Your life in Monster High

USA Version

In a nutshell, Monster High: 13 Wishes is a 3D platformer where you spend most of your time endlessly and aimlessly searching for trinkets to open up new stages and collect more trinkets. The game takes place after the Monster High straight-to-disc film of the same name and pretty much recaps that whole movie in a painful five-minute movie that you can't skip right at the beginning. The game's plot audaciously nullifies everything that happened in the movie and makes you do the same stuff, only now you have to actually do it instead of watching creepy deformed teenage monsters do it. Two people can "play" at once — one as a character on screen, the other as an assistant using the Wii Remote's pointer. Off-screen play is forced — you can't not have off-screen play because the second screen doesn't do anything. If you find yourself interacting with this game, you can at least do everyone a solid and not occupy the television with it, to help contain the misery.

Having played more Monster High: 13 Wishes for longer than should be legally allowed, we came up with the following 13 wishes should a genie ever grant us a baker's dozen with the condition that each one centres on this abhorrent excuse for a game. Strange genie, but we'll take any opportunity to air our grievances.

1. We wish the game didn't feel like a tech demo - Presumably Monster High: 13 Wishes exists for the sole reason of being able to plaster the weirdos of Mattel's bratty tweeny-bop goth franchise on a video game box, because whoever ultimately yelled "that's it, we nailed it, make thousands of these!" at the end of development clearly does not care about what's on the disc. 13 Wishes is barely functional as a piece of software and has no redeeming qualities as a piece of entertainment, let alone one asking for $40 to experience. It's as if the team only had time to build the engine, drop in player characters, and then shipped the alpha version.