By Boot Scraper

Out of the poorly written and blood-soaked bowels of B-grade horror comes Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, a backlog of half-baked horror clichés and monsters. It has everything a cult classic in the making has, but is it worth the price in videogame terms?
The game’s storyline is as campy as you can get: four teens try to save the town from zombies, werewolves, and even evil clowns. It’s told through short comic book-like cinematics. Watching these cinematics is usually quite a chore as all of them are filled with some of the worst voice-acting this side of Resident Evil.

Even the way the poor words sound is bad. At times it seems as if the recording sessions were held in someone’s basement with a $5 mic. But with the cheesy mentality of the rest of the game, the bad sound and acting could have been more of an artistic choice than incompetent artisans.
At the game’s start, you choose from one of the four teens. All the clichés are represented here as well with your choice of the goth chick, the slacker, the prep, or the nerd. From there the game plays almost exactly like a Hunter: The Reckoning game. In case you don’t know that game, it’s a compliment. You control your characters from a top-down perspective and even an optional 3rd-person type chase cam and use guns and melee weapons to fend off thousands of hell spawned creatures. And I do mean thousands. Enemies at some points seem to be in unlimited numbers. Its all pretty fun, until you realize there is absolutely no depth to this equation. Unlike Hunter: The Reckoning, you can not level up your character or use magic and the weapon selection (aside from the blunt objects you can pick up) is unusually slim. You can level up your main weapons by collecting parts, but other games that use the same formula usually have much more to offer.
The graphics and sound are about as mundane as the gameplay. For a 360 game, the graphics sure don’t shine like they should and some character models have a surprisingly low polygon count. That becomes even more of a shock when you realize that it was made using the Unreal engine, the same game engine used in such stunners as Rainbow Six: Vegas and Gears of War. And the sound is nothing more that cliché bangs and bonks with some music that could’ve been taken from any number of horror films made in the ‘80s.
The main problem with the game however is the replay value. By the fourth level, most gamers will be bored by the ever-spawning enemies. Although the levels and monsters have great diversity, the way in which you play each level and kill each enemy does not. It does have multiplayer, but by playing co-op you realize even quicker how shallow the game is.
In the end, what you have is a game that is not worth the asking price. Although it has it’s moments, it just seems a bit too little to warrant a purchase. It almost seems like it should have been a download over Xbox Live instead of a retail game. It ‘s most definitely worth a rental, but wait for it in the bargain bin otherwise. Score: 6 out of 10.