Do you like to kill cartoon-like zombies? If so, then you might enjoy SouthPeak Games' Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, because that's basically all you do.
It's a typical night in suburbia. The geeky Zack and the cynical goth Carrie are studying together. Zack is trying to gain the courage to ask her out on a real date when his skater buddy Andy shows up to hang out. Soon after, the hot cheerleader Jennifer arrives to get Zack to do her homework. Then they're attacked by zombies. Ah, just like my high school days!
In the adventure mode, you can play up to any of these four characters. (You can also battle other players online, over a Local Area Network, or in versus mode on the same computer.) Each of them have their own unique abilities and weapons and you go around the various levels killing the undead. You can collect gems after killing a monster and collect various materials which you can use to buy additional weapons at Larry's Tools' Trailer. You can also buy various other items, such as monster amulets which morph you into monsters, giving you special fighting abilities.
Gems can also be used to purchase Jolt at vending machines (which not only gives you the expected caffeine kick, but apparently has healing properties as well) and you can bring other players back to life at coffins.
The game looks decent. The animations are smooth and reminiscent of cartoons like Teen Titans or Kim Possible.
And there's certainly no shortage of undead foes to fight. Boasting over 70 unique monster enemies, the game features not just your run-of-the-mill zombies, but zombie dogs, evil clowns, bigfoots and undead pirates to name a few. And it's fun to hack away at them.
Based on the Unreal Tournament engine, the default controls are a little awkward. You move around with the keyboard and use your weapons and turn your body with the mouse. Most of the time, I would simply move forward with the keyboard and navigate corners with the mouse, instead of using the left and right keys. But sometimes, if the area was large or there were a lot of monsters spread out, the game would switch to an aerial view and then moving the mouse would only make you swivel around. I tried using my USB joystick but it wouldn't recognize it.
But then one analog controller wouldn't be incredibly useful as Monster Madness was clearly designed with the Xbox 360 in mind. It even neglects to re-record some of the audio instructions in the game. For example, when you come across a swan boat, the screen text tells you to press 'E' to climb aboard it but the tutorial voice tells you to press the 'Y' button. I mean, God, how hard is it, to re-record someone saying one letter of the bloody alphabet?
And this awkward gameplay makes the repetitive nature of the game even more annoying. I mean, I'm all for killing the legions of the undead, but at least you could change it up a little. Because even with all the different monsters and weapons, the game was putting me to sleep.
WHAM! Rating: |
5.5 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen) |
Official Web Site: |
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