Harold and Kumar Kill Zombies

When zombies invade the burbs in "Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia," a forthcoming game for XBox, it's up to the local teens (left) to fight them off. Decent! But "Battle for Suburbia," as described in the gamer press, misses a few beats: for one thing, the outsized, buffed and baldheaded would never be mistaken for suburbanites. One of the great gags of the classic horror flick "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was that you couldn't tell the walking dead from the city dwellers shuffling through their daily lives. These invaders are different than you and me. The settings for the skirmishes, despite praise from gamer-reviewers, are pretty lamely drawn and only one—The Shopping Maul—is recognizable as a typically suburban spot.

What strikes us as genius is that instead of conventional gamer weaponry, the collection of nerds, Goths and skaters wields whatever lies at hand in the suburban landscape: basketballs, lawn furniture, propane tanks and nail guns. The cheerleader twirls her ordinance, and one kid lays hands on grandad's home defibrillator. And while one reviewer takes exception to what he calls the "obscenely sexy," to our eye, that's what they're wearing at our mall, anyway.