There are a lot of different genres of video games in the industry today that begin development. But unfortunately ninety percent of the titles that reach store shelves are the same thing over and over again, with only a few shining gems actually making it into our hands. Don’t get me wrong; I love me some Gears of War or R6: Vegas, but the other mass of games are usually fairly average and just new versions of the same game, maybe with different characters or sports teams.
However developers Artificial Studios’ are trying to change this mold with their upcoming shooter Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, due for the Xbox 360 and PC this April. They stopped by our offices this past week to show off the newest build of the game and I have to say I came away quite surprised and much more excited for this game to be released in a few months.
Not only is Monster Madness a game that will force you to let your young child play with you, it also features zombies, yes I said zombies. First a little background, I have always had a special place in my gaming heart for old-school action titles. Starting with the Ninja Turtles games and going through games such as Loaded, Hunter: The Reckoning, and even to a lesser extent Untold Legends. What do all these games have in common? The co-op style, top-down view, beat-em-up action that will always remind me of what it feels like to be a kid; that’s what. As I said before I love blood-squirting chainsaw kills just as much as the next guy but sometimes I just want to play something a little different that doesn’t include blood or John Madden’s voice. This is niche spot that Monster Madness is looking to fill. Built for casual gamers by casual gamers, Monster Madness includes the top-down camera view, cel-shaded cartoon style graphics, and a storyline ripped from the Saturday morning Cartoon Network headlines.
Although the build we played was not complete the storyline is pretty basic, you take control of a young kid named Zach (the computer nerd) and the game starts out with a situation teenagers deal with on a daily basis, young love. As the main character attempts to profess his love to one of the other four playable characters, Jennifer (the prom queen); your buddy Andy (the skater punk) and his friend Carrie (the vampire goth) continually interrupt and wreck havoc on your plans. Then as the four characters are having a chat something strange happens, and it involves zombies, lots of zombies. The great thing about Monster Madness is that each one of the zombies we encountered in the game was unique and just plain crazy. We saw everything from normal run-of-the mill walking corpses, to the first boss battle that involved a reincarnated zombie Indian chief. There are a total of 50 different types of monsters to fight throughout the game, which is a nice big number of enemies and means lots of variation.
