REVIEW With over 50 years of films, and a wide range of westernized reboots and sequels – the Godzilla series is one of the most universally acclaimed monsters franchises to date. As a long time fan of the series myself, I have since longed for the release of a one decent Godzilla fighting game – complete with all the cheesy and awesome aspects that made these classics films, so fun to watch. So when I heard the news that Namco Bandai was working on a Play- Station 4 title – as you can guess, I was actually looking forward to this game. But as it turns out through its clunky combat, uninspired game modes and ugly presentation – that not even the most ample fanservice is able to save Godzilla from the realms of mediocrit. Performing attacks are awkward and in some cases, fail to connect at all. The move list is complete gar- GODZILLA Players will stomp around, destroy bage, as a lot of the attacks fail to generators, and will repeat this annoying process for 7-10 stages as Kaiju can be an extremely agoniz- register. And fighting off particular they try to get Godzilla to grow. ing considering, just how unbalanced every monster is. With not much variety – aside from a mode that allows to you defend these machines – as you can imagine, the appeal of this mode wears out its welcome quick. Sure Godzilla tries to hide this boring factor through destroying vehicles and leveling entire cities to the ground. But even with that, it still isn’t able to excuse the minimal effort placed into this poor and disappointing campaign. Enemy Kaiju – especially on the harder difficulty – will hound you endlessly with the same two moves over, and over again. And given that there’s no block button as well, players will find themselves at a dismay as they try to escape these annoying cheap combos. As for the presentation, visually this game looks incredibly dated. Whilst paying homage to the original movie with one fairly decent tutorial screen – it’s from here on out, that things go downhill. With only two offline modes, God of Destruction and King of Kaiju are the only single player experiences within the entirety of Godzilla. With King of Kaiju focused on monster on monster action, God of Destruction is essentially the main story mode for Godzilla. As explained in the tutorial screen – Japan has been making a nuisance out of Godzilla’s energy source, by harvesting these precious materials for power. With no other alternatives but to wreck havoc amongst these machines, players embark on a quest to destroy these pesky generators, in order to harvest the energy for our big green monster. And with that said, that’s pretty much the bulk of the experience within God of Destruction. With little attention placed into the destructibility, buildings at most will flicker a few times before letting a lackluster explosion. Needless to say, not even Michael Bay himself will be able to salvage much fun from wreaking havoc amongst these pitiful landscapes. As for destroying vehicles – spotting these things on the map is either an annoying process in itself, or just flat-out nuisance in trying to target properly. When you’re not attacking generators, monsters will sometimes appear depending on either how much of the city you’ve destroyed or how long you’ve been playing of the level. Whilst admittedly the thought of battling one of Godzillas many kaijus may sound appealing on paper – it isn’t until you discover by playing it, just how boring and broken the combat mechanics are. So much so, that if it wasn’t for the appearance of the 2014 Godzilla – this game could’ve easily been mistaken as a late PlayStation 2 title. Color ranges from the most disgusting looking variations of grey, green and brown – and a lot of the levels are designed so small and restrictive to the point, that it will almost make players claustrophobic. Truly though, the only thing that stands out is probably both the sound, and the design of the many Kaiju featured in Godzilla. But even with that, the monsters regardless are dated models – and the sound does eventually become repetitive through the limited tracks presented within these stages. Through its poor visuals, mediocre gameplay and broken combat mechanics – Godzilla manages to ruin all the potential that this title might’ve had. My advice – pick up the movies and instead, binge your way through the entirety of the Godzilla franchise.
2.8/10 Click to view the trailer here! PROS: THE TUTORIAL SCREEN SOUND EFFECTS SUIT EACH OF THE VARIOUS MONSTERS CONS: DULL VISUALS AWKWARD AND CHEAP COMBAT UNINSPIRED GAME MODES WRITTEN BY jason english WWW.STICKYTRIGGER.COM