Everyone wants to be something they’re not. In fact, that’s probably one of the main reasons we play video games–to get away from our 9-5 jobs and play the role of a gangster in Grand Theft Auto or a tactical spy in Metal Gear Solid. When creating a video game, however, it is probably best to stick with what you are and not try to be something you will never be–and that is where Monster Madness: Grave Danger fails so egregiously. Monster Madness is an Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network game masquerading as a retail product, over-staying its welcome by throwing in filler content that is more of a chore than fun to play.

No other moment in the game exemplifies the sense that the developers were struggling to fill the game with enough content then in the second to last mission. After snaking your way up a castle, you’re tasked with killing a set number of every enemy archetype in the game, with the exception of bosses. There are actually quite a few different enemy archetypes, so this process takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete. It is within the context of a “Monster Fest”, which will crop up randomly throughout the game–much like a JRPG random battle sequence–and you are forced to kill all the enemies it throws at you before you are able to proceed.

The core gameplay, while passable, is extremely bloated. The game takes a lot of cues from a hack-n-slash dungeon crawler, throwing enemies at you as you progress through the level. However, there is little strategy behind anything that you do, and with the exception of a few enemies and bosses, everything can be solved through brute force. In essence, the game feels much like a Dynasty Warriors game, in that the solution for everything is pressing the circle button ad nauseam. Reinforcing that thought is the “punishment” for death–you will only lose the “gems” that can be spent on various upgrades–and if you run out of gems, you will still be spawned back in the world with another life anyways. Some might enjoy the thoughtlessness that goes into playing Monster Madness, as I did early on in the game, but as the game stretches on and on, you’ll want to move on to something else.

The rest of the game has the same superfluous feel, and the story helps foster that feel of pointlessness. The story is told without an ounce of seriousness, attempting at a more humorous and laid-back approach–which is fine–but the poor voice acting killed whatever endearing impact the story could have had. The one saving grace in the entire story is how each chapter (there are five) has the story told through some very nicely done live comic strips. The content within the comic strips aren’t great, but the actual art and look is done extremely well.

Monster Madness uses the Unreal Engine seen in Gears of War, but you would probably be unable to tell that this was the case. Some of that has to do with the color palette being more than gray, black and brown, but also because the game doesn’t look all that great. Despite everything looking average, the game still managed to chug to almost a slideshow pace in two different portions of the game. The game ran smooth otherwise, but it was definitely surprising to see a game of Monster Madness’ technical prowess chug.

Of significantly more annoyance was the performance of the game disc itself. I’m not sure if it was the disc I received, my PlayStation 3 or the game itself, but simply loading into the game screen was a crap shoot. Some times it worked, sometimes it didn’t–and I had to restart the game disc multiple times because of it. Online co-op faced similar issues, and I was not able to test the online co-op performance because I simply could not access it. (Full disclosure: There is also four-player local co-op, which I also did not try.)

It is disappointing that Monster Madness: Grave Danger turned out the way it did. The 360 version apparently had a lot of control issues that I did not notice in the PlayStation 3 version. (With the exception of the vehicle controls) The problem is that Monster Madness should never have been a full retail product in the first place. Even at the reduced $39.99 price point, the content is stretched far too thin, becoming monotonous and needlessly bloated only a couple of hours in. The ending suggests that SouthPeak is interested in making another Monster Madness game, so I would hope that they pare down the content, focus in on enhancing the core gameplay, and releasing the sequel to Grave Danger over Xbox Live Arcade and/or PlayStation Network. As it currently stands, however, it’s hard to recommend Monster Madness: Grave Danger to anyone.