Mostroscopy Review: A Fantastic Monster Mash (PS4)

Fighting games have been around for years, becoming mostly everyone’s top favourite genre in gaming. Household names like Street Fighter, Tekken and Mortal Kombat constantly shift the balance, creating many smaller titles using a blueprint from these fan favourites. This brings us to our main focus, Mostroscopy, a classic fighting game that combines Horror and Luchador films from Mexican cinema of the 50s. 

I’ve always been a fan of fighting games since I played Mortal Kombat 9 on release. Since then, I’ve tried to dabble in as many fighting games as I can. Mostroscopy caught my eye with its classic movie filter and its monstrous cast of characters. It delivers a classic arcade experience with easy to learn controls and some quirky lore. Find out more in our review down below. 

Mostroscopy is available on PC, PS4/PS5, Switch, Xbox Series X|S for $12.49.

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Story – Climb The Monster Ladder

With most fighting games, the story isn’t the main focus; in fact, for some games, it’s nonexistent. However, fighting games nowadays will have fully voiced stories that last a few hours. Mostroscopy chooses to adapt the Arcade Ladder mode, putting you up against several enemies. This way of storytelling has been done before successfully in games like Mortal Kombat, but Mostroscopy misses the beat. Each of the 16 playable characters receives a unique comic-book style intro that presents small details regarding the character’s motivations. Some will have better reasons to fight than others, with some being as goofy as looking for a lost girl’s dog. 

The calls to action that Mostroscopy provides are a collection of “interesting” choices

During the Arcade Ladder, you’ll fight five of the other playable characters and one boss character who is sadly unplayable. This is the length of each character’s Arcade Ladder, which can be completed in under 20 minutes. With each fight completed, your chosen character has some dialogue displayed referencing the fallen foe. Then, once the final boss is defeated, the outro features another comic-book style panel. This is all well and good for what Mostroscopy offers, however, a lot of the context is missing. 

This is made increasingly clear by how most of the outros were done. Practically every character would start with one motivation and then, by the end, would completely forget about it and be suddenly doing something completely different. One character would be in search of a book to seal a demon away, but by the end, they end up teaming up with a superhero from space. Some stories would completely go off the rails, like with one story centring around a demon being told to fix a deal she made, only to end her story burning down a party full of rich people. 

Her story began hunting down fish monsters, then suddenly this…I don’t even know

Going through a few characters’ Arcade Ladders, it was becoming quite obvious that I was missing some details. I eventually figured out during my time with La Mujer Vampiro that there was a comic that was set before the events of the game. During her intro, there is a note advising the player to read the comic first for context. The problem with this approach is that the comic is not included with the game but must be purchased for an extra $2. This was an annoying limitation in an already lacking cohesion of character stories that, after five playthroughs of the Arcade Ladder, made me not care about their stories. 

The comic is only referenced once making it even more annoying and unnecessary

Gameplay – Retro Arcade Mayhem

Like I’ve said above, Mostroscopy is a simple fighting game that offers a roster of sixteen characters. It uses a small number of controls and provides easy moves for newcomers to the genre. You have a basic attack button, a special attack button, a taunt, and a block button at your disposal. The basic attacks and special attacks will change their moves depending on what direction you go with the analogue stick. The special moves are where most of the fun can be had, especially with the charged-up versions. Each of the special attacks has three versions that are dependent on how long you charge them for. Some attacks are just enhanced versions of the same attack, while others can vary depending on the character. 

Perform simple moves and land crazy combos with special moves

In each fight, your goal is to defeat your opponent two times to claim victory. While fighting, you will build up your “Monstro” gauge through connecting hits or taunting. When you go into Monstro mode, all your special moves can be immediately activated to their highest level. This allows players to dish out high amounts of damage with ease. I had a blast spamming as many moves as I could in the short time. Additionally, you can use portions of your gauge for guard countering an enemy attack or to push through an attacking opponent to attack from behind. 

Characters – An Unbalanced but Impressive Roster

One of the most important parts of a fighting game is the characters you’ll be playing. I think I speak for everyone, the characters we play alongside their moves make these games. Mostroscopy is no exception, it features a 16 character roster of bombastic lucadors, supernatural creatures, and a pretty cool robot. Usually, I end up only liking a few characters in most fighting games, but the roster in this game is pretty good. I mainly played as the undead gunslinger El Charro Negro who uses his firearms and a skeleton horse in battle. 

The current roster for Mostroscopy on PlayStation 4

During my time playing, I enjoyed almost the entire roster (wasn’t a fan of La Mujer Vampiro), though I did notice something. Depending on which character you play as, you’ll either have the upper hand or not. Usually, this is due to skill, but some of the characters are badly balanced. Some of the larger characters can take a larger beating than others, and certain special moves can deal insane amounts of damage. One example is with the demon Luzbelle, who, with her fast movement, can use a special move that fires off near undodgeable fireballs. Another character, Fluffy the werewolf, can use her ice projectiles to immobilise opponents for a few seconds. This can be used practically infinitely since it doesn’t require any charging to use. 

Game Modes – The Usual Suspects

Mostroscopy has a few game modes available, including a Story mode, which I’ve detailed above, Versus, Training, and Challenge mode. Versus provides the classic 1v1 mode where you can fight another player locally, fight a CPU or watch two CPUs go at it. In Training mode, you can practice and perfect each character’s moves. Finally, we have challenge mode, where you pick a character and attempt to complete several rounds of combos.

Fluffy possessed some of my favourite special moves to use

Despite its faults, I enjoyed Story mode the most, especially with the exclusive Starman boss, who was fun to fight against. Versus mode is exactly what you want; the only thing missing is online battles. The training mode provides what is needed for new players, but could be improved, like the CPU being able to fight against you. The challenge mode was my least favourite game mode due to the complicated combos. It doesn’t help either that it also suffers from poor tracking to the point where even nailing the full string of combos can lead to some hits not registering properly. Another downside to the mode is that the combo challenges have to be completed in one go. This made things more challenging, but not very fun. 

Graphics & Audio – Classic Monster Movies

When I first discovered Mostroscopy, the first thing that caught my attention was the fantastic art direction. The cast of characters is inspired by horror films from the 50s and old luchador films. Each character has a unique design, and each of their special moves looks fantastic in the different filters Mostroscopy provides. Speaking of filters, there are countless stages to battle on, each of them having two variants. These include a technicolour style that has grainy but effective colouration that mimics an old television. The other style is a classic black and white presentation that I love since it immersed me in the old monster movies. 

Generally, a great ambient soundtrack for a groovy Halloween playlist

In regards to audio, there isn’t much voice work for the characters other than some grunts. However, Mostroscopy does provide a great voice line when you boot up the game, saying the name in a spooky tone, similar to games like Resident Evil. Outside of voicework, the soundtrack is brilliant, each stage gets its own unique track as well as all the characters. Tracks like Ghost Surf Rock and EpicBattle J were standout favourites of mine. If you wanted to listen to all 31 songs, you can access them via the Jukebox in the main menu. 

Mostroscopy was reviewed on a PS5 using the PS4 version of the game provided by Seashell Studios.