Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a mosquito? What trials and tribulations you would face while flying around a room, landing on helpless victims, and sucking their blood? No? I didn’t think so, but somehow the concept is made compelling in the video game Mister Mosquito for the Playstation 2. In a time where developers were throwing money at big budget releases or hitting the double digits this game stands out for being unique and original. There’s nothing else out there quite like Mister Mosquito. Originality doesn’t automatically mean a game is good. Thankfully, Mister Mosquito delivers the goods. Let’s take a look.
You play as a cutesy little blood sucker named Mister Mosquito who is, as you may have guessed, a mosquito. The game begins as he takes up residence in the Yamada household, a typical Japanese family, in order to stock up on their blood so that he may survive the long winter. The game is divided between a series of stages each of which take place in a separate room, and feature one member of the Yamada family. Your goal is always to collect a specific amount of blood, and when you have enough you simply move on to the next level. Easy, peasy, right? Wrong. There’s quite a bit going on in Mister Mosquito and despite the non-violent subject matter this is a tough game.
Let’s start with the controls. Mister Mosquito handles almost like a flight sim in many respects. You control your speed by pressing L1 and R1 to either speed up or slow down. You have an on-screen reticule which is used to aim with, and you move this with the left analog stick and aim your flight path with it. If you move this target over specific objects you can interact with them, and this is done with the circle button which causes you to latch on to a person or interact with an element in the environment. For more intricate movements you can use the right analog stick as well. This extra layer of control is surprisingly helpful in a game that focuses on accuracy like this.
In each of the stages you have a human to contend with. They are both your target and your foe. As you fly around the rooms (think of them as arenas) you can be spotted by the human in question. When this happens the entire pace of the game becomes radically different. What was once a relaxing experience becomes a little more frantic as the member of the Yamada family in question begins coming after you. They can hit you which drains a heart from your health meter. Later on they’ll use projectiles like bug spray to damage Mister Mosquito. Battle scenes do not end on their own, and instead you have to relax the character in question by interacting with specific parts of their body. Sometimes you’ll need to hit more than one point on their body to calm them down.
Should you manage to successfully land on your human target without catching their attention you activate the blood sucking mini-game. You begin by pressing R3 which causes the mosquito to pierce the skin. From here you start spinning the right digital pad and your goal is to go at the proper space to keep the comfort gauge in the blue. Should it leave the blue (and stay there for too long) the human will notice your presence and if you don’t react in time they’ll kill you instantly. There’s a lot to pay attention to, and these sequences are surprisingly tense. It takes some practice but in no time at all I found myself able to collect the required blood with no problems.
I went in expecting the controls to be a nightmare. Most of the early ambitious Playstation 2 releases are overly complicated in this regard. The developers nailed the controls surprisingly well. I found that I was able to fly around, and dodge attacks with relative ease. Sure, I crashed plenty, but they planned for this and didn’t implement penalty for clumsy flying. You can bump into things all you want and in most cases you’ll walk (or fly I mean) away unscathed. The difficulty instead comes in the form of getting the proper rhythm down while sucking blood, as well as paying attention to the gauges to figure out when you need to fly away to avoid being hit.
I was actually surprised at how enjoyable Mister Mosquito is. Simple things such as flying around and finding features in the environments that you can interact with is fun. Tracking your prey, and waiting for them to get into the right position doesn’t even require that much patience. You’ll have fun doing it. The gameplay mechanics are well thought out and stay true to the themes. While the human enemies get a little exaggerated in the later areas (especially when the cans of bug spray come out) it’s never too crazy. For a game about being a simple houshold mosquito, Mister Mosquito is surprisingly enjoyable and addictive.
If there’s one weak link in this game it’s the graphics. This was an early release for the Playstation 2 console, and a niche budget one at that. It’s pretty clear that it wasn’t made by a huge team of developers. Characters don’t have a lot of details on them. The same goes for the environments. The framerate holds fairly steady which is impressive given the scope of the environments, but that’s probably the most impressive technical aspect of the game. I do like Mister Mosquito’s design; the artists managed to make the most annoying insect in the world cute. The music sort of sounds like what you’d hear in an elevator, but I actually liked it. The piano and jazz pieces are really relaxing. The voice overs are awful, but I didn’t really care to be honest.
Mister Mosquito is one of the most unique games of its generation. It’s also pretty enjoyable to boot! Mister Mosquito regularly tops lists of ‘the weirdest games’ and for good reason. Really, who would have thought a game like this would be a good idea? Somehow it all works, and it’s a very charming and challenging affair that I found myself wanting to return to even after I had completed it. It’s sort of a rare release, and isn’t likely to be updated for modern consoles. If you find this one for a decent price then by all means please jump on it. You won’t regret it.
