Monster Madness Preview

Monster Madness is an overhead shooter for the PC and Xbox 360. In co-development by Artificial Studios and Immersion Software & Graphics, the game is one of the few Xbox 360 titles that doesn’t seem shy of the public eye. We talked to Jeremy Stieglitz, the Project Lead at Artificial Studios, about the game and why it is suited to a next generation platform.

Pro-G: Monster Madness is an overhead shooter. This isn’t a genre we see all that often any more. What made you go down that route?

Jermey Stieglitz: Precisely because this genre’s not done that often, so we think it still has a lot of room for innovation and to give players experiences that they simply haven’t had before. Plus, it’s one of the few genres to support good offline cooperative play without a split screen.

Pro-G: Games like ‘Hunter: The Reckoning’ and its sequel received a mix response. Have you looked at those games and others to see where the genre could be improved?

JS: Bringing the Top-Down Shooter into the next-generation of games requires that they move into gaming territory that’s traditionally owned by First-Person Shooters. This includes 3D aiming (up & down), vehicles, online play, and high-end physics & graphics.

Pro-G: The game is set over five environments. Does this point to a short game or do each of these areas span many levels?

JS: There are actually 6 levels per environment, each level taking about 20 minutes to complete. So we’re looking at a 10 hour game for one play-through, and this game’s going to have a lot of replay value as well. For instance, because of the Weapon Building & Upgrading system, there’s incentive to play through on harder difficulty levels to acquire increasingly rare Weapon Parts. Furthermore, there’s going to be an assortment of competitive deathmatch modes and a survival mode.

Pro-G: Being a next-gen game a lot is expected with regard to environment interactivity. How can players interact with the game-world in Monster Madness?

JS: Most of the environmental objects, from cars to trash-cans, are physical objects that can be manipulated by the players or their weapons and used to damage enemies. Players can also destroy lots of these objects, and some may contain useful items inside. Monster Madness uses Ageia’s NovodeX Physics (with support in the works for their PhysX hardware) to handle large amounts of rigid bodies in any given level. Plus, there are drivable vehicles in the game that you can use to speed through the suburban streets and dominate pedestrian enemies.

Pro-G: What is being done in Monster Madness that makes it an ideal Xbox 360 game, rather than a game for the current consoles?

JS: Monster Madness’ graphics engine, which is based on the Reality Engine now owned by Epic Games, supports fully per-pixel lit environments, and High Dynamic Range Rendering. This really benefits the look of the game, since all lights are dynamic, can be shot out by players, or moved with the object to which they’re bound. Also, the engine supports dynamic shadowing & lots of characters on screen, which Monster Madness makes good use of. Finally, with the extensive use of physics, you’re looking at a lot of additional CPU work. It’s our goal to do so a very unique Top-Down Shooter, and we think that to take that genre into the future, it’s ideal to use the next-generation of hardware.

Pro-G: Customising your weapons sounds like it could make the way you play unique. What scope for customising is there in Monster Madness?

JS: There are two types of hand-held weapons in the game, Melee Weapons and Ranged Weapons. You can carry 1 Melee Weapon and 2 Ranged Weapons at a time. Melee Weapons can be found all over the place, to the point where players can basically improvise what Melee Weapon to pick up as you happen to find them. You might find a rapid-slashing katana to be effective against zombies, while a chainsaw might be better against more powerful but fewer enemies.

Ranged Weapons, on the other hand, need to be built by players by interacting with an NPC named ‘Larry Tools’. Larry’s a biker, mechanic, and hardcore monster masher, and with his help you can build & upgrade your weapons. Building & upgrading weapons requires Weapon Parts, which are household hardware items like adhesive tape, nails, or battery packs that you’ll find all over the game’s levels.

Building each new Ranged Weapon or upgrading existing Ranged Weapons requires certain numbers of different Weapon Parts. Each Ranged Weapon has multiple Upgrade Levels, and each Upgrade Level gives the Weapon a new kind of functionality. So a level 1 Nail-Gun might be a relatively weak Ranged Weapon, a Level 2 Nail-Gun will give you a Nail-Gun in each hand, and a Level 3 Nail-Gun will attach a powder to the nails that will explode on impact. The highest level Upgrades for a Ranged Weapon will require rare Weapon Parts that, in some cases, may only be found in the higher difficulty settings.

Between the improvisational Melee Weapons, the customizable Ranged Weapons, and the powerful Vehicles, we think that gamers are going to have a lot of fun killing monsters in oh so many ways.

Pro-G: Games of this type are always best played with friends. Can we expect four-player coop play over Xbox Live and on the PC?

JS: Absolutely, and one of the unique things about Monster Madness is that you can mix local and remote players. So you can have any combination of offline and online gaming, ensuring that you’ll always have 4 players to play the cooperative mode with. Of course, all local players have to remain on the screen (there’s no split), but the camera can zoom out quite far to keep up with the action and allow players ample breathing room.

Pro-G: Did you show the game off to any publishers at E3? Did you get a lot of interest?

JS:This game actually was not ready to demonstrate at E3, so we missed the opportunity for publishers there. But now it is in a very functional prototype, so we’re currently looking at a variety of publishers to find one who’ll give it, in particular, a good console treatment.

Pro-G: Thanks very much for your time.

Monster Madness is due for release on the PC and Xbox 360 some time in 2006. Look for more on the game later in its development.