Monstrum II - Preview
Prisoners, monsters and a whole lot of tools to help you survive. Monstrum 2 is the sequel to the relatively well received precursor survival horror game. In the same veins as other titles like Dead By Daylight or Friday the 13th.
The game in its current state, is just not all that good. It’s playable to a point. There is the option to choose between playing one of three monsters, or to try and survive as a prisoner. Lobbies generally manage to get at least 4 prisoners, but you can get unlucky and have less. The game will start regardless of how full the lobby is, after a set timer. It’s not a great way of doing it but ensures queue times aren’t longer than a minute.
The game is in a very, very early state. Attack animations on the monsters don’t appear to actually exist, animations overall are pretty stutter heavy. It makes playing the monster a little difficult, because it’s incredibly unclear whether or not a hit has landed.
The Brute is the only one of the three that feels playable at the moment. It’s abilities are the most fleshed out, and it’s the only one that really has all that much kill pressure. The Bhagra is an interesting stealth-style monster, but is just, underwhelming. The ability to climb on specific sections of the roof would be more fun if it were more useful. It’s felt almost useless to go on the roof, when I could just snake after players and lunge at them.
Turning to attack someone after lunging through them would be terrifying if it actually worked. The lack of attack animation and the seeming lack of an accurate hitbox at this time makes it hard.
The remaining monster is incredibly slow. It has the ability to teleport and see through players eyes. This monster is definitely the coolest of the three, but in its current state, the Malacosm is just a little too slow. The teleport takes way too long, and even if you teleport to a character the recovery time gives them ample opportunity to run away. This is the monster I had the most fun with however, and definitely has the most opportunity for improvement.
Playing as a prisoner feels a little bit chaotic, and actually is probably the most fun component of the game. Frantically running around, crouching and hiding, completing the escape objectives. The Prisoner gameplay is fun, but not all that scary. It’s very frantic, trying to find the right items to complete objectives, whilst running away from the monster. A good monster player will make it incredibly difficult to get anything done and adds an actual element of anxiety.
There is potential here, and there was definitely moments where I had fun with the game. There is a lot of work needed, but there is definitely potential here. Once some more animations are actually present in the game, and the abilities of Bhagra and the Malacosm are tuned a little bit more, I can see there be quite a good time here with Monstrum 2. However, in its current state, it’s just a little hard to look past how unfinished it is, even in this early access stage. I would hope a large content update in terms of stability and visual is early on the roadmap, which it appears to be.
Monstrum 2 definitely has potential, but at this early stage it’s just a little too underwhelming.
