Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia

I take critiquing video games quite seriously – in fact, when I prepare to write a review, I take notes while playing the game. To you, it may sound corny to take notes while playing video games, but I find it is the perfect method for me to assure that every impression and feeling I have about a game gets included in my final overview. Now, with all of that said, I would like to point out that I have never before written so many notes while playing a game, as I did while playing Monster Madness. Perhaps, if those involved with the development and testing of the game took more notes and had healthier observations, I would not be in the position I am no with so much unfavorable criticism to dispense.

Monster Madness is an utter disaster on so many levels for so many reasons. While forcing myself to finish playing it, I found myself saying some of the irritated things I've ever said about a video game. I asked myself many times if Monster Madness actually had beta runs or play-testers, because I fail to comprehend how it is possible for a game to end up as Monster Madness is, if those protective mechanisms were in place. Of course, instead of dishing out arbitrary, negative remarks - I will go into the specifics of why I found Monster Madness to be so poor, in an effort to convince you that it is quite possibly one of the biggest loads of rubbish ever released on the Xbox 360.

I wish there weren't so many problems with this waste of plastic, because maybe then I'd have a better idea about where to start. In any event, I think it's a good idea to start off with the game-play mechanics, control and what it is all about.

If you haven't heard of Monster Madness, consider yourself blessed. It's an uncreative, below average, action-oriented shooter (NOT first person), which tries to mimic an array of old-school action games, but fails at it miserably. Well, it isn't just a shooter since just as much of the combat can be melee based. You get to take the role of one of four teenagers - all absolutely cliché, and as much by the book as you can possibly get. There is Zack - a rabbit-toothed nerd, Andy - the cool but stupid skater-dude, Carrie - a gothic girl, and Jennifer - a ditsy blond with a huge rack. For some strange, unspecified, reason a bunch of un-dead start breaking into Zack's house and you must kill them. There is absolutely no justification to why you even have to do this, any sort of story, or any of relation between the sequential events and locations you end up taking part in throughout the story. The premise is extremely shallow, tacky, and slapped together without so much as even a mere motive the un-dead might have. Instead, the game consists of a bunch of purposeless and unrewarding tasks, so absolutely mundane and insignificant you begin to ask yourself what you are even doing every 15 minutes. If you like, or are familiar, with games such as Gauntlet, then you'll know what to expect – slaughter your way through loads of enemies and a near constant rate. Unfortunately, Monster Madness decided to skim on the that part of gaming, which some of us refer to as “fun”.

That is just the philosophy behind Monster Madness – the actual execution of the overly shallow premise is also a monumental disaster. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that this game is not only a waste of the plastic and paper it is published on, but that game developers from all over the world should take heed to games such as Monster Madness, to make sure they never make the same horrible mistakes. So, optimistically speaking, you could say that Monster Madness is a lesson to other game developers.

In Monster Madness, there are a number of melee weapons all around you, and a number of weapons that can be built. The game is advertised as allowing you to “customize” weapons, which is quite simply a load of crap. There is no customization – instead you make predetermined weapons using predetermined parts. There is no creative aspect towards building any form of unique weapon that would in anyway differ from that which your friend might have. To use the term “customize” when referring to building weapons is an injustice to the definition of the root word “custom”. In any case, weapons are built from various parts that are found everywhere in the various levels, and with a small fee of monster tokens, which you collect from defeating enemies. Regardless of whether you end up sticking with melee combat or “long” raged munition based combat, one thing is certain: it won't be easy.

Control is a nightmare. Wait, let me rephrase that. The control schemes in Monster Madness are quite possibly the worst planned, worst implemented and worst in execution - ever. Controlling your character feels counter-intuitive – if you think a certain button would do a certain action, you are probably wrong. Original control schemes are always a welcome change of pace, but that is assuming they are efficient and properly planned and executed. None of those can be said for Monster Madness. The default control scheme and camera angle creates a very linear movement effect, which seems completely out of place for a platform shooter. A lot of the time, I got the impression that the control scheme resembled a FPS, yet oddly, the perspective and camera function completely differently, which leaves controlling your character feeling extremely awkward. What's worse is just how unresponsive the controls are. Occasionally, your action is delayed, while other times, your intended action is downright ignored. Movement could not be any more restrictive. If you've been around video games long enough, you no doubt know about “invisible walls”; Monster Madness is full of these annoyances. For no logical reason, your character is restricted from going in many places, even if there is nothing physically hindering you. Instead of actually thoughtfully designing the levels so that it isn't an issue, invisible walls and barriers are dispensed like ten cent condoms.

The camera is not your friend, and you will pick up that simple truth early on. You get the choice of two different angles, and both suck. In some places you don't even have the opportunity to choose between the two fixed camera locations and the more annoying of the two is forced upon you. When you're not shouting at the annoying camera, you are likely to be shouting at the ridiculous reticule. You know – that little aimer that sits in the middle of the screen to show you what you are targeting. Both inside and outside of vehicles, it is impossible in Monster Madness to control the height of your aim, so all you can do is run towards or away from a foe if you want to target it. Lame? Yes. If you aren't cursing at the reticule, rest assured: you will be cursing at something.

If you're a fan of getting miraculously stuck inside of other geometry, then Monster Madness is definitely the game for you. You will find that it is far too easy to get stuck to the objects, including both the environment and enemies. Getting stuck inside and between objects is so common that you will smash down all the buttons countless times, in the hope that you may free yourself. You might not be so lucky all of the time though, and will be forced to resort to the game's “restart checkpoint” option. It's a damn good thing such an option exists in the pause menu because I had to use it at least ten times. Getting stuck on/in objects is all the more easier when you are controlling one of the game's several vehicles. You think that cruising down the highway plowing through zombies is going to be fun? Forget about it! It's a chore, and nothing more. I can't recall how many times I'd be making a jump in the buggy and how easy the tires always managed to get stuck on top of other cars, debris or objects. A game shouldn't have to have an option to restart from your last checkpoint, but in Monster Madness it is an absolute must – if you're ever going to get anywhere that is.

Speaking about vehicles, Monster Madness has a range of different types you get to (or, have to – depending on how you look at it) take control of. It pains me to say this, but somehow the developers managed to find a way to make each specific vehicle an absolute dreaded chore in a completely different method. It's amazing, but every single vehicle controls horribly, and each vehicle controls different than the others. Now either there are some really inefficient abstract thinkers over in the studio that should stick to something other than developing games, or the control schemes were purposely devised as some sort of ironic and sadistic joke. If you think that the game's controls are unresponsive in your character form, just wait until you try out one of the vehicles. Among the vehicles you will take control of, there is a buggy, a swan boat fitted with rocket launchers, a UFO and a mech. Each one controls differently than the others, but all follow the same basic principal: make the player hate this game. Now I'm usually a very open minded guy that loves to leave room for interpretation and difference of opinions, but if you have played Monster Madness and didn't find the controls (particularly vehicle controls) objectionable and frustrating to use, I am left to believe either, 1) you are fooling yourself, 2) you aren't very observant, or 3) you probably haven't played very many video games. In fact, I would probably go so far as to wager my credibility on the notion that you will be at least occasionally frustrated with the controls. For me, “occasionally” was nonsense - I was constantly trying to overcome the ridiculously, pathetic controls.

Without a doubt, controlling the buggy seems to be the most problematic, and for two good reasons. First of all, it's control is the least precise and most unintuitive. Your vehicle will regularly be going in different directions than you intend because the game for some reason either has a mind of its own, or doesn't care what you want. The other major problem that seems to be a major nuisance, primarily to the buggy, is the fact that steering is done relative to the camera, not relative to your position or the vehicle, but a very uncooperative camera. The problem with this is that the camera is very lousy. Not only is the camera in need of a good beating, but it is constantly changing, which means you need to constantly readjust how you are controlling the vehicle, since it's movement is relative to the current state of the camera. Getting your tires stuck on or in objects is also very common. Again, if it wasn't for the option to restart from your most previous checkpoint, you'd probably give up on the game early on.

While controlling the mech, there is another major problem, which oddly enough seems intentional. If it was intentional, the backwards minds responsible for this quirk have no idea how frustrating it is. No gamer wants to sit around playing a game that frustrates them. Besides being overly cumbersome, slow and bulky, controlling the mech is a whole new level of chore. For some reason, enemies continuously re-spawn from thin air and flock around you, thereby preventing your movement. A small 5 foot zombie is standing in front of you, and a giant 20 foot mech can't simply stomp on it or push it aside. No, instead every creature, no matter how large or small, contributes to building a barrier completely limiting your movement in the mech. Sure, being in a mech means you travel slow as it is, but when enemies crowd around you, acting as barrier walls, you'll only progress a foot or two every few seconds.

About the only vehicle that doesn't get caught on enemies or the cluttered environments is the UFO. Sadly, controlling this hunk of junk isn't much better. Just like being on foot, the game gives you absolutely no ability to adjust the reticule controlling your aim. This means, you can only control the direction of fire; you don't actually have any say-so in determine whether to fire low or high. During combat on foot, this is just incredibly stupid. During combat in a UFO, in which half of your enemies are at the same level than you, and half are below you, this is a pretty clear window into seeing the sloppy thinking of some of those involved in the production of Monster Madness.

AI in Monster Madness captures the brain-dead AI of some 20-odd years ago, and for the worse that is. Don't even go off thinking enemies are in anyway thinking or tactically trying to take you down. They aren't. Instead, they just run around swinging and attacking everywhere, while flocking in your direction. The AI for the bosses isn't any better as there were several situations I encountered in which a boss would continuously run into a wall. In other situations, bosses, and even normal foes, don't know how to follow you properly and frequently get stuck or confused while pursuing you. Instead of dissecting what it was about old-school games that had so many of us addicted, Monster Madness seems to rely on the most superficial and negative qualities that defined retro gaming. Instead of determining what the formula was that had so many people hooked on many classic shooters, Monster Madness simply throws together pointless and mundane shooting, with hordes of brain-dead enemies, while all along thinking that it is these features that get gamers hooked, while completely disregarding the fun-factor. For shame!

Visually, Monster Madness is below average. The art direction is weak, but commendable. I can see where they were trying to go with the style of this game, but it wasn't done properly and comes off as overly generic. There was a single level throughout the entire game which was semi-colorful, which took place in a park, but most of the color tones and very drab and lifeless. Granted, this is a game revolving around the un-dead and classic horror, but that doesn't justify the washed out looking textures, colors and lighting. Actually, in many areas, textures don't even completely match up, and bear a striking resemblance to how things used to be back in the PS1 era. Character animations are really stiff and unnatural looking, which makes the graphics come off even poorer. And then, when you die, which will happen regularly due to how frustratingly difficult the game is, you will see some cheesy blood running down the screen, which looks like it was drawn in ten minutes by some 13 year-old gothic kiddie. Mix all of this together with occasional tearing and an unstable frame rate and you have quite a crummy looking game. In fact, the only real positive thing that I could say about the graphics is that I thought the comic book drawings of the characters looked nice, but these only appear in a few places in the menus and aren't actually an integral part of game-play. The actual character models, specifically those which you see close up in the corner of the screen during certain scenes, look extremely amateur, as does the majority of the game.

But looks aren't everything, as sound plays a significant part in how much you enjoy a game as well. Apparently, trying to stick with the philosophy of, “we're going to make this the worst game available on the Xbox 360”, the developers didn't take music or voice acting seriously either. The score is very cliché, and quite repetitive to boot. You're not going to remember any of the tunes because they sound great, but possibly due to the fact that the same melody is repeated constantly throughout the same respective tune.

The voice-over work is by far some of the worst video games have seen in many years. Not only is the dialog extremely lame, but the quality of how the lines are delivered is well-below average. I was laughing in pain and frustration regularly not because I thought what I was hearing was funny, but because the horrible voice overs do wonders at contributing to your already elevated level of frustration. The female characters make overly sexual sounding moans when they are being attacked, or dodging. It's funny at first, but after hearing it a million times, you're more prone to muting the game than laughing. What makes this even more annoying is that your characters move quite slowly and the only way to walk around quicker is to continuously hit the dodge button while holding forward; this way your character will leap forward and you can make a lot more distance in a shorter time. The downside is that with each dodge/leap you have to listen to the most irritating moans over and over again. Whenever you get caught on fire, while playing as Jennifer, a scream effect is played which pierces your ears and prompts you to lower the volume, each and every time. Throughout the game you will run into a leprechaun, for some strange reason, and I just have to say that he has by far the worst Irish impression I have ever heard. I'm not one to say that I am the most talented in any particular field, but I sure would hate to be the guy that has that role on his resume. At one point in the game, the leprechaun speaks in a mix of slang gangsta-style English with the horribly off Irish accent. At that point, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh, or to cry.

I am sure it would be easy to criticize the sound effects, but for that they would actually need to be present. Well, I guess there are a few sound effects here and there, nothing memorable mind you. Generally speaking I felt that sound effects were completely lacking in certain departments. For example, I had carelessly walked into the swinging blades of a helicopter several times back to back, and it took me at least three or four attempts to realize what I was doing. I found it quite perplexing that large blades of metal spinning around incredibly quick while cutting through air don't produce the slightest bit of sound. A little aural clue here and there to know how you are even encountering your demise isn't too much to ask, is it?

And what is worse than a game that isn't funny? A game that goes so far out of its way to be funny, but fails miserably at each and every attempt. Monster Madness oozes with obvious attempts at being funny, but it never is. It's always cheesy, corny and irritating. The comic book style that is used throughout the game works well enough to justify the goofy tone, but it does not justify the myriad of poor implementations of humor and cannot overshadow the incredibly unfunny voice overs.

Monster Madness does very little to rekindle the feelings retro gamers might have got from playing their most beloved shooters or action games. Not only is the control completely whacked, the frustration level off the charts, and graphics and sounds in horrible shape, but there are lots of bugs as well. Besides the more dominant issue with getting stuck in or on objects, I encountered a few odd issues that were only fixed through the use of the option to restart from the last checkpoint.

In one such situation, I had entered a “monster fest”, which is a time in which you are confined to a small area and must kill X number of enemies in order to exit the enclosed area and proceed. What happened was I had managed to turn around and walk back the way I came before the fences had trapped me in, but the monster fight commenced. Because of this, I was on the outside and the enemies were on the inside and I couldn't harm them, and thus, I could not proceed. Sadly, this happened to me not only once, but on two separate occasions and two different locations. There were also a few times in which the fences wouldn't disappear after the fight was over, and I had to run around for up to a minute before the fence would disappear.

Speaking of disappearances, your weapons seem to vanish during cut scenes, but your arms still remain in the position that they are grasping the weapon; very cheesy. Actually, I noticed my weapon disappear on a few occasions while I tried to pick up another object, yet failed to do so. The game must have thought for a brief moment that I had taken up another object, but at the last moment realized for some reason I wasn't close enough or what not. Whatever the reason, there are clear signs that the coding is not structured in a very organized or well-communicated manner.

One level has you in the middle of a junkyard with moving platforms setup everywhere, much like what you would see in some cartoon. Well, oddly enough, I discovered another frustrating bug here, which took my life on a few occasions. It seems as though, the moving platforms have either some sort of gravity pump in them or, possess telekinetic attributes, because all I was doing was standing on the ground next to one, and it would move me in the direction that the platform was moving, regardless of the fact that my feet were clearly on the ground and that I wasn't even on the platform. On another level, there was a bridge which I fell directly through, and died as a result of this. For no logical, visual or apparent reason, the game's engine just decided, “I'm gonna throw the player through the solid ground”. Talk about frustration without any good reason for it. But without a doubt, the absolute most consistent and annoying bug is the fact that you can walk over objects (monster tokens, weapon parts, etc.) and the game completely fails to give the item to you. I'm not sure what exactly is going on, but there are definitely major collision detection problems Monster Madness.

But if you put aside all the lousy graphics, frightening voice overs, numerous bugs, and dreadfully boring and dull game-play, you are left with one of the worst save systems of all time. First of all, you cannot save in game, which is ludicrous considering that you may get stuck at a very frustrating part for ages, and you don't particularly look forward to losing a good half hour (or more) of progress. The lack of in-game saves is not only a major drawback, but a really stupid move for such a game, by any form of measurement. There are checkpoints throughout the levels, though you will restart from the beginning of the level if you don't finish it in your current session. The checkpoints are few and far between, and come at the more poorly planned out times. Whenever you need a checkpoint, they are nowhere to be seen, and when you are breezing through other parts, they pop up frequently.

But truth be told, I highly doubt you will breeze through Monster Madness. It is not an easy game. Even if you put aside a really uncooperative camera and the ridiculous control schemes, the game is still too difficult on the default settings. And before you go off making any critical judgment calls, questioning my gaming capabilities, let me just tell you that I have been around and I am an experienced gamer. But, I am also experienced enough to know and be able to admit when a game is not properly balanced for difficulty. In fact, while I did go through the game on the “thriller” difficulty, I had to change it down to the easiest difficulty for the final level, because I was having severe problems passing a part in which you had to control each of the vehicles in sequence. As I said earlier, controlling vehicles in Monster Madness is no walk in the park. Unfortunately, the easy difficulty is way too easy, but the next level is too hard, there are two harder difficulties as well, but none of the difficulties feels just right.

The biggest problem with Monster Madness isn't necessarily that it is composed of all these issues, but simply that it isn't fun to play. I was bored at the end of the second level, and by the third or fourth, I was already saying to myself, “why am I playing this, again”. Level after level, the game does absolutely nothing to draw you in or keep you interested. Combat holds no requirement for any level of skill, completing a level is an unrewarding task, and there simply was not a single time during the entire course of the game that I thought I was having even a tiny bit of fun. Sure, there is a considerable emphasis on multi-player to breathe contribute to the lifespan of the game, but this feels wrong to me. I found myself saying, “if I despise this game as much as I do, do I really want to put a friend through this torment”. I guess, another way of saying it is: friends don't let friends play Monster Madness.

I picked up Monster Madness in a bargain bin expecting a pretty generic old-school button-smasher. Man, was that a big mistake. Bargain or not, I cannot find any justification for spending any amount of money on Monster Madness. It is a one-way ticket to frustration, and nothing more. If you are having any doubt whatsoever about Monster Madness, trust your instinct and walk away and never look back at it. Up until I played Monster Madness, I was unaware that they still made games this crappy, today. Take my advice: look elsewhere.




Overall Score: 3.3

Gameplay: (3) Have you ever played a game that not only was filled with loads of bugs and glitches, but also completely lacking in the fun department? If you want to see what that is like, look here - otherwise, steer clear.

Graphics: (4) Well, they are polygons at least. Poor art direction, uncreative character models, stiff animations, unstable frame rate, tearing. Must I go on?

Sound: (3) Some of the most cliche and repetitive music I've heard coupled with some of the worst voice acting ever to disgrace the video game industry.

Lasting Appeal: (3) You'll get bored very quickly. RUN! Run for your lives!