Monster Madness Hands-On - A Neighborhood Nightmare

Games like Dead Rising, Infected, and Stubbs the Zombie opened the undead floodgates during the past year or so, and now Artificial Studios and SouthPeak Interactive are carrying the zombie torch into 2007 with Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia. We got to check out a late build of the Xbox 360 version, which stars school nerd Zach and his ragtag band of unlikely allies: Carrie the goth chick, Andy the skater, and Jennifer the preppy blonde bimbo. This group of walking clichés is brought together by circumstance but then unfortunately interrupted when a horde of drooling zombies shows up inexplicably on Zach's doorstep. What's a group of high school kids to do but fight back?

To do that, you'll engage in a top-down action game that recalls Gauntlet and its numerous successors. The game supports up to four players playing cooperatively on the same Xbox, with each player controlling a different character. The differences between the four kids are mostly cosmetic as far as we could tell. At the outset, you can pick up and throw most objects in the environment. But a number of melee weapons, such as axes, knives, katanas, and so on, will soon become available. Although you can use any weapon with any character, each kid has his or her own favorite with which he or she will be faster and more proficient.

As you fight through areas like Zach's house, the surrounding suburbia, and the "shopping maul," you'll also pick up all sorts of spare parts, such as old pipes and bicycle frames lying around the environment. When you collect enough of the right parts, you can visit a cantankerous old junkman who will help you assemble them into improvised weapons, mostly of the ranged variety, that will help you fight off the hordes of zombies. Because the weapons are made out of household objects that you've managed to salvage during the zombie apocalypse, you get things like a CD launcher, a potato gun, and a taser made out of a cell phone.

The action in Monster Madness has a frantic, button-mashy feel to it primarily because it's so chaotic and there are so many enemies running around at once. These aren't the slow, shambling, Night of the Living Dead zombies you'd probably expect, but rather the more unnerving and quick-footed monsters like in 28 Days Later. In addition to the pervasive undead menace, each level has a number of traps built into it. For instance, in the first level, the kitchen floor becomes flooded and then electrified by fallen appliances, so naturally you'll want to avoid walking into such appliances whenever possible.

Outside the main zombie slaughter, Monster Madness has a versus mode for up to 16 players that recalls games like Power Stone and Super Smash Bros. You'll do battle with each other in a number of enclosed arenas that are as dangerous as your opponents, so you've got to look out for all the death traps, as well as the whirling blades, rockets, and so on that will be coming at you. In the level we tried, a spiked roller continually menaced one corner; a large portion of the level was covered with acid; and one of the better power-ups was tucked behind a guillotine that was tough to dodge through without getting sliced in half.

The team at Artificial purportedly comprises younger developers, primarily in their early 20s, who are cutting their teeth on the Xbox 360's graphical muscle. Monster Madness looks good visually, with some nice lighting effects and a solid overall level of detail, though we'd like to see the frame rate tightened up before release. The game's cutscenes are rendered in a comic book style, with slightly animating panes and such, and were drawn by a team of comic book artists based in Colombia. An actual comic book that will flesh out the story of the game will also be packed in with the game, for those who want to delve deeper. You can look for Monster Madness on the Xbox 360 and PC in mid-April, and we'll have a full review of the game around that time.