Welcome House

Welcome House is an adventure game that puts you in control of one Keaton Paxman. As the game begins, you pull up in front of your Uncle Parkinson's mansion located on American Street in good old Miami. All of a sudden your car falls to pieces right before your very eyes! Upon entering the house, the doors and windows slam shut and lock. It is your job to navigate the hazards and help Keaton escape this prank filled Welcome House.

Hazards may be too strong a word as you cannot die. The only way to fail this mission is to quit. No matter how many times Keaton gets smashed paper thin or downright abused he will still get back up for more. The emphasis here is on exploration and fun, not twitch skills. There are numerous puzzle to solve ranging from simply finding a proper key to collecting the ingredients for a special recipe. Nothing mindbendingly difficult, thought a few tasks seem rather illogical.

Some added difficulty would be welcome because this adventure is over all too soon. The game can be completed in roughly an hour and a half to two hours. Not exactly what I would call an epic adventure. Anyone with any experience playing adventure games should have no trouble clearing this game in one or two sittings.

Control is similar to that found in the Resident Evil/BioHazard series. Pressing up on the dpad will make your character walk forward, down will make him walk backward and the left and right directions rotate him. You can inspect your surroundings with the A button or hold it down to run. The C Button opens up your inventory and start opens the map/save screen. You can press the X Button to jump, but you can only jump in one room of the house. Since there are no enemies in this game, you have no attack button.

Also taking another cue from Resident Evil/BioHazard, the game features static cameras. In other words, the camera angles are fixed to give it a more cinematic feel. I keep comparing this to Biohazard, when the Playstation version of this game actually came out a month before the first BioHazard. Maybe I should compare it to Alone in the Dark?

The first thing I noticed about the game was it's vastly improved loading time as compared to the Playstation original. In the beginning of the game, they provide you with a sliding tile puzzle to mess around with whilst you wait for it to load. I wasn't even able to move one tile by the time the Saturn rev loaded while I was almost able to complete the puzzle in the Playstation version. Furthermore, upon entering any door in the Playstation version, you were treated with a 5 second loading screen. On the Saturn port this loading is completely eliminated, allowing for a much smoother gameplay experience. For this reason alone, I find the Saturn version to be superior. Sadly, the Playstation version trumps the Saturn version in all other areas graphically. The Playstation's visuals are much brighter and smoother and some effects, such as transparent shower curtains, are completely absent from the Saturn rev. There is also some odd bouts of slowdown in the Saturn version that were nowhere to be found in the Playstation original.

I hope you don't tire of music easily because there are only two musical selections throughout the entire game. One plays until you reach the halfway point and then it switches to the second tune. So you will be listening to each tune for at least 45 minutes of game time. Hidden throughout the game are three records containing licensed music such as Doris Day's rendition of "Que Sera Sera." It's a shame you can only listen to these records in one room of the house and once you leave the room that all too familiar music resumes playing. Still, an interesting feature nonetheless.

A knowledge of Japanese is not required, though it may help. You should be able to easily clear the game even if you can't understand a lick of Japanese. Since much of the story is told in a visual manner you should even be able to discern what exactly is going one. The only bits of Japanese are item descriptions and the very few conversations that occur. Should you get stuck there is a great FAQ available at Gamefaqs, so there is nothing to worry about.

For a vast majority of you out there, I will not recommend Welcome House. It is simply too short and has no replay value. Personally, I enjoyed the game a lot, despite it's shortcomings. It has a humorous 3D cartoon atmosphere and some competent, if derivative, adventure gameplay. If you can get it cheap enough to where the short playtime won't bother you, then go for it. Just don't expect anything on the level of, say, Monkey Island.

©2003 Ed Finnegan

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