I’m going to get straight to the point, here: Monstrum 2 is not great. Not great at all.
It’s annoying as hell as well, because I love the concept. It reminds me a little of Evolve in the sense that you are a squad of survivors trying to fulfil an objective with a nasty monster as your barrier – more recent touchstones would be Dead By Daylight and Predator: Hunting Grounds. I played a lot of Evolve despite its relatively short shelf life, but Monstrum 2’s Early Access release made me want to switch it off just after a few games.
There are two ways to play Monstrum 2. Firstly, you can play as the prisoners, who are tasked with escaping a facility either via helicopter or submarine, hustling through the environment to flip a bunch of switches, restore power, get to your designated escape vehicle and fuelling up before taking off. All this needs to be done while trying to dodge the monster that’s lurking in the shadows waiting to strike… which brings me to the second method of play: the monster.
There’s a choice of three monsters to play as, each with their own stats and abilities. The Brute, for instance, is a hulking monster that is capable of roaring to find its prey and has a bull rush charge that smashes through anything in its path. It deals hefty damage when it swings and feels pretty unstoppable despite not being very mobile. On the flip side, you have the Bhagra, a smaller slender monster that can climb on the ceiling to stalk its prey.
Having played as both monster and prisoner, the monsters don’t feel so overpowered to me, despite there being some initial balance issues during the beta. Then again, that could be down to experience. The team of prisoners I was hunting seemed to know what they were doing, rattling through the objectives pretty quickly while the monster wandered aimlessly, typing in the world chat that he couldn’t find anyone.
I was amazed at the speed that prisoners were completing the objectives, especially considering the maps are procedurally generated. This is a nice touch and one of the better features of Monstrum 2, building off one of the key aspects of the single player survival horror original. Sadly, it’s not enough to sell it to me, right now.
It’s hard to be drawn into the tense horror when everything looks so laughably bad. From the dead pan expressions on prisoners faces to really odd noises the monsters make, I found myself chuckling quite a lot through this. I was playing as the Brute and every time I smashed something, it made this really amusing grunt that sounded like the Honey Monster on an off day. Then, when I used his roar ability, the roar seemed to last forever, to the point where it was weirdly uncomfortable to listen to.
To top off my complaint with the overall presentation, the levels just look cheap; blocky, too dark and a bit rushed. Darkness is good in horror games, but the lighting here is on another level, and when the graphics are poor it really doesn’t help the overall situation. As a prisoner, I never once felt any form of fear, just massive amounts of frustration and ‘WHERE THE HELL AM I GOING?’
So I’m not being a total downer, I will say with any kind of game like this, it’s always better with friends and maybe, just maybe, some of the downsides can be forgotten when you are playing with mates. You’ll most likely spend most of your time laughing and pratting around instead of actually trying to do the objectives.
Then there’s the controls. Despite the menu having options to configure a gamepad, I was unable to use my controller and forced to use a mouse and keyboard. Now, this might be OK for those who are used to keyboard and mouse controls, but it made the overall situation an absolute nightmare for me. Nothing felt fluid and the controls were initially mapped badly for someone who is left handed (that’s me). It just felt like a bit of a mess which I couldn’t help feeling would be made easier if it would just let me use a controller.
The game is currently in Steam Early Access, so there’s plenty of scope for it to improve, but right now it’s not fun. Games were over fairly quickly and when I was playing them, I didn’t feel like I was doing too much. There’s also not much real incentive to keep going, the only progression coming from the in-game store to buy different monster skins and prisoner clothes.
So yeah, Monstrum 2 left me feeling pretty deflated. The concept is nothing new, and there’s several other similar games out there doing it much better right now. Here’s hoping the final version is a little more monstrous.
