Team Monster: Us Vs. Them

It's said that bad news always comes in threes.

For the residents of the fictional city in Team Monster: Us Vs. Them this means Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies. For the monsters it comes in the shape of the individual members of the Team Monster themselves.

Unfortunately for the player, the same rule also applies to the gameplay of Team Monster.

Team Monster is one of those games that I instantly liked, but was then repeatedly battered by mechanics that should have been eliminated at the planning stage, let alone allowed through for release.

The premise is fairly simple – you control a team of three monster hunters, each with their own separate monster-ridding speciality, as they go about purging an infested city of evil.

The game plays out a bit like the classic 2D overhead Grand Theft Auto (understandable given that Tag produced the similarly GTA-like Car Jack Streets), with your team gunning down creatures and riding at high speed in their A-Team-with-spikes van.

Every level, you’re tasked by another character (normally the inept and corrupt mayor) to head to a location, shoot everyone there, and then engage in a number of mini-games before riding back home and shooting people with the van’s cannon.

Initially, it’s hard to not like the game. The dialogue between characters is funny, drawing on some cast-in-stone stereotypes like the bad-ass black dude, the air-headed bimbo, and the long-haired stoner hippy.

The handling of the van is also excellent, with the vehicle sliding out on a high speed turn and reacting appreciably different at lower speeds.

Once you’re out of the vehicle the team-based firing mechanic is fairly clever, forcing you to switch between protagonists by pressing the ‘*’ key as different monster types approach.

However, there are just too many annoyances that keep popping up time and time again for the game to be fully enjoyable.

For instance, the handling of the van is great, but hit another car or get trapped in an alley and you have to spend a few minutes shunting the thing back and forth to get going again.

Even what should be a massive highlight – running zombies over in the van – has been turned into a snore-fest. Despite the thing being equipped with spikes it takes about 40 times longer to kill anything with it than just getting out and shooting them.

If you can hit them, that is. While the team-based shooting mechanic is fun, the collision detection is all over the place, with monsters able to stand in-between your firing angles, character’s seemingly unable to hit anything directly on top of them, and even a glitch that resets all their weapons' power levels if you reload a game.

The mini-games, which include a Whac-a-Mole style shootout and a first-person dungeon crawler, should also be great, but end up being too easy, badly drawn, and dull.

There’s beauty hidden in the beast that is Team Monster, from the ambitious GTA-styled driving/shooting gameplay to a witty script. But only those willing to look past the myriad control and design flaws will ever see its true face.