Sea Splash last night's dinner up
During battle, on the upper screen, damage is indicated through body parts that change colour from black, indicating full health, yellow indicating medium health and red, indicating low health. If one of your opponents body parts is showing red, it's likely that you'll only need one more hit before you'll behead him or knock his legs from clean underneath him. Of course, at the same time you need to watch your own character and choose when to dodge, or use defensive or recharge actions before your monster takes a pounding. It's a strategic battle, which gets more intense the further you delve into the adventure.Although some of the combat moves available will be instantly familiar, such as the ground pound, there are tons of variations on offer and once you get to create your own monsters at the beginning of each mission, you'll unlike the likes of 'gnaw', with which you can take a bite out of your enemy, or 'sea splash' with which you can spray vomit over their face.
It's in the creation of these monsters in the laboratory prior to each mission, where you choose from and fuse together hundreds of mechanical, biological and alchemical parts, that demonstrates the depth of Monster Lab and sets it apart from similar turn-based combat games. The process of creating your own beast, naming him and then bringing him into battle is entertaining as well as absorbing.
The monster creation process takes place at the end (or beginning if you like) of each quest, where you enter the workshop to perform experiments with all the parts that you’ve been awarded through battle or from beating challenges. This is where a more intuitive use of the stylus comes in.
Fusing together parts to mold your creature together takes the form of a mini-game where you choose your ingredients and then use the Weld-o-Tron using your stylus to follow a seam across the screen like a blow-torch. You then need to blow into the microphone should you inadvertently move too far away from the line. The better you perform an experiment, (the more accurately you follow the line with your stylus) the higher the strength will be of the part that you are creating. By choosing from your list of ingredients and following a recipe, for example, by using a a metal platter and a spool of wire to make a defensive Buckler shield which attaches to your arm, you can make dozens of body parts (millions of variations) - all of which have unique attributes as well as a unique use in the field of combat.
There are dozens of entertaining parts to experiment with in combat, such as the armour plated jaw which allows you to perform a devastating chomp movement on your opponent. It's clear that a lot of thought has gone into the exhaustive range of maneuvers, which complements perfectly the deep underlying number-driven combat system, ultimately making each bout feel refreshingly challenging.
