[Review] Monster Dash: An Endless Horizontal Platformer

Monster Dash is a distance game from Halfbrick Studios, the creators of the addictive Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, and Age of Zombies. In this game, you have to play the role of the hero named Barry Steakfries who always carries a shotgun and keeps running. Basic aim of the game is to run as far as you can and killing monsters.

Our Review

Monster Dash adheres to the basics of a survival platformer where you jump over perilous gaps while continuously running from left to right, but drops in a great monster theme with an arsenal of arms. Without being remedial and overly complex, Monster Dash is simplistic and inventive as well. Here you have to tap one button on the left side of the screen to jump and one on the right to shoot the monsters. The lead character Barry will handle the running part himself, you just have to keep him alive and shoot on his behalf. You run until you die; that is, when either you lose all your hearts or fail to leap across a gap.

Monster Dash offers four different locations with four different monsters. Those chasm-filled stages are a Transylvanian level with vampires, an Egyptian level with mummies, an urban level with zombies and the Great Wall of China featuring demons. After running a certain distance, Barry is transported to one of that four different monster worlds. You will occasionally come across a weapons crate. By hitting crates, you can unlock new weapons with limited ammo, such as the excellent Machine Gun Jetpack or railgun-like Pacifier. These weapon power-ups give you a chance to dispatch more than a handful of monsters at a time.

The game starts with three hearts but you will lose each heart by running into an obstacle or into a monster. There are hearts scattered throughout the journey that you can collect. Collecting a heart when you have your maximum number of hearts gives you an extra heart, else-ways it heals you. Both foregrounds and backgrounds are equally impressive with several layers of parallax scrolling thats giving the game a sense of depth. The game also supports score bragging on Facebook and Twitter, as well as OpenFeint leaderboards and achievements help add to the replay value.

However, Monster Dash is one of those games that you can pick up and play for 5-10 minutes at best, due to its lack of surprises. It is not a game you will be playing over and over again in one intense sitting. Nonetheless, Monster dash is a perfect game for rejuvenating from boredom. You have to purchase this game by $0.99. But I think, your money will be more worthy if Halfbrick could update the game with new monsters, levels and surprises.