You only need to press the start button to know Mister Mosquito graduated from an era of PlayStation that’s long been lost. As the camera pans around the densely detailed exterior of the Yamada family’s estate, a dramatic voice over does its best David Attenborough impression, describing the precarious lifecycle of a mosquito. Your goal in this stealth-style flight sim is to survive a single summer, feeding on the aforementioned family to sustain your poignantly short lifecycle.
The gameplay is unlike anything you’ve experienced before or since; perhaps a contemporary point of reference could be IO Interactive’s recent Hitman trilogy, where characters all have patterns you can interrupt by interacting with the environment. Each stage sees you buzz around a beautifully mundane scene, with that hazy look that defined the PS2 era. You can turn on radios or switch off televisions to affect the patterns of your targets, creating windows to land on their skin and suck their blood.
While it doesn’t play anywhere near as antiquated as you may anticipate, actually drawing blood by rotating the right analogue stick doesn’t exactly feel comfortable; you need to keep your cursor in the sweet spot by altering the speed of your cycles, otherwise you’ll get detected and swatted. You can, of course, always fly away and return to your target when things have calmed down, but a lot of the replayability comes from time attack, so you want to be as prompt as possible.
This game is weird and a product of its time; one level sees you sucking blood from one of the family members while they’re taking a bath. The cut-scenes, which introduce each stage, are also utterly bizarre – owing to some awful English voice acting. One sees the matriarch of the Yamada family throwing a tantrum because her daughter doesn’t want to appear in a photograph with her. It’s barmy, weird stuff.
But it’s this type of boundless creativity that many feel PlayStation is missing these days. Sony may have lifted the overall quality of its output, but it’s come at the expense of unbridled oddities like this; a game that, when considered critically, is barely above average – but ends up more memorable than the latest AAA fancy purely because of the sheer insanity of it all.
Comments 23
I thought Astro bot was GOTY but then Mr. Mosquito got a re-release 🦟
Always wanted to play this game, now its the time.
Game deserves a 10, Sammy!
Probably won't play, but I got a chuckle out of this review title.
@R-Soub Enjoy!
Does it has trophies?
The voice over women is more seedy 90's late night chat line voice over, unless you're watching some very questionable attenborough content.
@DualWielding Yes! And a Platinum!
@get2sammyb does it have the option to play in Japanese with English subtitles or is it hard-coded?
I'd personally add the atrocious voice acting to the pros, I'm laughing so much because of it. Adds to the charm imo.
(First time playing, I'm loving it. Wish we got more quirky titles like this)
Great to see this game on PS+. Would like Kya Dark Lineage if Atari or Eden (Gear Club Unlimited series these days)/other types. Under the Skin please Capcom COUGH. Gun Gun Pixies is a Vita/Steam modern equivalent in a way to Mr Mosquito, it's weirder and more anime but still.
Control quirks eh, thing of the time, some easy, others quirky, but it's what I like about this era, is because people go oh no PSP 1 stick, yeah & try N64/Dreamcast, N64 has worse controls/awkward design. 5-7th gen creativity, eh controls, get over it. Better animal movesets/concepts then modern gaming too.
People are too used to modern design & same near universal boring control schemes. I can jump between many PS1-3 era control schemes & have no problem/not playing many boring current gen games. Not that hard. I can remember it, anyone can. Sigh, lack of trying/laziness/incompetence & reviewing because views not enjoyment.
Voice acting it's part of the charm but yes isn't going to be great, many awkward games of this time didn't have it. Enchanted Arms I played yesterday and it's hilarious not because of the voice acting really but the dialogue is so good. Mr Domino is bizarre too but excellent for a PS1 game, same with Devil Dice, I can take campy voice acting over polished voice acting but boring dialogue or other ideas. Then again a Kula World clone exists for PS4/PS5 Gravity Trickster so eh.
Weird Japanese/others of the time had their awkwardness & charm. Want western high budget game get your head out of your butt & play those. Anybody with that mindset shouldn't say anything at all or these play games if they have nothing really to say, a fair creative review writing wise but the cons are just a joke to sum it up at all.
Just review the garbage high budget presentation slop with no substance, flashing lights & shiny objects/nostalgia/bad emotions & no brains. Games like this are for people that appreciate game design, charm & weirdness because it's better.
Length, seriously, lol I swear you people need to get your heads out of your butts. You want 10 to 20 hours of something repetitive. Do you people remember lengths of games back then? The ideas and how much they could stretch, prototype, their budgets. You people are so hilarious with 'oh it's too short'. You want short and fun or lengthy and 20-100 hours of boring repetitive garbage dialogue with boring presentation, boring gameplay and other trash for $70. I'd rather pick the more charming game that's short thanks then current gen filth. They are short, use the concepts as much as they could come up with at the time or had the budget for and move on. They don't waste your time. An Indie it's fine but oh a 20 year old games that in some cases probably had a budget like an Indie or whatever many Simple Series games budgets were and oh it's too short. Do journalists have big enough brains to take their minds back to 20 years ago? I swear. Sorry but this is just a dumb con.
I swear people with the attention span of a fish or lack of idea of how to make a game go oh it's too short, well think about what ideas the devs have versus what ideas the player doesn't have besides us player that do think creatively and have brain to think hmm what ideas could you come up with. If I can come up with more ideas then Foamstars has to use Foam what ideas do players have, none. Point made. Mic drop. Length cons are for people with excuses, no brain and are idiots.
This game is a 10/10 from unique idea alone. Playing as a mosquito and sucking blood from annoying human? Brilliant!
And the flaws are tolerable. I mean, it's from early PS2 era. But the core gameplay is still fun.
@Spanky nothing hits that funny bone than in the first level, it ends with the sultry female voice saying, "I hope you enjoyed your first suck..." while "funky" music plays in the background
This is just my sort of game. Weird playstation at its best.
Where's the remaster already?
This was and still is one of the best underrated PS games ever.
The described opening screen is exactly (!) what I love about the PS1/PS2 attitude. I miss this stuff SO MUCH!
@SuntannedDuck2 Not reading all that. Free Palestine!
Any distinction between "kusoge" and "slop" is entirely arbitrary, and all attempts at that are the work of cliques warring for influence.
How dare you! The top tier voice acting adds to the Mister Mosquito experience. I will be personally suing you for 1 mosqillion dollars (USD).
@SuntannedDuck2 Never did I think I would see an essay like this all because Mister Mosquito got rereleased.
I loved this game so much.
It was one of the main reasons I bought a PS2. Mister Mosquito, Ico, Sky Odyssey, and the promise of MGS2:SOL down the line encouraged me to get a job and invest in a Messiah modded unit to play imports.
I told my friends and at school and they just didn't get it (apart from MGS2). "Why would you even want to play those other games?!"
Because they're fresh. If I invest in new hardware, I want an experience I could not get anywhere else. What was popular back then, Tekken? Yeah, I had fighting games on the SNES already, but nothing allowed me to BE a mosquito.
I miss those wild and creative days.
We need more major dumb Ideas nowadays
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