Haunting Starring Polterguy Review by: Eirinn - 7/10
Forget a witty review title, just play this game"Your stereotypical ghost/horror game" "Just another 16 bit game" "Run of the mill" These are all things that you will never hear a truthful person say about Haunting. In fact, not only is it not your stereotypical horror game...I wouldn't even call it a horror game at all. If anything, Haunting is a spoof of horror games. It's funny, silly, and simple light hearted fun.
The biggest twist on the horror genre here is that someone finally had the guts to make a ghost story game where the player is the ghost! That's right, you play a ghost whose fashion sense is heavily influenced by the decade he lived(?) in (the 90's), and scares the hooey out of people repeatedly, all while getting to be the good guy! Could the theme of this game be any more perfect?
The gameplay is extremely easy to catch on to, and the controls are equally simple. All you have to do is locate an area in the room where there's a colored sparkle, walk up to the sparkle and press the A button. Polterguy will enter the object "charge" it, and then exit it. The charged object then becomes a scare trap for the unsuspecting target. Scare them badly enough, and they'll run out of the house terrified. Be warned though: these people have nerves of steel. I don't know about you, but if my couch grows a tongue and licks me, or my floor opens up and a body comes up through it, I'm out of there no questions asked. These guys can take things like this and just go into the next room over. So good luck, because you'll need it to scare these folks away once and for all.
Well, let's get on with the assessment of this special little game.
Graphics: 6/10
Good.
So this is probably Haunting's weakest point. It isn't really that the graphics are bad, they're just more of an afterthought here, or so it seems. The way the game plays, the developers had to either sacrifice great graphics or great gameplay, and thankfully they chose to sacrifice great graphics.
From oozing green writing, to eyes bugging out of a scared Vito's head, from dark dungeons filled with unnatural forces trying to pull you down, to an annoying ankle biter and...flying heads? This game does offer some nice graphics, despite suffering from the zoomed out camera.
The sprites aren't bad, and are actually well animated and often humorous, but they're small and lack a lot of detail. This is mostly due to the camera angle you're given, so it's at least excusable.
The levels are well designed however, with attention being paid to the details. Everything looks great for a game of it's time, and to top it off, the animations are very nicely done, and are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. So with good amounts of detail, funny animations, and very nice color arrangements, the backgrounds and playing areas are very well done, raising the graphics rating a little.
So there you have it, Haunting may not be the prettiest game on the Genesis, but it certainly isn't a bad graphics show at all. It doesn't do all of the things that many games of the time did graphically, but what it does do, it does well.
Highlights:
-Great effects
-Nice use of colors sets the game off perfectly
Sound: 8/10
Exceptional.
A game with exceptional audio for a game on the console that at the time was considered by many to be the king of sound quality? It's impressive, and Haunting is just that.
The music is well done and incredibly fitting for the game, but they faded it too far into the background. Playing it softly was a great decision on the developers' part, but they would have done better to raise the music volume a tiny bit more. As it stands, I thought for a little bit that there was no in-game music (yeah, it's that low. Now if only Justin Beiber's music was recorded by the same developers...). Still, once you turn it up enough, it sounds perfect (so obviously Justin's music isn't written by the same people after all).
The sound effects: this is where the audio really shines. The sound of Flo screaming when you scare the daylights out of her is pretty darn funny if you ask me, and I guess you kind of are asking me since you're reading this review (either that or you're a glutton for punishment). Many --if not all-- scare traps have their own sound effects that play when they're activated. So the effects are quality, and anything but scarce.
Haunting is one of those games whose audio greatly adds to the game, while not exactly captivating it's audience, leaving you with little to no recollection of what you just heard.
Highlights:
-Great sound effects that really help make the game even more immersive
-Very well done music
Story: 3/10
Very bad.
I can't say how much I hate giving the story a rating of three, and "Very Bad" is really a bit misleading.
The problem with the story is that there is no real story in-game, but Polterguy feeds us tidbits of information, expecting us to know what he's talking about. He drops us clues like "After what those creeps did to me" but we're never actually told just what they did that has him so upset. I hate a story that doesn't tell you what's going on, even more than a bad story.
After some researching, and calling in some help from GenesisJunkie, I got ahold of a digital copy of the instruction manual which shed some light on the story --and by "shed some light on it" I mean it told the whole story. Turns out that Polterguy was a kid who died in a skateboarding accident caused by a poorly manufactured skateboard made in Vito Sardini's overly cheap production factory.
And Polterguy wasn't the only one hurt or killed...
Vito however managed to get away with covering up the fact that he had any ties to the factory that produced the skateboards, and so got away with it. Polterguy is now determined to pay him back by making his life miserable.
A pretty good story when you read the whole thing, but I can only rate the story based on what's revealed in-game. So sadly, a game with a good story gets a bad rating for it.
Highlights:
-The story in the manual is actually pretty good
Depth: 8/10
Exceptional.
I admit, I was torn between a six and a seven for this category. I chose seven because of the low score I gave it on the Story, despite the story not being too bad for such an early game. Then I started writing this category, and realized that it deserved more credit than I was giving it.
So what is there to do in Haunting? For starters there are nearly 400 items that Polterguy can use to frighten his enemies. That's essentially 400 weapons in the game, and while most are automatic and do the scaring themselves once charged, some are manual and actually let the player control the scaring; those are always a blast to use.
Next up, we have various abilities for Polterguy to use. You find these in the dungeon scenes (more on those later), and can simply press the C button to bring up a list of said abilities. These range in use from scaring people, to warding off the family dog, to refilling your ectoplasm meter. My personal favorites are the ecto refills and the Zombifying ability, that allows Polterguy to take control of a member of the Sardini family and use them to frighten others. Suffice to say, there is no shortage of scare tactics with this ghost.
And how about that dungeon? Polterguy is given an ectoplasm meter that depletes constantly, and can only be refilled three ways:
1. Gathering the ectoplasm dropped when a member of the Sardini family is scaed into another room. This is only enough to postpone your visit to the dungeon however, as there is never enough ecto dropped to replenish the ecto you lost while frightening them.
2. The Ecto refill ability that Polterguy can pick up later in the game. Unfortunately, this method only works once per house (or is it once per dungeon visit?), and isn't available early on in the game.
3. The dungeon. This is the place you try your level best to avoid. Avoid it like the plague, like a man eating beast that craves your flesh, like a Justin Beiber song (Yeah, I saved the worst for last. I'm sorry if that thought scared you like it did me). You get sent here every time your ecto meter is fully depleted, and you must collect every single drop of ectoplasm that drops in here, only then can you leave. The problem? The dungeon is the only place where you can take damage and get a game over, and if you aren't extra careful, you will get one quickly. The bright side of the dungeon is that once you get out, you're taken back to where you left off in the house, and your ectoplasm meter is completely refilled.
Also there are four occupants to scare out of the house, and you must scare them out of four different houses. Then there's the surprise ending...good luck getting far enough to find it.
Finally, we have a multiplayer option. This is activated by pressing the start button on player two's controller. Now you can go head-to-head in a scaring competition with another ghost friend. Who hasn't dreamed of that before?
So as you can see, Haunting has a good amount of things in it, and it definitely offers a decent amount of playtime, given the fact that there are no save or password features, so you have to start over if you lose all of your health in a dungeon. Haunting is a game you won't exhaust anytime soon.
Highlights:
-Around 400 ways to scare the daylights out of the Sardinis
-An innovative health system
Addictiveness: 10/10
Incredible.
And there it is, ladies and gentlemen: the rating that makes or breaks a game. This definitely reflects the amount of fun that there is to be had with the game, as well as my personal opinion on it.
I've been playing this game on and off for over two years now, and I don't suspect I'll ever quit. It's a blast to play and with so many rooms in each house, and each room having it's own scare traps, you'll have to play through this one a few times to see all that there is to see, and if you're like me, you'll enjoy it every time. It's a straight forward game, but it manages to be a straight forward road to fun.
Highlights:
-Promises multiple playthroughs for the player that just has to see and do it all
Difficulty: 6/10
Challenging.
While the game itself is fairly easy, the dungeon can quickly suck all of the health out of your meter if you're not careful. The biggest issue is that your health never refills after a trip back from the dungeon. However, if you can score 50,000 points a health refill will appear in the dungeon in the form of a star. This is the only way to refill your health, so be careful not to lose too much too fast.
The last house is also a big challenge. I won't go into details here, just be prepared when you get there. It'll likely take a few tries to finish that one. And with no continues or passwords, you're likely to find yourself wanting to rage quit unless you use save states, you little cheater.
Highlights:
-While the game presents a challenge, it does so in a good way
Overall: 7/10
Very Good.
Haunting is a very good game, and deserves a lot more credit than it got. It's easily one of my favorite 16 bit games, and one that I can always count on for some fun times. In all honesty, my persinal rating of the game is without a doubt a ten. The game is unique, innovative, and an all around blast to play.
So after it's all taken into consideration, the pros and cons are weighed, and a dash of biased opinion is thrown in, Haunting is the perfect game for someone looking for a unique gem of a retro game, and it's more than worth the time and Viz (or real money) that it takes you to get your hands on it. If I were to put a price on it, I would value it at $30 easily, based entirely on the fun you'll have with it.
So there you have it folks, this wraps up my review on the gem that is Haunting: Staring Polterguy.
Graphics
6 Sound
8 Addictive
10 Depth
8 Story
3 Difficulty
6
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