Monster Lab

Introduction

Monster Lab is a blend of role-playing game elements and fighting game elements.  You are tasked with building the best monster to defeat the evil Baron Mharti.  You'll master different experiments through your journey to free the land and people from the wicked scientist.

Gameplay

You start out the game as a budding mad scientist.  As you fight and defeat monsters, you'll learn the three different sciences available in the game to create monsters.  These are evil robotics, evil biology, and evil alchemy.  You'll gain experience by defeating other monsters and stealing their body parts to use in your own experiments.  There are 150 different parts available for you to experiment with.  You can create and store 10 different monsters to use while playing the game.

Combat

To fight with your monster, you'll move the monster of choice to an overworld map where different monsters will be lurking around.  You can either touch the enemy monster with your monster or you may simply wait for a monster to attack you.  Once you've been engaged, you will be taken to a screen that looks like a traditional fighting game.  You have a list of different attacks which your monster can use to fight.  Just like an rpg, select an attack and your monster will perform that attack. 

Cycling through attacks also allows you to see where the attack will do the most damage.  Do enough damage to a particular body part, and the part will fall off.  Moves that require certain body parts (such as kicking requires legs) will be removed from the attack list once that body part has fallen off.  If the torso is destroyed however, you will win the match.

The system is deeper than just selecting attacks to perform.  Each monster has an associated energy meter which, early on, only has around 6 points in it.  Most of your attacks will cost more than 6 points so you will have to upgrade your monster before gaining access to more devastating moves.  There is a recharge move that will allow your monster to refill it's energy tank but costs an entire turn to perform, making you vulnerable to attack.

Each battle will be different as every enemy is generated at random, most likely making for some very interesting combinations.

Customizing

At any time during the game you can return to your lab to repair or add new parts to your monster.  The creators have spiced up the customization process by adding different minigames for you to perform, taking the place of certain "assumed" tasks.  One such minigame is welding.  You'll use the Wii Remote to aim a welding torch to attach each piece you need to create the part in a side-scrolling type minigame.  There are supposedly over 100 different minigames for you to play.