Monster Prom XXL Review

Monster Prom was released back in 2018 on PC and now it’s available in XXL form on console, which includes any DLC and content released since day one. That means Monster Prom XXL has a ton of endings and scenes to discover across two terms—the first term and DLC second term—and several hours of play. Expect a well-written and hilarious narrative, a loveable cast of monstrous misfits, and a scramble to get together all the stats you need before the most important night of your life: your high school prom.

Monster Prom XXL is playable by one to four players, online and offline, and each playthrough will take you at least 45 minutes to complete—though that varies on reading speed and the ability of your co-op partner or partners to be fair and honest. Just make sure you’ve got the whole hour free, because there’s no way to pause a game and resume it at a later point. You start the game by selecting your number of players and, if you’re playing couch co-op, there’s even the option of sharing a controller, which was not only a throwback to the glory days of couch co-op, but a sound game design decision. Then, you decide if you want to play a short game or a long game—the difference between the two being that there’s slightly fewer turns in a short game. Then, you choose from the four available characters. It’s worth noting that, though there’s two male and two female avatars, you can select which pronoun you’re most comfortable with—whether that be he, she, or they—which is a wonderful indicator of the LGBTQ+ inclusiveness of the times.

During your playthrough, each player takes turns selecting a location on campus and then talking to the character or characters therein and making a dialogue decision. Different locations alter your stats both positively and negatively, and the decisions you make will change your standing with the character in question. The correct answer isn’t always obvious, and at times they gave me pause as I didn’t want to lose stats for making the wrong decision.  It helps to think about your response in terms of who you’re responding to or what stat the location calls for, depending on the situation.

Once everyone has taken their turn, you’re presented with a fun ice-breaker type game where everyone chooses an item, person, profession, etc., and then the order of turns during the next round are decided based on the criteria outlined by a question asked. These are laugh out loud moments and can get heated as you argue why your answer is better. This is also where the trustworthiness of your prom-bound partners comes into play. The last person who took their turn decides who’s answer lines up with the given criteria and ultimately decides on the next round’s turn order. Which means if that person is so inclined, they could completely ignore the results of the mini game and make it so that they’ll be first.  Each location can only be selected once, so if another player chooses the one you want, you’ll have to wait until next turn.

Which leads to my biggest gripe with Monster Prom XXL: who you can successfully romance at the end of your two week high school session is based on your total stats–not necessarily how well liked you are by that character. This discounts the well-received dialogue options you selected during scenes with your potential date. This also makes it so that, if you want to aim for a specific romance option, it makes it very difficult to do so unless the other players let you have dibs on the location you need to boost your stats.

The art style is colourful and cartoony, and the music is catchy though repetitive, but the real winner here is the writing. Monster Prom XXL has the kind of raunchy, irreverent, quick-witted humour you’d expect from animations like Archer or Bob’s Burgers, and I found myself laughing aloud on multiple occasions. There are swear words aplenty and general ridiculousness that is made capable by the fact that the characters are made up monster teens and in this world drinking poison is normal and murder and mayhem are commonplace.

. Bottom Line.

Monster Prom XXL is hilariously written and you’ll have even more fun if you’ve got someone to play with—either online or locally. There’s over a thousand endings to get between the base game and DLC and the cast is likeable enough to want to see all of their scenes. It’s just a shame the deciding factor is solely based on stats, making the majority of your character-related dialogue options feel pointless, otherwise this would have easily been an 8. That small flaw aside, I enjoyed my time with Monster Prom XXL and I have dozens of playthroughs ahead of me to clean up the rest of the events.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.