Home Alone

Plot synopsis:
The McCallister family is preparing to spend Christmas in Paris, gathering at Peter and Kate's home outside of Chicago on the night before their departure. Peter and Kate's youngest son, eight-year-old Kevin, is being ridiculed by his siblings and cousins. A fight with his older brother, Buzz, results in Kevin getting sent to the third floor of the house for punishment, where he wishes that his family would disappear. During the night, heavy winds cause damage to power lines, which causes a temporary power outage and resets the alarm clocks, causing the entire family to oversleep. In the confusion and rush to get to the airport, Kevin is accidentally left behind.
Kevin wakes up to find the house empty and, thinking his wish has come true, is overjoyed with his new-found freedom. However, Kevin soon becomes frightened by his next door neighbor, "Old Man" Marley, who is rumored to have murdered his family with a snow shovel in 1958; as well as the "Wet Bandits", Harry and Marv, a pair of burglars who have been breaking into other vacant houses in the neighborhood and have targeted the McCallisters' house. Kevin tricks the pair into thinking his entire family is home, forcing them to put their plans on hold.
Kate discovers mid-flight that Kevin is missing and, upon arrival in Paris, the family discovers that all flights for the next two days are booked. Peter and the rest of the family go to his brother Rob's apartment in the city while Kate manages to get a flight back to the United States only to get as far as Scranton, Pennsylvania. She attempts to book a flight to Chicago but again, everything is booked. Unable to accept this, Kate is overheard by Gus Polinski, the lead member of a traveling polka band, who offers to let her travel with them to Chicago on their way to Milwaukee in a moving van, which she graciously accepts.
Meanwhile, Harry and Marv realize that Kevin is home alone, and on Christmas Eve, Kevin overhears them discussing plans to break into his house that night. Kevin goes to church and watches a choir perform. He meets Old Man Marley, who sits with Kevin and they briefly speak; he learns that Marley is actually a nice man and that the rumors about him are false. He tells Kevin he is watching the choir because his granddaughter is singing, but he never gets to see her because he and his son are estranged and have not been on speaking terms for some time; Kevin suggests that he try to reconcile with his son.
Kevin returns home and rigs the house with numerous booby traps. Harry and Marv break in, springing the traps and suffering various injuries. While the duo pursues Kevin around the house, he calls the police and flees the house, luring the duo into a neighboring vacant home. Harry and Marv manage to catch him and discuss how they will get their revenge, but Marley sneaks in and knocks them unconscious with his snow shovel before they can do anything to Kevin. The police arrive and arrest Harry and Marv, having identified all the houses they burglarized due to the latter's habit of flooding them.
On Christmas Day, Kevin is disappointed to find that his family is still gone. He then hears Kate enter the house and call for him; they reconcile and are soon joined by the rest of the McCallisters, who waited in Paris until they could get a direct flight to Chicago. Kevin keeps silent about his encounter with Harry and Marv, although Peter finds Harry's missing gold tooth. Kevin then observes Marley reuniting with his son and his family. Marley notices Kevin and the pair wave to each other before Marley and his family go inside his house. Buzz suddenly calls out, "Kevin, what did you do to my room?!" at which point Kevin runs off.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
Cute and fun little game. In the wake of the success of Home Alone, this fun little game came to be. Focusing on what is arguably the most entertaining scene in the film(or the only entertaining one, as some cynics will undoubtedly say; I should know, I used to be one), this pits you against Harry and Marv, in the role of Kevin. The plot is simple; you have one hour(I'm not sure if that's "real time", the clock seems to move faster than that), not unlike the film(if I remember correctly?), to set up traps all over the house, before Harry and Marv start breaking in... by which time, you had better be prepared. If you find yourself ready before the clock is at 9 pm, there is a function that allows you(by pressing N on your keyboard) to fast-forward until they come. The first half of the game-play consists of you running around the house, picking up things(mostly household items, like in the movie) by pressing F1, placing them as traps in select areas, scattered around the house, by walking and/or jumping up to where it should be placed(clearly indicated, both from afar and when you're close enough to place it, there's no missing it) and pressing F3. You can carry three items at a time, F2 cycles through them. There are just shy of thirty traps to be set(I believe the exact number is 27), and two wild-cards; the BB gun and the tarantula. The aforementioned is required to execute certain traps(most just work by Harry or Marv walking into them) and is good for one hit(it takes ten hits for both burglars to go down, give up) dealt to each of the thieves(you can shoot them more than once, but that will only give them slight pause, giving you a second or less of more running time), both achieved by firing it, the key for which you set during setup(to be able to use it, just make sure you have it in your inventory when the clock runs out). The last-mentioned is not an actual trap... you can set it, but don't expect it to stay still. Or get you hits. It will only give pause, though more than shots from the BB gun(after the first one). The second part of the game-play, once the clock reaches 9(either by itself or through the player using the feature to jump in time) has you running around the house, now with the ability to fire the BB gun(if you picked it up and kept it), with the traps set(meaning that you, yourself can also walk into them, ruining them) and with Harry and Marv breaking into the house. Now, the clock counts up, and you are now to lure both burglars into enough traps each to secure they take the hits, and the high-score will then rank you based on damage they received(the highest being a hundred, each hit counting, yep, you guessed it, ten points) and the time it took you(hence the clock). All the ordinary(the ones that don't need shooting at) traps work the same way; there is an animation(some have more intricate and detailed ones than others) as Harry or Marv walk into them, they are stopped in their advancing for the while the animation takes(never more than a second or two), the trap is disabled(one use per each... no one said it was going to be easy!) and the counter at the top of the screen adds 1 hit to the scoreboard for that character. The thieves have different speeds of walking... the closer they are to you, and the angrier they are(meaning, the more of a beating they've taken, trying to get you), the faster they walk. You can usually get them to slow down by simply running away... they can't "see" much more than one room in front of them. Be wary, though... the one way you can lose in the game is getting caught by one of them, so stay on your guard. Whether or not they've seen you, and how fast they're moving can be seen at the top two corners of the screen... the first by whether or not the color of the text(red if they have, blue if they haven't; this text also helps you find doors and passageways) indicating which room they're in(only by name, though, so you may want to run around the house a couple of times and note the different rooms and their names and make sure you know them, since the McCallisters have what isn't much less of a mansion for you to go wild in), and the second is indicated by the animation(running or walking) of them in their respective upper corners. The animation will also show when they run into traps out of your field of view(which is only the room you're currently in) and when they give up. Speaking of the animation, it's fair for a game of this time. The graphics go for a somewhat satisfying level of detail and they do the job; you're never really confused as to what you just picked up or how a trap worked. The game-play is fairly entertaining, if somewhat limited. For such a simple game, the re-playability is pretty good; not only is there the motivation of trying to top the high-score, there is the unpredictability of where the burglars turn up, and how they move. Also, with the many places you can set up the traps, not many people will play the exact same way(plus, that allows you to change around the way you play, yourself, trying new things). The moment the second part of the game starts, where you lure Harry and Marv towards the traps, you get a counter that displays how many traps there are... of course, it doesn't say where any of them are, so you'd better be keeping an eye on where the two of them are, which traps they walk into. I recommend this to fans of puzzle-action games. 7/10. Even less entertaining than the movie for me.. Remember the days when you could rent a whole boat load of games for only a buck? Yeah, those were the days, I always enjoyed the days my parents let me rent five or more games. That way you could rent some reliable favorites and take some risks going outside the box. I rented this game and it was an outside of the box one. I did not like the movie, so I am not sure why I thought I would like the game. Perhaps I thought it would be fun setting traps and avoiding the two burglars. Well it isn't. The game is basically the house, basement of house and tree house. The two burglars pursue you relentlessly, but not to fear you have traps! Well, not very good ones as all they are, are squares with pictures on them representing what they are and I guess you have to use your imagination on what they do. All they do in this game is momentarily stun the two crooks. I applaud the game for keeping the game like the movie and only having the two villains and not adding all the typical enemies found in video games of the era. One could easily see them adding rats and spiders here and I think they actually did that with the super Nintendo version of the game. However, there just is not enough to do in this thing to make it a true video game. I have played flash games that were more involved than this one. At least it was only a dollar to rent, this one is not the type of game you would want to own.