Mr. Mosquito is one of the few titles released through Eidos’ Fresh Games label. Fresh Games was supposed to pick up obscure titles and put them out at a budget price. This was a smart move on two levels, because nobody in their right mind would have paid full price for this game, but for a cheaper price it’s one some people would want to play. As an easily affordable niche title, Mr. Mosquito is more than enough to satisfy a gamer’s taste for the weird.
Japanese flavor has been baked deep into this title similar to the way it was in Katamari Damacy, though it’s a completely different type of game. What it doesn’t offer in terms of gameplay variety and depth, it more than makes up for with charm. Chances are if you enjoyed rolling the "big ball of stuff" around, you’ll enjoy the predatory pleasures Mr. Mosquito can offer you.
"Mr. Mosquito is more than enough to satisfy a gamer’s taste for the weird."
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The Insect That Makes People... Itchy
At its heart, Mr. Mosquito is a flying game which plays similarly to the free-roam stages in Star Fox. You pilot Mr. Mosquito around rooms in the Yamada household in order to accomplish objectives. Your main task as a mosquito, obviously, is to suck the blood of the people who live there. As a mosquito, you’re tiny compared to the people in the house. You’re probably about half as big as one of the characters’ fingernails at the start, though they won’t have any trouble spotting you should you be careless.
If you fly into their line of sight, you’ll be "spotted." That gives you a few seconds to get away. If you aren’t quick enough, you’ll enter into a battle with the human. Humans will be dead set on killing you; they’ll swing their arms, slap at you, and even bring out the bug spray later in the game. In order to defeat the human, you’ll have to hit several pressure points lit-up all over their body using your dash maneuver. Hitting all of these points will calm the human down, in turn ending the battle, and if you do it fast enough you’ll unlock a new color scheme for the titular insect.
These lighted points don’t just appear in battle mode, however, as they also show you where to suck blood from the human. It might sound easy to find an illuminated target, but getting them to appear is a different story altogether. Interacting with the environment is integral to your success as a blood-thirsty insect.
The Intelligence of a Mosquito
Interacting with environments is something unprecedented for a mosquito. I never knew they could turn on radios, or manipulate remote controls. Maybe all mosquitoes can’t, but it’s clear that Mr. Mosquito is one resourceful character. He defies all laws of nature right from the start; it’s the female mosquito that sucks blood. With a name like that, he sets the stage for some illogical occurrences right away.
Interacting with the environment is easier than it sounds; let’s take the first stage for example. The young girl comes home from school, and is relaxing on her bed. She put bug spray on earlier, but some of it came off. At first, there are no apparent points for you to attack. There are, however, plenty of points highlighted in the environment for you to investigate. You could turn out the lights, forcing the girl to get up and turn them back on. Muttering to herself in a confused manner, she would then go lay back down, and this action might reveal a point-of-suction on her leg. Each environment provides different opportunities for Mr. Mosquito to exploit, and finding suction points can become quite a task in the later stages, especially when you have to find multiple points on one person.
Sucking blood creates a tension I’ve only experienced in Resident Evil games, which is odd because this isn’t survival horror. When you land on the suction-point, you click in the right analog stick. You then have to rotate the stick clockwise to create suction. Suction is measured through a meter on the side, and you have to fill up a tank with blood; some stages have more tanks than others, and some even have extra, hidden tanks to find. There is also a meter that tells you how fast to rotate the stick. The meter changes how fast you should be rotating as you’re doing it, so not only do you have to pay attention to your speed, but you have to watch the human’s actions as well. If you think he or she noticed you, it’s always a good idea to jump off and get back on later. If you rotate too fast or too slow, or perform an imperfect rotation of the analog stick, the human will notice and crush you, thus ending your life.
"At its heart, Mr. Mosquito is a flying game which plays similarly to the free-roam stages in Star Fox. "
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Being crushed by a human isn’t the only way you can die, however. There are multiple hazards in the environments to avoid, and they appear in larger numbers as the game goes on. Bug zappers are occasionally included, though avoiding them is easy as they don’t affect your flight; if there were some kind of pull to them (the phrase "like a moth to a flame" comes to mind) they might have posed a threat, but instead they just remind careless pilots to pay more attention to where they’re going. Sometimes clouds of insecticide linger around, and cause quite a problem if the player doesn’t plan their flight accordingly; Mr. Mosquito has a limited supply of health and can only sustain a few hits.
Engrish at its Best
The family you’re attacking (the Yamadas) are quite an interesting bunch. The game was obviously made in Japan, but if you were for some reason questioning that point, the voice acting would be a dead give away. The voice acting is probably some of the funniest I’ve heard in a long time, but for all the wrong reasons.
It sounds like they hired Japanese voice actors who could read English, but couldn’t really understand it. The wrong syllables are pronounced, and the wrong emotions go into the acting. Some of those problems could have made for an audio experience many would refer to as "awful," or "ear-splitting," but I would call it "hilarious," or "side-splittingly funny." The narrator is also amusingly off the mark at times, but it’s probably just because she has weird lines to read. They aren’t even the kind of lines I could explain here; you’d have to hear them to appreciate just how awful the acting is.
"The only real issue I have with Mr. Mosquito is the length."
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While the voicing is hilariously awful, the story doesn’t do anything to help it out. In fact, it probably just makes the game that much funnier. The mother wants to take a family picture, and the father and daughter want nothing to do with it. The whole game is based around a debate between the family members about this asinine event. It’s not great, but it gives Mr. Mosquito an opportunity to exploit their distraction and suck their blood.
Snatch Up or Swat Down?
The only real issue I have with Mr. Mosquito is the length. There are only twelve stages and they last about five to ten minutes a piece. If you go back to win all the battles, you could probably squeeze another play out of each stage, but that still doesn’t make for a very long game. The controls can be a little touchy at times, especially when sucking blood, but the A.I. is fair; it was designed to notice you. Chances are if the human swats you it was your fault.
Mr. Mosquito isn’t exactly an easy game to find anymore, but if you’re planning to hunt it down it’s good to know that its price isn’t very high. Fans of quirky Japanese games will eat this up like delicious candy, while most people would probably get only a chuckle or two out of how ridiculous it is. This game has solid play mechanics and doesn’t really do anything wrong, but its length and quirk make it hard to recommend for anyone but people who like strange games from Japan.
