 Hmm… a drink full? The thing about the horror film genre is that even the bad stuff still has a shelf life. Stuff like Troll 2, the giant spider invasion, Plan 9 from Outer Space, or even Manus the Hands of Fate can still be campy fun. But can you say the same thing about horror themed video games? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein argues that no, you cannot. This game was developed by Bitt Studios, which also developed GunForce, a run and that practically plays in slow motion which makes it more of a walk-in gun, as well as dumpster fires like Terminator 2 and Last Action Hero, the latter being known as the game where Arnold inexplicably looks like Shane McMahon. Yeah, that's right, I'm recycling jokes, but only because I love the idea of a side-scrolling beat-em-up starring Shane O'Mac. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is your basic side-scrolling platformer, for the most part. You play as Frankenstein's monster, and the game follows how the story of the 1994 film was laid out, with the Bavarian townspeople convinced that Frankenstein's monster is some kind of demon, and they try and stop him by any means necessary while you, as the monster, are trying to seek out Dr. Frankenstein, who's played by Kenneth Brenna on the film, since he kinda sorta totally rejects you and throws you to the wolf, so to speak. The blue meter up top is your health, B jumps, Y is your stick attack, and X is a magic attack that's tethered to your life bar, so it costs health to use magic. You can also hold the button down for a stronger attack, but again, that just uses up more life, which is definitely not a good thing, since you only get one life, and zero continues to get through six levels with a password system. And that may seem harsh, but to be fair, you can absorb a ton of damage here. I mean, yeah, of course you can. You're Frankenstein's monster fighting a bunch of jabronis. But if you do need a health replenishment, what's interesting here is that you don't get it in the form of an item or whatever, but by getting to a certain spot and getting struck by lightning. Well, okay then. Unfortunately, this is yet another game that may sound kinda neat on paper, but the execution here is so, so awful. The level layout in particular is ridiculous. There's all these doors and elevators that just lead you in circles, and everything looks the same, so it's really easy to lose track of where you've been and where you wanna try and go. The thing is, you can interact with the background a bit, smashing up boarded windows to find health, or finding these chests on the ground that contain important items. The idea here is to get to this gray door on the far right, at which point you put together some of the stuff you collected, like a length of rope, a pulley wheel, and a book that shows you how to use them together, I guess, and that opens up the door and lets you progress with the game. Again, this sounds fine, but the execution here is terrible, because the level layout is just thrown together. It's just a mishmash of elevators and platforms and pulleys, and where the hell am I even going? Worst of all is how your character moves. He attacks with a stick, which you can light on fire for a stronger attack, but this is one of those games where the detailed sprite animation, while impressive, just gets in the way of actually playing the game. It's like they were more concerned with making sure the monster has just the right looking limp instead of, you know, making sure the gameplay is actually fun. It's really a deal breaker because combined with the bad circular level design, this game is just work to try and play through. The second level doesn't get any better than the first. Early in the game, you know, you find that you can light your stick on fire to destroy enemies, so it would make sense that you can use it as a light source too, right? Well, the second level starts out in a dark crypt with no way to take advantage of that useful mechanic. There's no fire. You just stumble around in the dark until you finally look into a door, and then you stumble around some more until you finally find some fire. What is the point of that? Ugh, just so many bad decisions here. The third level takes place in a swamp, and that's pretty straightforward action platforming, and it's fine, but just getting to that level is a lot of work, and it's not worth it. So yeah, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein may look kind of cool, the sprite animation of the main character is well done, the settings look nice, and the music definitely fits, but the actual gameplay is terrible. Your character is too slow to react, his attack sucks, the level layout really sucks, and if you think the Genesis version is any better, it's just a lot more of the same, which is a big bag of suck. Avoid this game. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.