Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia
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ESRB:
Blood,Suggestive Themes,Tobacco Reference,Violence
Publisher: SouthPeak Interactive Genre(s): Action, Shooting Home Page: http://www.monster-madness.com/
 It's madness all right - maddening, really. At first glance, some video game archetypes appear impossible to implement poorly. A developer would have to try hard to mess up a top-down melee combat game, right? Not so fast. The devil is in the details, and even a seemingly straightforward gameplay mechanic can be torpedoed through poor execution. The melee combat genre isn't immune from dud releases. When implemented properly, however, there's a certain satisfaction to be had in taking out row after row of bad guys with a varied arsenal of weapons. Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, published by SouthPeak Interactive and developed jointly by Artificial Studios and Immersion Software, is a light-hearted, monster-themed take on melee combat. If melee combat is good, then melee combat with zombies is better. Add in an upgradeable weapon system, a variety of undead baddies, flesh it out with Unreal-engine graphics and layer it all on top of a paper-thin story involving four stereotypical teenagers. That's the recipe behind Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia. It's an 18-level single-player romp through a zombie-infested town. The weapon system is creative and there's no shortage of action, but is the game any fun? After all, this formula has been rehashed dozens of times, each time with a different coat of paint, since 8-bit consoles graced living rooms. Innovative or not, all that really matter is whether or not the game is fun. Monster Madness is framed by a light story and dressed in comic art styling. The comic-book style flows from the main menu, to cutscenes to the game itself. It's an art style that lends itself to a theme that's campy if a bit cheesy, but it's consistent throughout the game. There's a whiff of a story - something about a town overrun by reanimated corpses - but the dialog feels contrived. Ironically, the stereotypes (The nerd! The goth chick! The slacker! The hot popular girl!) found in the four playable characters only serve to make the game a parody of itself.
No doubt borrowed from the teen-thriller movie genre, the exaggerated characters are far from compelling and the story lacks any pull. It's not captivating, and it's hardly funny. The multitude of geek references will have even the most dedicated basement-dwelling gamehounds scouring Wikipedia for the origin of quotes. To make matters worse, the voice acting is entirely uninspired, and characters have a tendency to repeat the same quips in-game ad infinitum (thankfully, dialog can be turned off).
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