House M.D. - Episode 5: Under the Big Top Review

The greatest thing about Episode 5 of House M.D. is that House M.D. only has five episodes. It's finished! DSiWare's done with the series after today, and thank goodness -- we may never have to see Hugh Laurie's scowling mug in another eShop Update ever again.

If you're somehow just now taking notice of this on-going trainwreck, the House M.D. DSiWare series has been a five-way fragmentation of what was originally supposed to be one complete DS retail cartridge. The plans to get the game into actual physical form fell through, and so publisher Legacy Interactive salvaged the code and pushed it out the door digitally instead. And that would have been just fine -- except for the huge price discrepancy that came about as a result.

Each individual episode of the House series has sold for eight dollars through DSiWare, whereas the PC version of this same game collects all five parts together for less than seven bucks. It's a ridiculous difference. And this one on-going example, to me, has become the poster child for everything that's wrong with Nintendo's pricing structure in its digital download shops -- when people complain that the company's behind the times and that alternatives like Apple's App Store filled with 99-cent downloads are the future, it's hard to argue in Nintendo's favor on days like today.

Setting the phenomenally inflated price aside, these House games have at least been consistent in their look and tone. Each one has captured the wit of the Fox TV show well, particularly in the dialogue for Dr. House himself, and this installment has him in rare form making fun of a mysteriously ill circus performer. The mini-games peppered throughout the story are average as always, with nothing new and sensational here beyond what we've already suffered through four times before.

But even with the game itself being mediocre overall, it can't be rated as anything but awful with that comically steep price attached to it.

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