On top of all the other flaws that make up this game, the control scheme is horrendous, awkward and ill conceived. The left stick controls the travel of the character, while the right stick controls the direction that the character faces. Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the character face the same direction he/she is running? The result of this layout is an unnecessary learning curve that is never fully mastered, and hampers the game play in the heat of battle. If 10 monsters surround me, the last thing I want to think about, on top of everything else, is which direction I’m facing. The right trigger operates your primary weapon, meaning the gamer will do a lot of “button mashing” on the trigger, which feels awkward in and of itself. Once powered up, each character’s special move is activated by holding the right trigger, which is entirely too sensitive and easily initiated accidentally. Clicking the sticks results in dodges and jumps, while holding the left stick depressed makes the character run. The few vehicles that are scattered about the game use the same dual stick controls that the characters use on foot.
The graphics are built on the Unreal 3 engine, so for the most part they are smooth and attractive. There are some frame rate issues, but these are very rare and scarcely noticeable the majority of the time. The characters and cutscenes are rendered in a comic book fashion, while the environments tend to be modeled more realistically. Though the environments are not fully destructible, the characters and monsters can interact with hundreds of objects, such as using traffic cones, tennis rackets and air compressors as weapons. The biggest graphical flaw tends to be the camera, which slowly swings around, following the direction your character faces, which is constantly changing. The action of the camera comes dangerously close to inducing motion sickness, as if this game needed another facet to provoke nausea and vomiting. In single player mode, pressing the Y button will toggle between the free-swinging camera and a more conventional third person fixed camera. Unfortunately, the fixed camera is useful in only a handful of situations, as most of the time the gamer will need to see in all directions to avoid flanking attacks. Coop play’s camera is placed very high to cover a wide swath of the environment. Though this camera angle limits how closely you can view the graphics, it is necessary to accommodate 4 players simultaneously.
Monster Madness’ sound assets leave plenty to be desired. The music is a cliché horror movie soundtrack that compliments the mood of the game fairly well. The voice acting is the one area where the aural experience breaks down. All characters have only a few phrases, and they are constantly repeated ad nauseam. The bosses have even fewer lines of dialog to pull from, so between your character and the monsters, the sound gets old very, very quickly.
When you’re not repeatedly hacking and slashing monsters in a boring and mindless fashion, you’ll be searching the landscapes for various parts to upgrade your weapons. The weapons are quite unique, such as the cell phone taser or the CD launcher, but the weapons tend to be very expensive to build and upgrade, and seem to lack the punch you would expect for all the effort you put in to obtain them.
Upon first glance, Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia had a great deal of promise in my book. Since the days of Gauntlet, I’ve always been in the market for a top-down coop style game. With a fantastic array of monsters and upgradeable weapons, on paper it would seem like this game was a “can’t miss”. With it’s lack of a decent Live offering, horrendous controls, bad cameras and annoying soundtrack, this game is actually a “must miss”. I can’t even recommend that most gamers rent this title. If you have two or more gamers in your household that are interested in this style of game, it may be worth a weekend rental. If you’re looking for a game that’s fun single player, or online, you need to pass on this title. In fact, you need to run from it! That being said, I challenge the developers to take each and every flaw into consideration, and build a game in this genre worthy of the Xbox 360. If they can do that, I’d certainly buy it.
