Monster High: Ghoul Spirit Is Kind Of Shitty

While we were clearing out my grandmother's apartment after she moved into my aunt's house, I found a DS game called Monster High: Ghoul Spirit.

I know Monster High is some Bratz-style brand of sexy monster dolls for I guess the vast hordes of tween proto-goths who want sexy monster dolls?  Presumably the game belongs to one of my younger cousins, and I hung onto it so it wouldn't get lost and I could return it to her.  I got bored though, so I tried playing it.  It's...kind of shitty.  Not super-shitty, it's no E.T. The Extra Terrestrial or anything, but it has little to no value as a game.

I guess I should start with the most immediately obvious quality, the graphics: they kind of suck, even for a DS game.  I tried to find a decent screencap to show them properly, but the game is so boring and worthless nobody seems to have posted much about it.  I did nab this, which actually looks better than the game usually does:

Now, I can't really say the graphics are completely awful.  I mean, I've seen worse graphics.  Monster High: Ghoul Spirit is probably roughly on par with Nostalgia in that respect, or maybe even a little better than Nostalgia (Nostalgia was pretty bad).  But when this screencap example is the very highlight of the game's graphics, it's...not good.  There was one character who was supposed to look like a total mess, with bad frizzy hair and an ugly outfit and one of the quests was to get her looking nice again.  But I didn't realize that she was supposed to look like a mess until I finished that quest and her sprite transformed into the "pretty" version.  I don't know if it's because I never actually looked at her or if it's because all of the characters are so jagged and awkward I can't tell the difference between the ones that are supposed to be pretty and the ones that aren't.  I also don't know if it's something to blame on the graphics or something to blame on the character designs.  Maybe both.  Speaking of character designs, I just have to say something about the general look of the series.  I know it's not original and everyone has said it before me, but dang, these monster girls are freaking gangly.  And long.  You could probably have a literal skeleton as a character and she'd be able to share clothes with the rest of the characters because you physically cannot make them skinnier than this.  And I'm pretty sure they've all got horribly broken and deformed legs.  How does this poor thing walk on those twisty stilts?  Each girl is technically a different type of monster, but really they're all variations on the horrifying Lankyleg Ganglebeast

It's sad that those boots are the second most horrifying thing about her legs.

But I should at least try to stick to game-specific criticisms. One thing that's definitely bad in this is the map.  The school you're in is so bland-looking that it's hard to figure out where you are just by the surroundings, so I mostly used the map to get around.  Unfortunately, the map is not actually an accurate floor-plan of the school.  The game designers thought it was more important to make the school coffin-shaped on the map rather than make a map that could accurately tell you where you are.  Or, you know, make the school actually coffin-shaped, for some reason.  If that was so important to them, I don't know why they didn't just draw the map first and then design the school to its specifications, but whatever, it's a stupid game and it's obvious that nobody actually cared.  I can't tell you how many times I went into the wrong room because the map told me I was on other side of the corridor.  The school is pretty small and bland-looking, which is kind of weird.  Not really the small part, I guess, since there's only like ten students, but you'd think a trying-to-be-coffin-shaped school of monster people would look more interesting.

So it's mediocre graphics and a shitty map.  Not a great start, but it can redeem itself with the actual gameplay, right?  Maybe it's an okay game after all!  But...no.  Sorry.  Not a chance.  The gameplay is crap.  The entire game is random fetch-quests and pointless busywork.  One particularly egregious example was the "storyline" (I guess? I wouldn't call it a story arc, but it's as close as this game managed to get) about how the zombie girl was kicked out of class for "mumbling" but the real problem was that the teacher doesn't understand zombie language.  Well, okay, I guess in that case you go to the headmistress and explain what happened and make sure that the problem gets documented and dealt with?  Nope!  You talk to the zombie girl instead and she tells you that she wants to make sure the teacher learns zombie language by reading a zombie language book.  So she sends you to her locker to get the zombie language book, then you bring the book to her so she can highlight the important parts, then you go find a custodian's outfit, then you bring it to her so she can change into her disguise, then you go to the "creepateria" to get a soda, then you bring it to her so she can explain the next step where you bring it to the classroom and pour it on the floor so she can clean it up as...a distraction, I think?  For some reason it is vitally important that you find a custodian's outfit for the zombie girl and then pour a soda on the ground.  Then you go into the empty classroom and leave the book on the desk.  That's it, right?  The end of the quest?  Nope!  Next you get a text message from somebody else, so you go find them and they tell you to go find the audiobook of the book you just left on the teacher's desk.  So you bring them the audiobook, and they tell you to go put it in the teacher's headphones.  Or mp3 player.  Apparently the two are interchangeable.  So you go do that, and wonder why you're wasting your time like this.  Then you go leave that on the teacher's desk.  But you're not done yet!  You get another text, and suddenly someone else has an idea!  You should make a potion that magically makes people understand languages!  So you go all over school collecting the potion ingredients (I think -- I vaguely remember doing something like this, but I'm not entirely sure. I tried to double-check by looking up a walkthrough, but none seem to exist, and I'm certainly not going to play the game again just to check, so let's just assume I'm remembering correctly), then you have to go to the Mad Science Lab to make some sort of potion with them, then you have to find whoever sent you on this quest so you can give them the potion so they can drug the teacher with it and the teacher will suddenly know the zombie language and everything will be solved!  For the third time!  That was very long and complicated, wasn't it?  Basically, you do a fetch-quest to fix the problem, but you're immediately sent on a second, completely unnecessary part to the fetch-quest to solve the same problem you just solved, then the final part of the fetch quest is to render the first two needlessly long fetch-quests unnecessary by using a potion to make the teacher understand zombie without needing either the book or the audiobook.  What the hell.  That was a waste of a waste of my time.

I feel like I've wasted your time just making you read that, so here is a hopefully useful "life hack" to try and make up for it.

There's a relationships element to the game, too.  I don't see the point of it, though.  You seem to max out every character's affection for you by completing the quests, and since the quests are the only things to do in the game, you don't have any other options.  You can't progress and do another quest until you've finished the one you're on (or at least I think so, this is another thing I only half-remember) and there aren't extra things to do like give gifts or anything.  So basically, play the game in the only way you can and you'll automatically max everything out and win the popularity contest at the end of the game.  Yaaaaay.  If that's how it works, why bother keeping track of affection at all?

Overall it was a tremendously dull game.  In fact, it was so boring that I forgot I was writing this post three-quarters of the way through and left it in my drafts for like, a year, until I found and finished it today.  I've since given the game back so I can't replay it to familiarize myself with it again to have anything fun to say at the end of the post.  Instead, I'll just point out how the series has desecrated The Phantom Of The Opera by having a character named Operetta, who is somehow the Phantom's teenage daughter from the Deep South, complete with a Southern American accent and obsession with .... ugh ... country music.  Not that there's anything inherently wrong with country music, until you try to mix it up with the fucking Phantom.  She is the single worst interpretation of anything related to Phantom of the Opera.  Just look at it, it's horrifying.

"AN MAH MYOOZIC CAN WHUP Y'ALL'S MYOOZIC!"

 (PLEASE PLEASE KILL ME NOW)

It Menaces With Spikes Of Llama Wool

I've been playing Dwarf Fortress a lot lately, and last night one of my dwarves was overtaken by a strange mood and claimed a metalsmith's forge, and ended up creating this thing:

It reads, "Udnair, 'Willrhymed', a trifle pewter right gauntlet.  This is a trifle pewter right gauntlet.  All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality.  It is studded with trifle pewter and encircled with bands of white stork bone.  This object menaces with spikes of llama wool.  On the item is an image of forgotten beasts in white stork leather.  On the item is an image of Willrhymed the trifle pewter right gauntlet in ash."

I love how the dwarf who created it engraved an image of it on itself, "in ash."  I don't even know what that means, I didn't know ash was a thing you could engrave.  It's not wood from an ash tree, because that would be called ashen, I'm told.  Maybe he glued the ash on like an arts-and-crafts project and then carved it in?  Alternate theory, it is not an image of the glove, in ash.  It is an image of the glove in ash.  As in, the dwarf created a really spectacular gauntlet, then decided he had to carve onto the side an image of that gauntlet lying in a pile of ash, presumably because the world burned around it and the gauntlet is the only remaining sign of anyone having lived and fought and died there.  Dwarves are real downers.

I wonder if the image of the gauntlet on the gauntlet is also engraved with an image of the image of the gauntlet on the image of the gauntlet on the gauntlet.  And that image has an image of the image on the gauntlet on the image of the gauntlet on the image of the gauntlet on the gauntlet.  Dwarves, man.

I spent too much money today :(

So today I went to the mall!  I was supposed to go with Sam, and head up to Value Village to look for a Halloween costume, but she was a butt and decided to feel sick today.  So the Halloween costume search is put off 'til next week, but I still needed new headphones (as you may remember) so I went to the mall solo tonight.  Insert Forever Alone face here.

Overall I'm relatively pleased with my purchases! I got the new Harvest Moon game -- well, relatively new, it came out last year -- and two pairs of headphones instead of just one, because I lack willpower.  Nail polish for the same reason.  But both the headphones and polishes are really cute so it's okay.

I haven't tried the earbuds yet.  I'm expecting them to be pretty mediocre-to-terrible, since they were only six bucks.  I'm sure they will crap out in a month or two and I'll have to buy another, better pair.  I did try the big over-the-ear headphones on the way home, and I think they were kind of shitty?  I can't really tell.  I mean, they don't sound as good as my old earbuds used to, but that might just be because my earbuds were noise-cancelling and these aren't, so I'm expecting them to be louder than I have a right to expect them to be, uh, loud.  Still, that's what I get for buying the cheapest pairs in the store.  I should have gone for the Skull Candy ones, like TK recommended when I called him for an opinion.

I might end up buying a better pair next paycheck and just keeping these as backup.  They are really cute, and they did a good job of keeping my ears warm.  Plus they fold together to be small enough to be (kinda) portable in my purse, and they have that nifty curled telephone-wire on them which just looks neat.  And they were cheap.  So overall, I'm happy with them.

Trust me, they're adorable.

I haven't played the Harvest Moon game yet.  I'm gonna start it tonight, and I will probably be completely sucked into it and disappear from the world for a week or two once I do.  I will have to do my best not to become completely obsessed.

No promises.

The nail polishes are omfg crazy cute.  I tried the pink and green colours on my left and right hands, respectively.  The pink went on frickin' neon!  I thought it would take a couple coats, but nope.  Straight out of the bottle, blinding pink.  Also it dried into sort of a matte finish, rather than a gloss.  I've never had polish that dries like that before!  I like it.  I always did prefer the feel of a matte finish to a smooth gloss finish.

For the record, my camera does not do justice to the crazy-bright colours of these polishes.  Or to my bright pink headphones, since we're on the subject.  All these colours are like ten times more intense than they look.

So that's what I got at the mall tonight.  It was an arduous journey, but the loot was worth it.  Now excuse me while I go play Harvest Moon for the next eight hours.