Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia Review (PC)

Zombies ate my will to live

If you want a game to sell, there are a couple of things you can do to help it along. You could include a short, fat, Italian plumber. You could add a blue hedgehog. A busty brunettes in hot pants and Lycra tops work well. But one thing that always seems to aid your sales is zombies. One of the earliest games I remember with this sort of inclusion was mummy on the Amstrad 464. Now ok that was a Mummy, but the idea is the same. Brainless killing machines that want to eat your flesh!

The ideas in the game are really good

Recently games like Resident evil and Dead Rising have used this Zombie obsession to great effect, so it comes as no surprise that other companies want some of the action! Enter Monster Madness ? Battle for Suburbia. A port of an Xbox 360 game, Monster Madness is a kind of mix between Zombies Ate My Neighbours and Dead Rising.

Monster Madness tells the story of 4 teen stereo types as they hack, slash and nail gun their way through level upon level of zombies and monsters. Starting off in the Zacks house (he’s the geeky one), you are given the chance to familiarise your self with the controls and ideas in the game. The house is full of items that can be picked up and used as weapons. After a few minutes, the zombies attack. You have to face them down with lamp stands, kitchen knives and toilet plungers.

From the outset the controls suck. Using the mouse you will find movement near impossible. With no lock on to targets you will find yourself throwing stuff at nothing half the time. For the majority of the game you will be stuck in a corner just hammering the fire button hoping for the best, that is if the camera has not flicked the wrong way so you can’t see anything!

The ideas in the game are really good. With the help of a mechanic called Larry Tools, you are able to create new, weird and wonderful weaponry from parts you have found. Anything can become a weapon and there is a lot of anything to be found! Cars, bikes, UFOs, tanks, mech warriors, the list is quite endless! The main characters (the Goth girl, the afor mentioned geek, the home boy and the dumb blonde cheerleader) are all entertainingly portrayed. The story (if that is what you can call it) is presented with some very well drawn cartoons. The voice acting is a little suspect, but every now and again it will elicit a chuckle. The enemies are all well realised and varied, a kind of whose who of the monster world!

The graphics are really very good as well. The environments are detailed and fun to play around in. The maps are varied, although a little linear. Exploring levels is important as you can find new bits for you Larry to use. But again there is a sting in the tail when it comes to exploration. The save system. It works on the good old checkpoint method. Great in theory, but the checkpoints are few and far between, meaning that getting killed can lead to some seriously long backtracking! Seeing as this is a seriously tough game, you would have thought the save points would be a little more frequent.

As I said this is a hard game, the main waves of baddies are tough, but the Boss battles are another feature that will have you trying to smash your PC. They are unbelievably hard! If you have a few friends then the Co-op modes should be explored. They will make the game a bit more bearable, but as a single player this is a game you should try to avoid!

Monster Madness could have been one of the most fun games released this year, but it is let down by bad controls, bad cameras and a difficulty setting that would have the Krypton factor winners of yester year crying into their jumpsuits.

Fun for multiplayer, but avoid single player if you want to keep your sanity!