Monsters are mad! With their yellow teeth, their veiny eyes, their warty skin and their habit of being killed in a gruesome manner at the end of every Hollywood film they’ve ever starred in. This probably qualifies as madness and if not, the fact that most of them drool rabies and some of them actually choose to live at the bottom of a Scottish lake cements the deal.

Having said that, though, monsters aren’t quite as mad as games publishers can be. Look at the screenshots and you can tell that while Monster Madness has been developed with plenty of heart, it’s not a game that has had a truckload of money thrown at it. If a game looks budget, sounds budget and smells budget, then by God, it probably is budget. Now, stop looking at the screenshots and think about this: Monster Madness is actually being sold at the full price of £49.99! What craziness is this?

This one single move has effectively priced Monster Madness out of its own niche market – a fun-sized brawl perfectly pitched for multiplayer mayhem. Those who remember Zombies Ate My Neighbors or, more recently, Gauntlet on Xbox Live Arcade will know what to expect. This is a topdown shooter using the twin analogue sticks to move and shoot. As is traditional with the genre, enemies are piled on and on and on until the screen is flooded with them and you’re crying for help from team-mates who are swamped under a mountain of zombie dogs/zombie kids/fat zombies. If there’s ever going to be an award for most variation on zombies, Artificial Studios has won it hands down. Even Bob Zombie, a cross between Bob Marley and Rob Zombie, makes an appearance. Absolutely incredible.

Fortunately, you have plenty of firepower to back you up. You start off with an axe but soon upgrade to rocket launchers, Molotov cocktails and chainsaws. That’s when the fun really begins. Even better is the genius way you collect these weapons. Rather than go for the usual chainsaw-floating-andspinning- above-the-ground nonsense, you have to collect weapon parts to build your own weapons. It works well because not only do you feel that you’ve achieved something when you build your own weapon but there’s a certain sense of camaraderie that accompanies the way you can usher friends towards the final weapon part they need. It certainly beats the usual method of sneakily grabbing an on-screen weapon then claiming it was a mistake and you meant to leave it for everyone else. Like anyone ever believed you anyway.

The main problem with this genre is it struggles to ward off repetition and fatigue, something that Artificial Studios is all too aware of and tried to address with varying degrees of success. What we like are sections where you get to charm golden zombies by dancing with them and herding them towards leprechauns in exchange for a key to pass the level you’re on. What we don’t like – this applies for all games, so take note developers – are tacked on stealth sections with a tiny margin of error. In fact, we’re pretty sure no one in the world likes them so developers, PLEASE STOP WITH STEALTH SECTIONS.

For those with no friends, Monster Madness can be played as a single player mash-’em-up but it’s nowhere near as fun and only really serves as an option for those who like a game to provide a full-blooded challenge that kicks them in the face. There are difficulty levels here to accommodate that. However, it’s a depressing experience because the cut-scenes are clearly designed to allow for more than one player so you’ll have huge gaps in the cut-scenes where your friends would normally have stood. Even the dialogue reminds you that you have no friends and Monster Madness wasn’t programmed with the lone gamer in mind. “Hello there kids!” a zombie in a top hat will growl in a cut-scene, even though you’re the only person standing there. Wibble.

That’s not the problem. The problem is for a game that lives and dies on the strength of its multiplayer, it has thrown up a huge barrier of entry for those curious but not committed to the hefty 50-pound price tag. By pricing itself alongside the Gears Of Wars and Ghost Recons of this world, who will actually be brave enough to take a chance? How many people will own it to allow the excellent multiplayer component to fully flourish? That price tag is the modernday equivalent of hari-kiri, minus the blood and honour. Which is a real shame because, given how much fun Monster Madness proves to be when four of you are carving up critters, it deserves so much better. Add an extra mark when the price drops.

Ryan King