Monstrum Review on Xbox

Monstrum is a First person horror survival title set on board a cargo ship with the sole aim is to escape without being killed.

The premise is different from the usual survival horrors around with you waken as the only human on a rusted and drifting cargo vessel, set in the late 1970s. You are, quite literally, stuck between a monster and the deep blue sea, and if you don’t escape, one or the other will claim you.

The game boasts procedurally generated levels, permadeath, environmental traps, three different AI driven predators, accompanied by three different possible escape routes.

Gameplay

As I mentioned earlier, you awake in a hidden corner, as the sole survivor on board a cargo ship floating in the middle of no where. Your objective is then to make it off the ship using one of three escape routes available to you. However, these escape routes aren’t simply getting to them. They themselves have multiple objectives you need to complete before you can escape.

For example, one objective is to find the bolt cutters in order to remove the moorings on the helicopter. The life raft escape route is handled by a crane that needs spare parts, whilst the sub escape route needs a power cell. And this will all happen whilst being hunted down by a monster.

To make matters worse, each time you play, the decks and the items you need, randomly rearrange themselves. Thankfully the escape locations stay in their general positions, so you always know the Sub is in the bowls of the ship or the helicopter being on deck near the centre and the life raft close to the bridge.

Now whilst this helps give you a rough sense of where you need to be, the claustrophobic corridors give nothing away. This turns the Gameplay, into a form of careful and methodical exploration, checking every room for those essential items, as well as other objects that might prove useful. One of the issues I do have with the game is the limited storage you have, so finding items can often be, a choice of what you think you need to escape vs what items you need to survive.

Items like glowsticks, fire extinguishers and flare guns can be used to stun your hunter. Radios and egg timers, can be used to create distractions, and when combined with rooms that can be locked, can provide you with valuable seconds in order to escape. If this wasn’t enough, there are also environmental hazards, such as broken steam pipes that will kill you instantly, and security cameras which if seen will sounds out a wide spread alarm, perfect for a hunter to hone in on where you are.

But to be fair, it really about the hunters that’s going to keep you on your toes the most. There is the Brute, an almost nemesis inspired monster with glowing eyes and mouth. The hunter, a fast insect looking creature with predator style mouth and the Fiend which resembles a purple floating space alien like design. Just like their individual designs, they also possess their own distinctive attack patterns and tell tale signs when they are close. For instance the Fiend causes the lights to flicker when near. Its these unique traits that you will learn over the course of regular playthroughs as you start to workout counters to the their attacks.

And trust me, regular playthroughs are needed in order to understand what you need to collect and place, as you will often be caught and killed before completing a task. The game is hard and if you don’t have anything to stun the monster you can easily be killed if you cant run and find a place to hide quick enough.

The game has a ruthless permadeath system with only notes and audio recordings carrying across. These help fill in the games back story of the strangely absent crew and offering big hints as to what's required to secure the various escape routes.

The game itself has a great blend of tense exploration vs sheer terror of running for your life when a hunter closes in. However after numerous playthroughs, the monsters themselves become less terrifying and more an obstacle to overcome. Adding another monster and more different corridor tiles would help keep things fresh for longer.

Graphics

For me the overall style has a smoother version of a retro PS1 game, as if the developer thought, what would silent hill look like if it was set on a ship and in first person mode. Its even got the heavy fog effect that limits your ability to see anything at a decent distance, which help plays into the games claustrophobic atmosphere. 

Whilst there is nothing ground breaking about the visuals, the limited colour palette plays well with its nicely done ambient lighting. The mood is set perfectly because of it and I often found myself using the lights as a visual cue for when a hunter was close.

Because the level design is based on randomly generated select amount of corridor tiles, it does keeps things fresh whilst maintaining a ‘’have I been here before’’ feeling for quite awhile. There was no slow down, tearing or framerate issues I could see with the naked eye, which is what id expect from an older game being ported to console.

Sound

The sound here really hits the nail on the head with the monster sounds being a perfect cue for when close. Also it has to be said that the sound of the ship in general is excellent, as the creaks and groans of the ship under foot add to the disturbing ambience. Rattling pipes of steam unnerve you easily and you will continuously be looking behind you because of the sounds emanating from the ship. This is a treat for the ears and perfect for a decent gaming headset to help determine which direction your hunter will be coming from and if you are hidden, leaving from.

There currently only voicework is done for the audiotapes found about the ship and these gave a pretty good performance selling an audio record of events.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-

Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Monstrum is "On Sale".

What is here is done well with it being intense and an unnerving experience, however, once you have seen all the monsters and understand the items you need to collect for escape routes, it does become more grindy than scary.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £24.99 or approx $30, and depending on skill and patience would give you about 5-10 hours worth of gameplay to potentially get to an ending. With the procedural generated paths and three different hunters, this opens the games replay ability and could easily net you another 10 odd or so hours.

What you get for your buck is a solid FPS survival experience, that is just showing a bit of its age. It was released on PC five years ago and can’t help think it just needs a few more tiles or monsters to keep it fresher for longer. Regardless, there is rumours of Monstrum 2 and ill be keeping my eye on the developers, as its clear they do understand the genre well.