It's a great time to be a fan of action RPGs. But not because of stinkers like Space Siege and Too Human. Instead, Monster Madness: Grave Danger is an update of last year's underappreciated monster-mashing hack-and-slash teens vs. zombies undeathmatch. This game presses all the right buttons: clever theme, cooperative gameplay online or locally, inventive weapons, wildly varied enemies, and persistent characters who level up however and wherever you play them.

Read the review after the jump.

Pop quiz! Zombies Ate My Neighbors is…

a) …a George Romero movie.
b) …a good reason to move.
c) …something I just totally made up.
d) …an SNES game that hasn't been suitably ripped off/homaged in the 15 years since it was released by Lucasarts.

My theory as to why Monster Madness and its recent Playstation 3 iteration, Grave Danger, got such bad reviews is that too few people know the answer to the above question. Zombies Ate My Neighbors should have started a trend of light-hearted horror games in which monsters of all variety are slain by spirited kids with crazy improvised weapons. Imagine facing down the undead armed with a squirt gun full of holy water, shaken soda cans as a grenades, popsicles, a CD launcher, or a cellphone turned into a taser. Home Alone meets Dawn of the Dead.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors was a sort of stage-based combat platformer/Gauntlet clone thingie-ma-bob. Monster Madness isn't quite that. Instead, it's a full-blown action RPG that draws its inspiration from the tone of Zombies Ate My Neighbors (there's a direct reference to that game in the first cut scene). Horror here is a great big colorful goof. It is an opportunity for terrible puns and a grab bag of cultural references. It is the sport of kids. It's the giddy delight of Halloween. And it's a great place for an action RPG.

Every monster here has its own cinematic introduction (although some didn't survive the streamlining process to the PS3), and they all have distinct abilities or attacks. You’ll fight fat farting zombies, flirty witches who turn you into a frog, jack o’ lanterns that stick pumpkins onto your head, UFOs that beam down green martians, an undead granny with a gaggle of cats, an annoying leprechaun (is there any other kind?), and more. There are a few consistent themes, but this is mostly a crazy stew of anything vaguely horror related.

This Playstation 3 version is ported over from last year's Xbox 360 game. It includes new online support for playing the adventure cooperatively, as well as the competitive arena and battlefield modes (not that anyone is playing these modes online…). There are also several challenges, ranging from sequences lifted out of the game, to minigames created from whole cloth. These are strictly optional, but if you score a "C" or better, you'll unlock costumes for the game's characters. In other words, even the most remote sense of attachment to a favorite character (dibbs on Jennifer!) will have you banging away at the challenges.

Parts of the adventure mode from the Xbox 360 version have been chopped out for this Playstation port, making it a bit sleeker. There's less lateral room to explore, but there are also fewer aggravating challenges. Anyone who played the 360 version will probably remember the werewolves at the construction site and the trek up into the girders. Ugh. Good news: the site is still there, but now you just drive straight through. The terrible garbage truck chase is gone, although oddly enough the cinematic introducing it is still in the game. The Mr. Huggles battle isn't half the accomplishment it used to be. Even the final boss battle is also cut, which is a shame, since it was a surprising and amusing fight.

But the trade-off for the narrative sloppiness is much smoother gameplay. The difficultly level is a lot more even, and the pacing is better. Monster Madness has a lot to show you, and now it does so at a steady clip. Also tidied up are the camera system and the controls that made combat difficult for some players. Now the camera takes care of itself and fighting plays out like a traditional two-stick combat game, a la Robotron or Geometry Wars.

Also new to this version are upgradeable items for each of the four characters that will improve their combat capabilities. It's not nearly as dry as upgrading stats, but it's definitely an RPG system. And it's a great money sink to encourage replay value. But the barbed hook that'll get any action RPG player by the cheek is the weapon system. There are a dozen or so different weapons, all of which can be built and then upgraded by cashing in bits of junk you'll find in tool boxes hidden throughout the levels (the junk used to be scattered pell mell around the levels, giving Monster Madness the messy feel of a level designer who just left the loot lying around carelessly).

Different weapons are purchased with different bits of junk. Although it’s easy enough to just gather everything and spend it whenever something’s available, the meticulous player might notice an economy. Do you spend your pipes on a new flamethrower, or do you save them to upgrade the shotgun that’s served you so well? And what should you buy with those few precious gears you’ve found? Then there are all the fancy gadgets that mostly cost money, but mix up the action with a variety of bombs, turrets, dance-inspiring boom boxes, and even supernatural tokens that let you play as a monster. As a combat sandbox, Monster Madness is quite generous.

You can freely replay levels to gather loot and improve your characters, who are persistent whether you're playing solo, online, or with friends locally. This is an undead killing spree where the possibilities, the mayhem, and the fun increase with the amount of time you play, and the number of people playing. It's all about the interplay between distinct creatures and distinct weapons. It doesn’t have the gloss of something like Ratchet & Clank, which is probably the best example of this kind of game. But it has the basics down pat and more than enough heart to stand out at a time when the only other new action RPGs are underwhelming half-baked designs like Space Siege and Too Human.