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MONSTER MADNESS GRAVE DANGER Posted by Alec Hilton on Sep 19, 2008 20:29 (Sep 19, 2008 20:29) |
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It seems that even with the stream of brilliant new games this year there has been an unusual amount of ports from yesteryear. The ultimate cash-in for companies is to open their target audience and spread their game to systems that it may not have originally launched on. So here comes a title from the 2007 Xbox 360 catalogue Monster Madness, which was originally subtitled Battle for Suburbia and now subtitled Monster Madness: Grave Danger for the PS3. Upon Monster Madness’ first outing the game wasn’t particularly well received and was generally ignored by mainstream gamers, the PS3 port has had a bit of a revamp with some new features and improvements added over the 360 version. Monster Madness offers the classic arcade experience with a top-down viewpoint to the hack ‘n’ slash proceedings. You can choose one of four different characters to take control of as you make your way through the hordes of undead, each character offers a different weapon set but unfortunately the story plays out the same mp matter which one your choose. In keeping with the sea-front arcade feel of the game up to three other players can drop-in or out at any point to help out with the Zombie slaying, and helpfully this option is available both online and off.
The plotline of the game is that for varying reasons a group of four teenagers are at Zack’s (the local geek), house one night and during the night they discover that the whole of the neighbourhood has been over run by the undead, so the group of teens decide that the best course of action is to head for the local police station. This simple storyline soon turns much more sinister as the trek to the police station turns into a frantic battle to find out why and how this quiet suburban district has became overrun by zombies. Monster Madness makes reference to some well known films and games throughout the story in a quite funny tongue-in-cheek way. The gameplay is of a standard hack ‘n’ slash affair, without much of a particular focus on anything but having to survive the legions of Zombies that attack you wave after wave in an attempt to overwhelm your character. There is a nice mix of different types of zombies to content with so instead of having the normal idea of having the same enemies that just get tougher Monster Madness just mixes in a new type of bad guy with your standard grunt to try and keep the action fresh and it does work for a while at least. Unfortunately in single player the game begins to feel stale after just an hour or so, its just constant zombie killing with very little variety in it.
Monster Madness does offer a RPG style upgrade system where you can upgrade your weapons giving a stats boost and also making completely new weapons from collected materials that are dotted around the maps. New to the PS3 version is the ability to increase your characters stats and to do this you need to spend monster tokens which are collected when you kill enemies.
Introducing some friends into the mix does help a little with the boredom and brings a nice element to the game, but it still wears thin quite quickly. The idea of having three friends take control of the other characters isn’t a new one but adding this option changes the dynamic of the game so drastically that it seems unreal. In the single-player most games of the same ilk have your character surrounded by all other players but instead Monster Madness pits just you against the monster masses and if a friend does join in then their character just appears in your screen. Single-player would have been so much better if it had followed in the footsteps of games like X-Men Legends where all members of your party are on the screen all the time.
The best part of Monster Madness is the cutscenes, not because there is anything of a story or the dialogue is good but because of how they are done. The main story telling cutscenes are in a comic book cell style that really adds to the feel of the game. The graphic in the cutscenes aren’t anything like the amazing cell-shading that can be seen in games like Ultimate Spider-Man or the upcoming Prince of Persia, but nonetheless it works well with the general flow of the game.
Monster Madness does offer some diversions from the Adventure mode in the form of a versus mode in which you can battle it out with up to three others in standard game modes of Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. The other is slightly more interesting but only slightly, there are 25 challenges to be played through that are pretty much just sections taken from the main adventure mode and extended to give a bit of a break. These challenges unlock new costumes and other extras for the game but they don’t offer much of a challenge and when they do it just gets old quickly.
Monster Madness is a good attempt at something, but it misses its target by a landmark. There are parts for the story that are funny and the cutscenes are enjoyable if you mute the dialogue and just look at the cells. This title really was better left to the depths of the 360 vault, or if it was to be re-released it should have been as a PSN game and not a full title.
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