For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to download the Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia Demo that was released yesterday. I figured since it was a free demo I’d give it a try. Now that I tried it I wish I had not wasted my time. I knew going into it that the game looked like it was made for the 12-15 age group, but I like a good hack-n-slash so I thought I’d try it anyway. Setting aside the graphical style of the game is not that appealing to me I had a lot of issues.

When you start a game it has you pick one of four playable characters. Each character starts with three available weapons; their hands, dual pistols, and a shotgun. Each character also has a preferred weapon that is suppose to be somewhere on the level that you can find and use. I tried out all four characters, and I was only able to find the preferred weapon for two of them. The game narrator tells you that their preferred weapon with have a little thumbs up symbol next to it, but I never saw that symbol for any of the characters. I just got lucky and figured out two of their preferred weapons from their picture.

Once I found the preferred weapon picking it up was another story. Pretty much everything on the level can be used as a weapon. At first this seems like it would be cool , but because there are so many items on the map it makes it difficult to pick up a specific one without an enemy coming up and hitting you while you try to position yourself right above the item you want. Additionally, all of the items on the level move around when you or the enemies bump into them. There were a lot of items I’d go to pick something up only to bump it further across the room while zombies were hitting me in the back.

The other big issue I had was with the controls. You control your character in normal First Person Shooter style where the left thumb stick moves you and the right thumb stick aims you. This would be fine if the game was in first person, but it is not. The camera sits up above the gameplay showing you a large portion of the room you are in. So, I constantly was having to turn around to try and attack enemies that were behind be. It would not have been too bad controlling the game like this, but to pick up items you have to hit the X button which means you can no longer turn because have to take you thumb off the right stick. Because items were already hard to pick up this became very frustrating. Right as I’d get positioned to pick up an item it would get bumped so I would have to turn around, chase it down, and then hope it did not get moved while I tried to get positioned just right to pick it up.

After about 20 minutes I got tired of fighting the controls, quit my game, and delete the demo from my drive. Next time I know in advance that a game is not geared for me I’m not going to bother with trying the demo. After wasting 30 minutes of my life yesterday I realize there are plenty of good games out there that I don’t need to bother with the ones that suck.