Monetery Jack Review (Xbox Series X/S & PC)

Like blue cheese, Monterey Jack is something of an acquired taste. It’s very much the sort of bargain bin first-person horror that you purchase on a whim or out of curiosity, but necessarily because you want to sample the cheddar. Though, to call it a horror still doesn’t feel quite right, as it’s about as unsettling and as threatening as a plastic spork on a cheeseboard. A pantomime with light blotches of cheese-soaked action, however, feels like a good way to summarize it. The fact that it has its own rendition of Willy Wonka’s “Pure Imagination” says it all, really.

Monterey Jack is anything if not cheesy — and that’s a good thing, believe it or not. Given that we’ve had more than our fair share of psychological nibbles with the usual side seasoning of mascot-baked horror tropes, it does make for a welcome change to see a game that is so ridiculously bad that it’s actually, well, quite good? I mean no disrespect to the developer here, either, as it is rather apparent that even Monterey Jack knows how bizarre the whole thing is, to blend slingshots with fireworks, bowling alleys with sous chefs who go by the name Charlie Cheese Ball. It all adds up, and weirdly, it just works.

Of course, this isn’t a game that you would naturally look to if you were ever in dire need of a meaty plot and a lot of rich character development. In fact, Monterey Jack is the polar opposite of a thought-provoking game. It makes it so obvious, in fact, that it immediately removes the option for you to start pondering anywhere that isn’t in the realm of a simple corridor-hopping carnival ride. A friend—Mikey—has gone missing, and was last seen entering a former cheese factory that, due to COVID and other questionable complications, has since fallen from grace. It’s your job, as the voiceless protagonist, to venture into the cheese-smothered quarters of Monterey Jack’s defunct kingdom, and to save him before the worst possible scenario takes hold.

As mascot horrors are a predictable bunch, it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to see that, like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Poppy Playtime, Finding Frankie, or even Cakey’s Twisted Bakery, Monterey Jack utilizes almost all of the same basic elements. Although you can fight back here, either with a slingshot, a kitchen knife, or fireworks, most of the game tends to rely on the usual crutches—hiding, running, and obtaining seemingly random objects for the sake of unlocking a new passage, for example. It’s all textbook stuff, and at no point does it make an effort to add an additional layer to the mascot-empowered homebrew. Annoyingly, though, it doesn’t need to.

Given that you can quite literally smash the heads from the in-game dolls or ricochet a marble from a piece of cheese and walk away without so much as a scratch, Monterey Jack really isn’t a difficult game to work through. Even though it often requires you to flee from the titular antagonist or hide in a ball pit or somewhere else that is just out of harm’s reach, at no point does Monterey Jack became an uphill battle. If anything, it’s an oddly pleasant trek that, while still unnerving at times, is strangely entertaining to complete. Again, see “Pure Imagination” reference.

While Monterey Jack is a rather short game (ninety minutes, give or take), it does cram a lot of bits and pieces into its story. Alongside a couple of boss battles and action sequences—acts that often involve using a slingshot to pepper marbles at cheese-coated enemies, naturally—you also have a handful of light puzzles, and, of course, a boat ride through the curdled coves of a cheesy wonderland. It’s all pretty ridiculous, but it serves its purpose as a lightweight mascot horror.

There are a couple of issues with Monterey Jack. For example, the game features inventory management—a system that is, with all due respect, a rather pointless addition to the game. Given that you have enough slots in your backpack to hold everything that you come into contact with, there honestly isn’t much of a point to the save rooms or storage trunks. Tickets, too, don’t add much value to the overall experience. Say, if you accrue enough tickets, you can purchase the odd upgrade from the gift shop, like a better flashlight or a sturdier slingshot, for example. That said, you don’t need any of the upgrades in order to progress through the game, thus making the collectible purely cosmetic and not a mandatory part of the game.

Monterey Jack is quite clearly a budget indie, and so you can definitely expect to bump into your fair share of technical hiccups here. In several instances, I found myself glitching through the walls or being forced to reload a previous save. Although it didn’t dampen the mood, it did often serve as a reminder me that I wasn’t playing a brilliant game, but an indie comedy that was just as bonkers as it was broken. Still, it gave me something to smile about for a while, and that sort of made the issues all the more tolerable.

With a couple of endings to unlock and several biomes to explore, Monterey Jack is definitely a game that you could pick up and play through several times over. Again, it might not anything particularly special to give itself a shot at the apex of mascot horror-like indies, but it does what it says on the box and delivers a laughably silly game that’s as entertaining as it is cheesy.

Verdict

Monterey Jack leans into its cheesy roots to create a toe-curdling budget-friendly mascot horror that’s both oddly entertaining and surprisingly hilarious to chew through for eighty or ninety minutes. While it might not hold a candle to the all-time cult favorites à la Poppy Playtime, it does bring a refreshing flavor to a bloated concept. Is it scary? No. Should you play it for the rendition of Pure Imagination? Absolutely.