Home Alone (2006 video game)

Home Alone
"Hey guys, let's license Home Alone years after it was popular and make a video game about it!" Said someone from Blast! He probably got a promotion for it instead of being fired as he should have.
Genre(s): Puzzle Platform(s): PlayStation 2 Release: October 2, 2006 Developer(s): Coyote Developments Publisher(s): Blast! Entertainment Country: United Kingdom Series: Home Alone Predecessor: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

".. But this game, by all known laws of physics in the universe, has no right to exist! The mere idea would baffle the greatest scientific minds of our time!"

— The Angry Video Game Nerd

Home Alone is a 2006 game released for the PlayStation 2 that is loosely based on the film of the same name. The game was developed by Coyote Developments and published by Blast! Entertainment only in Europe.

Gameplay

The game aims to go through five areas and dispose of the burglars while locking all the doors and windows to stop more from getting in. The player can collect and use tools to close the entrances and traps to catch the burglars. Unless the player locks all the entrances on the level. However, defeating a burglar means another takes his place.

Why It Should Be Buried Into The Snow

1. Complete lack of faith in the source material. There are made-up characters to play as, besides Kevin, you lock the burglars inside the house and kill them with various projectiles instead of catching them in traps, you just fight repeated clones of Harry, differing only in the color of the sweatshirt; there is a two-player mode (even though it's Home Alone), etc. Also, the game's season is spring, not winter according to the source material.
2. This game is a 'blast from the past' like the movie it was based on was released in 1990, which came out 16 years ago before the game. In other words, it was too late to release a licensed game based on the movie, causing the game to sell poorly due to the lack of interest in the film at the time.
3. False advertising: As the title would suggest, when we're alone at home, of course as Kevin, but we have to choose three other characters during the playthrough.
4. The gameplay only involves locking the door, ending with defeating the opponents. And so through 10 levels The gameplay is so simple that almost after the first level, it becomes boring even for a game for children.
5. The level design is too tight, so if you have no projectiles left to hit the burglars, you have a small chance to avoid getting caught by them. Also, the controls are slow and you move at the same speed as your opponents, so it's really hard to get away from them especially considering the low levels.
6. Attacking opponents is difficult because throwing an object takes too long and can only be cast, according to the coordinate system makes the gameplay is not only as dull as tripe with oil but also highly frustrating which is somewhat contrary to the game for children.
7. The hand-drawn art (including the company logo that appears when starting the game) is so badly made it looks like they were done by a small child and although it is a game for children, it should still look nice because it is a console game created in addition by the company.
8. You are only given three lives, and if you lose them all, you have to start the entire game over from the beginning. This is supposed to be a PS2 game, aimed at kids, not an NES game which is unforgivable because the NES era ended more than 15 years earlier and was much weaker hardware than the PlayStation 2.
9. Downright abysmal and amateurish graphics that are close to an Atari Jaguar level and look like a very early PS1, 3DO, or Sega Saturn game, even though this is actually a pretty late PS2 game, and this wasn't done by Indie developers as well, it still looks awful for 2006 standards.
10. The game only saves high scores and does not save game data, so if you restart the game, you have to reset the whole playthrough of the game into the first level as if the developers did not want to refine the records more and decided that at the moment there are Atari 2600 times where only points count and nothing else and this is a PS2 game released after the release of such platforms as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii, which is unforgivable for a game that's not an indie game.
11. The length of the game is extremely short, it can be beaten in about 1 to 2 hours which for a console game is ridiculously short and could be made much longer, but the developers did not want to.
12. Generic music and sound effects that feel like they were taken off a Flash or another puzzle game from the early-mid-2000s and they don't match the game which is pretty funny because it's a full-price boxed edition under the movie license sold in real shops, so you could play the music from the CD.
13. Extremely little content for a PS2 game, as its ISO file is about 50 megabytes when extracted. This could mean that the game was printed on a CD instead of a DVD in 2006, this clearly shows how lazy the developers were who didn't want to do more than just a simple arcade game.
14. The menu is very lazily made, all we can choose is the language and the hero, and that's it.

Reception

The game, not being noticed by critics, like other games from Blast, met with very negative opinions from online reviewers and YouTubers and was considered the worst Home Alone game. It sold poorly and is currently sold at high prices from certain countries such as France on eBay.

The game is also part of the infamous trilogy of games from Blast which is compared to other infamous trilogies like Data Design Interactive, The Code Monkeys, Phoenix Games, or Team 6 Game Studios.

After playing the game for the first time, JonTron straight-up said that the box art was the best part of the game.

During the Angry Video Game Nerd's review of various Home Alone games, he simply rejected this game, criticizing that it didn't feel or look like the movie.

NRGeek reviewed the game and mocked it for its weird enemies and unfair difficulty and even compared it unfavorably to a game released over 15 years earlier.

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