If You Do Not Cook Your Review Rare, Your Must Hang Yourself In Shame

When I picked up Master of the Monster Lair in EB Games, I had the impression that it would be a great, original concept that went completely wrong.

And, unfortunately, I was right.

The basic premise of the game isn't too hard to get. You are random male doofus in random town who needs a random job, but every position available to a young upstart such as yourself is taken. So you decide to head out into the forest, where you find a magic talking shovel (I wish I was making that up) which tells you that you are now destined to be a dungeon digger for the rest of your life. Oh, and the shovel will only listen to you, so don't think about trying to give it away. At least they bothered to explain why you and only you could do the job.

Now, charged with the task of digging a dungeon to make your town popular and famous, you spend day after day walking into a cave, digging up dirt, and placing rooms for monsters to live in. The concept is unique, original, and allows for some interesting set ups, even if the options are limited. Monsters are more likely to leave behind loot the more you kill in one battle, meaning if you fight one enemy, you won't get anything, but if you fight three, you're bound to get some sweet loots.

To improve your stats, instead of leveling up by killing things with your sword, you enjoy a hearty supper, which based on what you prepare will increase various stats. I loved this system - even if it was fairly abuseable - since it was just so strange, much like other elements Monster of the Master Lair. You only get three playable characters, and only two of them can eat food(apparently blobs of goo don’t need to eat), so I had it set up that the male doofus was a fighter, and the female doofus was a mage. On a side note, Firefox's spellchecker does not recognize either the words "doofus" or "mage". Expect to see them show up a lot from this point on.

These aspects of the game should come together to make something fun and different. So what's the big problem? Grinding. This game will make you grind so hard Tony Hawk will throw down his skateboard in defeat to your superior skills. Every floor requires you spend tons of money to get the rooms you need so you can fight a boss and move down to the next floor. How do you get money? Kill monsters. Want to level up? You need to kill monsters so they drop the right ingredients so you can cook. And since monsters have so many varied drops, and what you find is random, the chances you'll get what you need are low enough to make throwing the DS at a wall a very satisfying idea.

I'm not sure which doofus came up with this idea to make the player grind and grind until he has enough ground beef to make meatloaf for all of New York City, but he must have been some kind of doofus mage. Sitting at a board meeting with the other doofi, looking at the popular games at the day. Suddenly, our doofus stumbles upon World of Warcraft. He turns to the other doofi and says: "Wouldn't it be great if we could make a game where you can grind endlessly, and not have to play with other people or online?" Everybody nods, awed by the wisdom of this man, and he is crowned Mage Doofus.

It's such a fantastic concept, the ability to create your own dungeon, and then explore it. But it shouldn't require ten in game days just to build a floor. Let the player design one floor completely, then tweak it as necessary to get what he wants. Instead of forcing the player to grind and get food, why not just have somebody in town who can sell all the food the player has found throughout his travels? And make the rooms cheaper, please, or have enemies drop more money. I'm thinking about this, and it occurs to me that if the game didn't take so long to get anywhere, maybe they could have worked on the storyline a bit more.

On the subject of plot, there isn't any. What there is can be summed up in: "Be a doofus. Make a dungeon. Kill monsters so they don't overthrow the town." There is one plot element which could be considered a twist, and if you didn't see it coming, you should probably get your eyes checked, because you suffer from blind stupidity.

To be a bit more fair, the game isn't trying to take itself seriously, what with a main doofus who thinks he has to be a dungeon digger because at least it's something to do, a mage who teaches you how to cook, and a girl in the town square who sings about world conquest. And to top it off, you have a talking shovel. I don't think I can stress this enough, it's a talking shovel. So. Stupid.

I only managed to get through the first ten floors of the game, the "main plot". After that, the credits rolled, and I was told that I could dig another ten floors. To which I said "screw you, game". This is not a selling point, if the game makes me want to not play through the extras. This is bad design. Maybe I'll get back to it at some point, but I doubt it. It is not going to be worth my time. Not even slightly.

However, there are some rays of light in this doofus fest. While not all the music is sensational, there are enough good tracks to make the dungeon crawling enjoyable. After each of the first eight floors, the game gifts you with a new dungeon theme, which you can select to play while you dig up dirt. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, you can set it to random, and get a different track after every battle, or every time you go up and down a flight of stairs. I personally did not make use of this random function, because I found one theme to listen to after the fourth floor which was just that much better than everything else.

I can sum up Lair of the Monster Master in the following sentence: play if you enjoy spending three hours at a time grinding for items and money. If this does not sound like an appealing concept, then congratulations, you are not a doofus.