Xbox

Monster Garage

Those who regularly watch the Discovery Channel will undoubtedly know the name Monster Garage. It's the show where motorcycle guru Jesse James and his team transform a vehicle into a functional machine with a purpose. It's no surprise that the fun, dynamic show would make its way onto video games. Unfortunately, the PC version released earlier this year was a travesty, due to its lack of strategic gameplay, poor design, and stability issues. Ten months later, an overhauled Monster Garage has turned up on the Xbox. The Xbox version yields mixed results: It makes numerous improvements but it also takes away some of the freedom offered in the PC version.

It's as if Hollywood wasn't doing enough to ruin our favorite TV shows. That's the only rationale behind Activision Value's latest game, Monster Garage, the highly touted Xbox version. Now, I've been a fan of the show since it first aired two years ago. The reality-TV concept married to a high pressure automotive engineering challenge is damned exciting to me, not just because of the open-ended mechanical problem-solving but also because of the incendiary personalities. Sadly, neither quality has managed to find its way into this clunky car-"making" game. What we're left with instead is a puzzle game that inexplicably straddles the line between Byzantine complexity and generic simplicity.