet Bandits' flunkies. Being touched by these bad men three times causes Kevin to lose a life, so he must somehow defend himself. The game offers Kevin an array of weaponry to combat these perverted sex-hounds. Watch as Kevin valiantly sprays the fat mafia guy with his squirt gun . . . . and he bends over and gives a low “Oof.” Oof?! The guy was hit with water. Why the Hell would water momentarily stun a grown man? At least Kevin's slingshot, baseballs, and BB Gun make more sense. Bash away at your trespassers with these babies . . . . and they bend over and give a low “Oof.” But, if you keep hitting them, they'll eventually fly off the screen with a loud “bliaaah.” Unfortunately only the squirt gun has unlimited ammo, so that means you have to be stingy with everything else. The only problem is that it takes a lot to bring down even the lowliest of thugs. Since you can simply stun everyone with your squirt gun, what's even the point wasting your “beautiful toys” on anything but the strongest of bandits (You know, Harry and Marv!)? But sadly, it's even foolish to use your squirt gun. The game almost makes all your weapons useless by placing traps nearby almost every bandit. These traps must be walked into in order to activate and include dropping paint cans, dropping hot irons and dropping TVs. Notice a trend here? Worst of all, the robbers always fall for it. “Gee, what's that kid doing up their with that paint can? I'll just stand right under him and look up so I can find out!”

Kevin can also locate power-ups throughout the stages. These include slices of pizza, whole pizzas, cookies, and aftershave. Collecting eight slices of pizzas yields an extra life, while an entire pizza gives an instant life. Cookies on the other hand replenish one unit one Kevin's health. All three can be found by, you guessed it, holding up on stupid objects around the house. In fact, there is an entire pizza in one of the toilets. Who in there right mind would think to look in there (But then again, remember what system this game is on - zing!)? Aftershave is almost always found by looking in the mirror above the bathroom sink. This power-up doubles your speed and allows you to run into the crooks and brutally murder them (In a fly off the screen and yell “bliaaaah” sort of way). However, the power-ups are completely unnecessary because the game is too damn easy to begin with.

When you've filled your backpack, Kevin must run to the nearest laundry shoot and drop in his TVs, digital clocks, and Tabbies. The screen then cuts to a picture of the stuff falling next to a large safe. Now call me crazy, but doesn't your laundry shoot lead to, you know, somewhere near the washer and dryer? Then you go back to searching and dump your stuff when you've filled your backpack. You keep doing this until the counter next to the safe icon on the top of the screen reaches zero. Then magically the basement door's key will appear right in front of said door. Talk about convenience.

As Kevin makes his way into one of the family's four dungeons, he abandons his weapons and must complete a variety of lame platforming scenes. This includes ducking under slow moving bats, jumping over rats, stepping over spiders, and even running under hopping ghosts. After escaping these perils, you'll have to face a menacing boss fight for the last three stages: a giant spider, a huge ghost, and a large rat. To defeat them, Kevin must drop a respawning loose brick on top of them. The encounters are extremely easy due to the insanely simple patterns given to the bosses. For example, the giant spider walks back and forth in the middles of the screen. Every time it's hit, the spider speeds up, but it's never smart enough to move all the way to the edge of the screen. Whoo-boy. When you've killed the damn thing, it will fly off the screen and make a noise that sounds like a cash-register closing. Then Kevin just has to walk up to the safe, jump up about five feet into the air while spinning around making some sort of whistling noise, and the level will be complete.

And while all this is going on, you're fumbling with some of the worst controls you‘ll ever see. You'll be running around the house, see some tacks on the floor, and try to stop. On screen, Kevin decides not to stop and instead walks into the tacks. That happens a lot due to Home Alone's slippery response to the d-pad. There's also a lot of problems with jumping. Kevin's range with each jump is so awkward that you have to position yourself just right in order to not have those bandits put their hands on you. If you're too close, Kevin leaps right into the arms of the bandit. If you're too far, Kevin will land into the thug. Sometimes I just save myself the trouble and walk right into the crooks. Why? Because despite these constant control problems that drain your health, the game is too damn easy.

First of all, the game crams way too many power-ups into the game. Kevin will be quite the fat child after eating all this toilet pizza and cookies crammed behind mirrors. You can take all that damage and simply either heal up quickly or use one of your abundant supply of lives. Second of all, the developers put too many valuables in each level. If you were to need 20 items to put in the safe, they'd hide about 30 in the level. There's no way in Hell you'll have trouble finding enough loot to grab. In addition, there's only four levels for all this to happen in. It's not like you're going to have to really save up your lives for anything really tough. In fact, the game doesn't even have time to become challenging. Before you know it, you've finished the forth level and are staring at the ugly digitized picture of Harry and Marv in prison (in their normal clothes for some reason).

Home Alone essentially looks like an NES game with more color added. The backgrounds are always being rehashed with little to no change. The burglars may have looked impressive back in the day, but their animation was always so primitive then that I laughed at them. Nearly everything has a mere two frames of animation making everything jerky or idiotic looking. The fat mafia robbers will mostly stand still and look in front of them or behind them. This is done by having one frame with the thug looking forward and another turning his head. When put into action, it appears that his head is moving at break-neck speed. Or let's take Kevin's sprite: the kid looks like a deranged ape on crack. On the top, we have his head always sporting the same maddening grin. His torso sports a white shirt with one of his arms poking out in front. The other arm can be seen moving back and forth during animation, but in two frames. Thus we see his back arm jut forward and back as if he were some strung-out hillbilly blowin' a jig on his whiskey jug marked with “XXX.” Lastly we have Kevin's legs, which you'll clearly see aren't even properly attached to his torso. When he runs, Kevin looks like Michael Jackson break dancing.

The music just plain sucks. Each melody is far too short making them repeat constantly. Also the SNES instruments chosen sound totally lame and unimpressive to the ear. The developers were so lazy that they didn't even give each stage its own theme. For whatever reason, we hear a rock type song in the jewelry level, a more serene playful tune for the toy level, a static-like sounding piece of music for the electronics stage, but then the pet level rehashes the rock song. I guess they just thought you'd be so bored out of your mind that you wouldn't remember it being in the first level. The sound effects, however, are unintentionally hilarious. You'll just fall in love with the goofy voices (my favorite is the dying “bilaaaaah” noise). But you'd better watch out for Macaulay Culkin's voice-overs. When you complete the stage you'll hear his obnoxious, “YESSSSSSSSSS!”, but when you die, you're greeted with an ear drum exploding “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Oh Lord does it suck.

While Home Alone isn't anywhere near as bad as some of those other unplayable games out there, it still is an utterly boring experience that you don't want to take. The pathetic four levels of length, the sloppy control, the tedious valuable finding, the lame platforming aspects, the overall ease in finishing the game off, the hideous graphics, and the terrible music. About the only good this game does is make itself possible and give you a fine laugh at those voice-overs. You know, playing this game feels like a scene I remember from another Joe Pesci movie. Casino - head - vice grip. Get the picture?

“Bliaaaaaah!”

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/04