Retro Review - Haunting: Starring Polterguy

over 3 years ago

I should have published this review on Monday, since I was planning to publish reviews twice a week, Monday and Friday, but... procrastination is part of my day to day life and I didn't finish the review on time, so this week I will only publish one review. Changing the subject and leaving my procrastination aside, recently I played a quite curious game, with a quite original premise and that although at some point it becomes a bit repetitive, it is undoubtedly a little known game from which quite original and entertaining ideas emerged, with a lot of humor and ghosts, the game I'll talk about today is a hidden gem of video games.

That's why today's Retro Review is about: Haunting: Starring Polterguy.

Haunting: Starring Polterguy has a quite simple and direct story, in this game we control the ghost of a boy who in life was quite rebellious, punk and liked to ride a skateboard, but died because he used a skateboard of the brand "Sardini", This skateboard being of bad quality caused the death of our protagonist, so now, in the form of a ghost, Polterguy, is going to be in charge of chasing the Sardini family, and will scare and torment them in all the places and houses they go to. It is a story of revenge in the purest style of absurd comedy.

The graphic section in Haunting: Starring Polterguy is quite good, there are plenty of bright colors in this game, in addition to its variation, so thanks to that palette of colotes so "alive" makes Haunting: Starring Polterguy a visually pleasant game that has aged quite well over the years.

Haunting: Starring Polterguy is a game that, as I mentioned at the beginning, in which there is a lot of humor and that can be seen in the animations and in the expressions that the characters can make and that despite the graphic limitations, it can be visualized with great ease, a detail that undoubtedly gives a lot of personality to this game. Using his ghostly powers, Polterguy will be able to scare the Sardini family with the objects in the room where they are, in such a way that depending on the object we use to scare, it will have a different type of animation and effect, the effects are quite varied and it will always be something of a "scary" tone so that the character in question is scared.

It's quite funny the scary gestures that the characters make, and despite being formed by quite large pixels, the developers of this game did a great job in creating the expressions and emotions, is undoubtedly the best of the game along with the wide variety of animations that can make the characters. Another aspect that stands out and by far, are the scenarios, usually are not very large, however the amount of details that are in them is quite large, the decor in each of the scenarios is quite good, so that it "feels", so to speak, that we really are in a house, and besides the scenarios to have a relatively not so large size does not have that effect of "empty" and little used space, in Haunting: Starring Polterguy despite the limitations is a game that in terms of graphic level stands out quite a lot.

The music in Haunting: Starring Polterguy is good and has a type of tonality very in line with the video game, that is, we can hear melodies with "ghostly" characteristics, that is, the typical melodies that we relate to everything related to ghosts, but in everything a little more humorous, as in animated series like Scooby Doo, for example. They have tonalities and a musical style that relates to the "mysterious and scary", in short, the soundtrack of this video game is made to perfection to create a good atmosphere. Likewise the sound effects are also very well done and contribute a lot to the humorous style of the game.

Video Author Alen Starkly

The gameplay in Haunting: Starring Polterguy is simple but effective, in which we have to control Polterguy along the different rooms of the house and in different houses along the game, always trying to scare the Sardini family to move to another house, for this we can use different objects that are in the rooms and using the ghostly powers of our protagonist, Polterguy can spell/bewitch the objects that the game has at our disposal and scare them, that simple.

For the Sardini family, we are an invisible entity that is why we must make use of the objects on stage, and there are many objects to use them, so that when a member of the family approaches one of the objects that we previously used the powers of our protagonist, it will activate it and from that object something will appear that will scare it. Although depending on the object we will be able to activate it manually, we can also cast several objects at once.

Haunting: Starring Polterguy has an aerial view, in fact it reminds me a lot of the Sims, this way we have a better visualization of the whole scenario and everything we can use in our favor. We have to take into account many factors regarding the gameplay and the use of the objects, because when we cast a spell on an object, the family member who is in the room at that moment will approach it because that object will start to move, when it gets closer it will activate the spell and it will get scared, However, if that family member is already scared because he or she has previously activated another object, he or she will not go near that object, so we must also use well the objects that can be activated manually, because if we do not do it well, that family member will run away from the room before time.

Polterguy uses "ectoplasm" to cast his spells, and we will get it after a family member runs away from the room and the amount of ectoplasm we will get will be proportional to the number of times we have scared a character. We have an ectoplasm bar that we must use wisely to perform our mission very well. Polterguy will not have it easy since the family dog can detect it and make us lose ectoplasm, in the same way from time to time certain creatures will appear to steal our ectoplasm, to defend ourselves we will be able to give blows to those creatures. We can also go to the Underworld to collect ectoplasm, but this is the most boring part of the game.

In a few words: Haunting: Starring Polterguy is a very original game in terms of what we can do, with simple mechanics that does nothing but become entertaining every time we are in a room trying to scare a member of the family. Sometimes it can become a bit repetitive, but still it is highly entertaining and fun. Very few games of the Mega Drive were as unique as this one and therefore deserves great merit for its rarity and originality.