MonsterKill

Put away your garlic heads, crucifixes, and silver bullets - the means of defeating the world's creepiest monsters is right at your fingertips. MonsterKill gives you the power to eradicate humanity's greatest foes with hand drawn spells. Despite the phenomenal presentation and clever upgrade system, the gameplay itself is hairier than a teenage werewolf.

Mummies, werewolves, clones of the dark lord Dracula, and replicas of the reanimated freak Frankenstein's monster come at you from the top of the screen. They're dead set on destroying a wall at the bottom of the screen and should they break through the enclosure, it's Game Over.

Gestures traced out on the screen with a finger conjure magical attacks capable of sending the creatures to the underworld. A horizontal swipe cuts off mummy heads, a vertical zig-zag summons a lightning bolt, and an upside-down 'V' launches a fireball. You can even freeze enemies to temporarily hold them back by drawing a 'V.'

While simple in concept, these gestures face problems when push comes to shove. Zig-zag lines meant to call down a flash of lightning regularly go unanswered: the game is far too fussy about the angle at which these lines are drawn.

Even worse, lightning gestures are occasionally confused for ice spells. Instead of zapping an enemy, the game misreads the zig-zag as a 'V' and freezes the nearest monster.

Upon reaching the last few levels of the 20 level campaign or spending time in Endless mode, the large waves of monsters induce frenzied finger work that exacerbates the problem. When you need them to work the most, they fail tend to fail you more frequently.

It's a shame, because MonsterKill does right by every other account. A well-conceived upgrade system rewards you with cash to replenish your wall's integrity and boost its maximum health, along with coinage that can be used to improve spells and speed up magic regeneration.

The graphics are pretty nice, too, but without tighter controls you may have to resort to garlic bulbs, crosses, and silver bullets to get the job done.