Monster Madness: Grave Danger Hands-on Preview

Previewing a port of game we’ve already reviewed is never easy, so we can’t say we were overly thrilled when Southpeak Games’ Monster Madness: Grave Danger arrived through our letter box. In the middle of last year we wanted Monster Madness on the Xbox 360 to be a modern Zombies Ate my Neighbours, but it ended up feeling rather dated without the nostalgia. Now coming to the PlayStation 3 with the Grave Danger subtitle, we headed back into the zombie infested world to see if any significant changes have been made.

As in the Xbox 360 version you are thrown into the deep end, as a marauding pack of cold-blooded Zombies storm into the sanctity of your living room. From thereon in you’re exposed to a consistent stream of undead beasts of human and animal descent. There are quiet moments on occasion, but the emphasis here is on hack ‘n’ slash and trigger happy combat, with a mixture of button mashing combat and Geometry Wars-style directional shooting.

This isn’t a zombie survival game by any means, with the tone firmly in the tongue in cheek category. In Grave Danger you’ll be beating them about with garden tools, household objects and makeshift weapons as you dance about them. It’s a simple pleasure, but one that is as fun now as it was last year. The problem comes from the game’s inability to do much with the concept. You’re not always shooting or mashing up zombies with cleavers, but you are for most of the game.

From our hands-on it seems that little has changed in the game’s core experience. Up to four players can play cooperatively, moving through the game’s monster-filled levels. The story spans five environments and 18 levels, and you’ll encounter more than 70 different enemy types, including some well designed bosses. On top of the campaign there’s online support for up to 16 players across the usual game modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag and more. It seems as if PlayStation 3 owners will be getting pretty much the same core features as seen in the Xbox 360 game.

The major new additions are the Challenge Missions – 25 new missions and mini-games exclusive to the PlayStation 3 game. The mission type challenges see you fending off zombies in the same way you do during the main game (torching an endless wave of zombie cats for example) while the mini-games offer everything from a take on Pac-Man to baseball. Although these additional games are unlikely to keep you entertained for long, playing through each a few times should add a few hours to your game time.

Visually Grave Danger is somewhat of a mixed bag. The game is heavy on interactive objects, so a large majority of the items in each level can be moved about. In the large battles, this can result in complete chaos, with objects flying all over the screen and zombies taking up every other inch of space. Other than that though, it already looks pretty dated, with the character and enemy models lacking detail. The environments vary in quality, but most seem a little too simple in their design. If the preview build’s occasionally slow frame rate can be sorted out ahead of release, then PS3 owners will have a competent if not spectacular looking game on their hands.

Monster Madness: Grave Danger is highly unlikely to generate much hype when it’s released on the PlayStation 3 this spring, but it does offer gameplay that can’t really be found elsewhere on the console. A retooled version for the PlayStation Store might have made more sense, but for our final verdict look out for a review close to the game’s May 30 release date.