Monster Madness: Grave Danger

Monster Madness: Grave Danger

Publisher: South Peak Games
Platform: Playstation 3
UK Price (as reviewed): £24.99 (inc. Delivery)
US Price (as reviewed): $38.99 (inc. Delivery)

Some things are destined to go together. Some things fit so well together that they are virtually inseparable in the imaginations of Joe Public.

Gin and tonic. Cheese and onion. Fish and chips. Zombies and computer games.

We've experienced some great zombie games in past: many hours have been wasted on the various House of the Dead games, and the Ravenholme level of Half-Life 2 stands as one of the best examples of level design, most probably because it contains zombies and Russian monks.


In the run-up to the release of Left4Dead, everyone has gone zombie mad, so I was surprised when I was given the task of reviewing Monster Madness: Grave Danger from developer Psyonix. Normally Joe hordes zombie games to practice his tactics and hone his plans for the inevitable zombie invasion.

So, will Monster Madness: Grave Danger allow you to improve your zombie killing skills, or is Joe just unloading the rotting flesh on me after using his zombie survival kit?

Story

You play one of a group of high school students caught up in a zombie invasion of their town. The four characters come straight out of a boilerplate teen flick: the nerd, the goth, the cool dude and the cheerleader.

And this, really, is all you need to know: you're a teenager, your body is a torrent of raging hormones and your town has just been invaded by zombies.

Do I have to say it one more time? Zombies – what more do you want?


Well, if you’re Joe then you don’t want a hell of a lot more, but since you probably aren’t Joe then you might want something else. Unfortunately, Monster Madness doesn’t deliver anything more on the story front. It literally is just you, against a load of zombies.

Of course, not every game has to have a gripping story and for every fascinating story-filled epic like Pac-Man, there’s a game which is built with no story at all and is instead created to showcase pure, beautiful gameplay – games like BioShock, which have no plot whatsoever.

The problem with this system though is that if you aren’t going to have an interesting plot then you’d better make sure that your gameplay at least is original and interesting, not just a repainted, inferior remake of another classic video game...