Monster Madness

5/10

Monster Madness Screenshots

Game Description

Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia really wishes it was born in the '80s. It has got its heart in the right place, trying to capture the kitschy vibe of such zombie-murdering classics as Zombies Ate My Neighbors and producing a gameplay design that feels like a 3D mash-up of Gauntlet or Ikari Warriors. When you throw in four-player co-op play, a bunch of goofy competitive multiplayer modes, a lengthy campaign, and a mad number of monsters to kill, the formula for some good old-fashioned fun would appear to be in place but Monster Madness botches the execution. This includes a counterintuitive control strategy, oddly balanced difficulty, obnoxiously repetitive combat, and a nearly useless camera in co-op mode. Eventually such problems become too numerous and too stressful to tolerate, turning what could have been a simple monster-killing romp into a broken, clumsy mess.

Monster Madness rotates around a quartet of teenage stereotypes (the geek, the bro, the goth chick, the cheerleader) who find themselves in the midst of an invasion from a greatest-hits collection of the monster world. For some reason, ghouls, ghosts, goblins, skeletons, mummies, werewolves, gremlins, vampires, martians, UFOs, harpies, banshees, leprechauns, jack-o-lanterns, chupacabras, evil trees, demons, medusas, imps, evil clowns, spiders, gargoyles, swamp monsters, the grim reaper, zombies, zombie dogs, zombie pirates, zombie samurais, zombie Indians, zombie grannies, zombie tanks, and exploding zombies, among others, are attacking suburbia. And the four unfortunate kids are the only ones around to do anything about it. Equipped with melee weapons, such as axes or plungers, they nosedive headfirst into this monster-killing adventure, cracking poor jokes and pining for one another all along the way.

The story is more of an excuse to get you killing monsters than anything else, though it's also an excuse to insert as much awful comedy as possible into the proceedings. Occasionally, the game elicits a chortle or snicker, but for the most part, the script is not all that funny. Part of this has to do with the jokes, which often rely too heavily on slightly lost and rather lame pop- and nerd-culture references. The other part has to do with the voice acting, which is largely flat and unremarkable. Even in the rare examples where enthusiasm is mustered for a line or two, none of the actors seem to have much in the way of comic timing. The game often has characters repeating the same tired lines again and again, as well.

All told, Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia feels like a lost opportunity. The premise is cool, and the combat seems like it has potential. However, the controls and lousy co-op camera mess the whole thing up so that nearly all the fun is sucked out of it, regardless of how many people play. Plus, as gently entertaining as the online multiplayer can be, it's absolutely criminal that this game doesn't include some form of online campaign mode. Though considering how unwieldy and tough everything else in the game is, maybe that wouldn't have helped all that much.