Monster Tale Review

Needs to Go Back in the Oven


Monster Tale's big hook is that it is a mash-up of adventure platforming and pet-raising simulation—in other words, it's Metroid meets Pokémon (as Richard Naik fittingly noted in his review on Gamecritics). Genre blends are a funny breed. I imagine their inception usually begins with a thought like "Wouldn't it be cool if we mixed X with Y?", and the variables are filled by a Mad Libs style brainstorm or by drawing randomly out of a hat. It sounds like a fun way of creating new ideas. Wouldn't it be cool if we mixed pinball with real-time strategy (Odama), or how about arcade action with role-playing elements (The Legend of Zelda)? The hybrid offspring could be a bastard mutt or a completely fresh pedigree. Which one depends not only on how well each individual component is executed, but on how those components interact with each other to create new gameplay. While it may seem easy to generate novel concepts by using this approach, it is also a risk because the developer has to follow through on multiple gameplay mechanics and make them work together. Unfortunately, this task proved to be too much for DreamRift.

The game begins when a young girl named Ellie finds a magic wristband that teleports her to a mysterious land of monsters. On arrival she stumbles upon an egg that hatches into a cute and cuddly monster whom she names "Chomp". Soon she discovers that the land has been taken over by the Kid Kings, a group of children who rule over various regions by enslaving the monsters. It's up to Ellie and her new pal Chomp to free the monsters and find a way for her to return home.

The player controls Ellie on the DS's top screen, where the main action takes place. On the bottom screen is Chomp's home base: the Pet Sanctuary. At any time Ellie can summon Chomp up to the top screen to help out in combat or occasionally remove obstacles. Ellie can let Chomp wander and fight enemies freely, or command him to perform various special moves. Chomp has a stamina bar that depletes when he uses a special ability or when he takes damage. Ellie can send Chomp back to the Pet Sanctuary to recover stamina, eat food, and use items. This seamless pet help is a genuinely intriguing and innovative idea. However, great ideas need equally great execution, and DreamRift fell short on this effort.

As a point of reference, consider the original Metroid. It was a game where the number of power-ups was fairly limited, but each one significantly changed how the player approached the gameplay. For example, it was easier to kill enemies with the wave beam since it penetrated walls, but the ice beam let the player freeze baddies and use them as platforms, making previously difficult traversal sections easier. Furthermore, the player was not required to get many of the power-ups in order complete the game—not even the ice beam! This made for interesting gameplay choices.

In contrast, Monster Tale offers a smorgasbord of power-ups, but most of them are completely superfluous. As Chomp battles and eats food, he earns experience points and can evolve into different forms, each with its own unique skill. Disappointingly, I found many of these abilities to be pointless or redundant in combat. For example, there are at least three forms that allow Chomp to shoot a spread of projectiles, each with slight variations such as bouncing off walls or homing in on enemies. While these differences sound legitimate, in practice the forms are all more or less equally effective. For the most part I used the same two abilities throughout the entire game because almost nothing I obtained afterward seemed as useful.


Ellie herself gets a regular dose of upgrades, but the only real purpose the vast majority of them serve is to give access to new areas. For example, I never found good cause to use the "Super Wave" ability, which lets Ellie fire a continuous stream of shots—much less the "Air Super Wave", which lets her do the Super Wave while in the air. It doesn't help that there are doors secured by very contrived locking mechanisms that can only be opened by a specific ability. I got the clear impression that her upgrades were designed more for unlocking these doors than for actual combat.

This obvious gating highlighted the fact that the game's level design is far too linear. Fans of Metroid may recall that the player could defeat the two main bosses, Kraid and Ridley, in any order before completing the game. There were also countless side paths and loops, almost every one of which gave some sort of useful reward such as a precious missile expansion. These design characteristics provided a lot of replay value and motivation to explore.

Unfortunately, there is never any opportunity in Monster Tale to deviate from the current goal. The game requires the player to defeat all of the Kid Kings and acquire the power-ups in one and only one order. There is not much motivation to seek alternate routes, either, as there are very few side paths and the hidden rewards are sparse. These issues are exacerbated by the large amount of backtracking that is required.

Despite all of the problems I had with Monster Tale, it might have been much more successful if it wasn't so incredibly easy. As it stands, the game is a straightforward, bland affair with a lot of meaningless complexities that aren't justified by the challenges presented. The original idea of combining adventure platforming with a pet-raising simulation had tons of promise, as it seemed like those two genres could mix very well together. It is too bad that DreamRift never capitalized on that potential.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via retail store and reviewed on the 3DS. Approximately 11 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode (completed 1 time).

Update: July 17, 2011 - This review was published on Gamecritics.com through their community user review process.

Slippery Slopes

Hopefully you remember that last month (while everyone was gearing up for the 2009 holiday season) a federal judge ruled that the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision, a part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), was unconstitutional. If an individual does not have health insurance coverage through an employer or some other means, the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision requires that individual to purchase health insurance coverage or else pay a penalty.

Where does the federal government get the power to compel an individual to purchase a product from a private entity? According to the act itself,

The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section ... is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce.

Presumably, then, the power comes from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which reads:

The Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

One of the questions put before U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson was whether or not the power to regulate interstate commerce extends to the power to regulate any inactivity that otherwise could potentially affect interstate commerce. In his ruling, Judge Hudson found the reasoning for the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision to be a very slippery slope:

In her argument, the Secretary urges an expansive interpretation of the concept of activity. She posits that every individual in the United States will require health care at some point in their lifetime, if not today, perhaps next week or even next year. Her theory further postulates that because near universal participation is critical to the underwriting process, the collective effect of refusal to purchase health insurance affects the national market. Therefore, she argues, requiring advance purchase of insurance based upon a future contingency is an activity that will inevitably affect interstate commerce. Of course, the same reasoning could apply to transportation, housing, or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation and is unsupported by Commerce Clause jurisprudence.

The astonishing thing to me is that this isn't the first step we've taken along this dangerous path! Allow me to explain:

It is clear that the health care mandate is headed for the Supreme Court. While I was brushing up on this topic, I came across some previous cases decided by the Supreme Court that were relevant here. One of those cases, Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), stood out from the pack.

The case dealt with a farmer named Roscoe Filburn who grew more wheat than he was permitted under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which attempted to control the price of wheat on the national market by limiting the amount of wheat that farmers could produce. Filburn argued that his wheat was not part of interstate commerce since the wheat was grown only for consumption by himself and his livestock. Therefore, Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce did not apply.

In a baffling decision, the Supreme Court ruled that despite the fact that the activities (production and consumption of wheat) were local, when taken in the aggregate they significantly affected interstate commerce, and therefore could be regulated by Congress. Presumably, if Filburn and others like him did not grow enough wheat to feed their families and livestock, they would have to purchase it on the national market. Here is a key excerpt from the Wickard ruling:

But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'

This has to be the most outrageous Supreme Court ruling I've ever seen. Think about it: The Court decided that Congress has the authority to stop a person from growing his own food for his own consumption using his own property. This is an insane intrusion into the lives of private citizens, and it absolutely should not be acceptable in a free society. It cannot possibly be what the founding fathers had in mind, and it is not within the spirit of the Constitution.

Nor is it within the letter of the Constitution—at least, it is not in the letter of the Commerce Clause. Merrium Webster defines commerce as

the exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving transportation from place to place.

The text of the Commerce Clause says that Congress has the power to regulate "commerce", not the power to regulate "any economic activity that affects commerce". It should be patently clear that Congress does not have the power to regulate production or consumption of goods and services, but only the exchange of those goods and services itself, and only if that exchange takes place between different states.

The sticking point, in my view, is the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause:

The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

This clause grants Congress implied powers that go along with the powers explicitly given to it. It has been used in the past, including the Wickard ruling, to grant Congress very broad authority. The Obama administration has a pretty good case as to why the health care mandate is necessary—indeed, it is crucial—to the success of its health care overhaul.

But is it proper?

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of room for subjectivity in the interpretation. In my view, the huge problem with both Wickard and the health care mandate is that there is no logical limitation to the applied reasoning. That makes them both highly improper. The Wall Street Journal identified this problem last year:

All human activity arguably has some economic footprint. So if Congress can force Americans to buy a product, the question is what remains of the government of limited and enumerated powers, as provided in Article I. The only remaining restraint on federal power would be the Bill of Rights, though the Founders considered those 10 amendments to be an affirmation of the rights inherent in the rest of the Constitution, not the only restraint on government. If the insurance mandate stands, then why can't Congress insist that Americans buy GM cars, or that obese Americans eat their vegetables or pay a fat tax penalty?

Wickard started down a perilous road by essentially allowing Congress to regulate anything that you do do. The Minimum Essential Coverage Provision would be another step along the same path, allowing Congress to potentially regulate anything you don't do.

Maybe to save us all the trouble, the founding fathers should have just included the following clause:

The Congress shall have Power... To do anything it damn well pleases.

Update: January 31, 2010 - Another federal judge has ruled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.