esse jogo é incrível, joguei demais ele com meus amigos quando pequeno e era sempre divertido demais. fiquei muito feliz quando vi que ele estava no catálogo da plus.

sei que hoje em dia esses controles já estão obsoletos demais e quase que eu dropava só por conta disso, mas dei uma chance e acabei acostumando.

oh saudade de jogar isso com os amigos. marcou demais na infância no ps2.

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Sometimes you find a game that is missing that finishing touch. That last bit of polish that holds it back from becoming truly great.

War of the Monsters is an interesting pitch to the player on paper. A Kaiju arena fighter developed by the team behind Twisted Metal 1,2 and Black. Though David Jaffe had no involvement at the time as he was busy with God of War. You still get a fun, slightly under cooked experience out of it.

The story shows a lot of promise, humanity triumphs over an alien invasion, but the toxic waste from the crashed UFOs causes giant monsters to pop up around the globe, and start a global war for supremacy.

Unfortunately the story goes nowhere after the intro movie as it's unfinished. You play through adventure mode with your monster of choice, with no intro movie explaining why the monster is doing what it's doing, then you kill the final boss and the game just ends.

You do unlock an origin movie for 8 of the 10 monsters after finishing their adventure modes. But it feels like a band aid solution since the devs had to rush the game out. It's disappointing that the story had to be so under cooked here given the potential of the setting. And leads to the two unlockable monsters feeling tacked on.

The ost is perfectly serviceable. If you've seen any American creature features you'll feel right at home.

The main problem though stems from the music sounding as generic to genre stereotypes as possible. As a result, no tracks stand out and your left with a competent, but unmemorable OST.

Visually the game is excellent. You have some fantastic texture work, like Ultra-V's wings having paint scuff marks. Monsters like Congar have decent furshading (which was rare on the PS2) and Kineticlops has convincing translucent, pulsing electrical currents throughout his body.

The particle and destruction effects are real eye candy as well. Fire and electric shocks blend in seamlessly with the action on screen. Buildings shatter and crumble in hilarious and and over the top ways and greatly contribute to the chaotic feel of the fights.

The monsters animate well and have some great run cycles and attack animations. Every monster, light or heavy, conveys their weight through their attacks and movement and it's a joy to see them in motion. One great example of this is Kineticlops, who's sole solid matter (his giant eye), bobs and weaves realistically with every animation.

The art direction does a great job of capturing the aesthetics of each region of Kaiju/Sci fi/Creature features represented here. Ultra-V looks like the perfect Amalgam of Super Robot anime. Togera blends Godzilla and Gorgo into a unique blend of Japanese and British aesthetics. Agamo takes the Daimajin inspiration and adds a Hawaiian aesthetic.

It's clear the devs loved the material they were inspired from. Every character here is designed with a ton of sincerity and Kaiju fans will get a lot out of the characters here.

Gameplay wise, the combat is good, but has some baggage.

Unlike other Kaiju arena fighters like Godzilla save the Earth, movement is much faster. Navigating the stages is brisk and easy, but it does present a massive annoyance in single player.

When CPU monsters in Adventure mode lose around a quarter of their health, they will make gangway for health pick ups. This isn't an AI bug, the CPUs don't care about dying, they just want to make sure you have no resources. Chasing them down to stop this can be very annoying and it's present in every non boss stage in adventure.

Much like Twisted Metal, the AI in adventure can be relentless. When they are at full health, all enemy monsters track you, and only you, down despite there being no team battles in this game. It can lead to some frustrating ganks down the line and players will have to resort to crowd control heavy attacks to send one enemy flying to solve this.

The player has two melee attacks at their disposal. A light combo and a heavy combo. Light combos are obviously quicker and can set up for a super, and heavy attacks, while slow, send enemy monsters flying and let the player grab health and energy pick ups. Button mashing will not work here and the game expects the player to learn the basics to survive. Uncommon for Arena fighters, but appreciated.

Unfortunately the rushed nature of the game leads to each characters combos doing the same amount of damage. So it leads to melee feeling sameish. And it's exacerbated since this is the main meat of the combat.

This also gives fast monsters like Preytor and Congar an unfair advantage. As their speed will always give them priority frames. While slower monsters like Magmo and Togera will have to block and hope to god for an opening.

Thankfully every character feels mostly unique in their supers. You start each match with a super token that gives you the ability to do an explosion for crowd control, or a super move for high damage.

The former is almost never useful, as heavy attacks already accomplish this, and deal more damage. So the player will just feel obligated to ignore the explosive wave.

The latter leads to some the most entertaining chaos in an arena fighter I've enjoyed in a long time. Every monsters super needs to be used strategically to get the most of it. Ultra-V's grapple will not work unless he's on the same plain as the enemy, Togera's fire breath will cancel out if the player uses any other attack, Congar's sonic roar locks him in place and only covers 90 degrees in front of him etc. This is far preferable to other arena fighters where supers are insta win.

The player can also throw objects. And unlike other arena fighters this comes in clutch, as melee and double jumping drains energy, and running out locks out your melee and double jumping for about 5 seconds. Throwing objects however builds meter that can lead to extra super tokens, and is another example of how this game encourages the player to use every mechanic.

There is some minor annoyances in regards to the thrown objects. Monsters can get impaled and immobilized, and you need to mash buttons to escape. Thankfully if you manage this, you can throw the spear right back at the enemy, and this alleviates this gripe somewhat.

The movement while unlocked takes some getting used to, as turning does not happen on a dime, so you'll be holding L1 and R1 constantly to get tighter movement. It does not help that getting close to enemies soft locks you to them. This becomes very irritating in adventure mode where you need to destroy reactors and you are constantly swung around due to the soft lock.

Stages are very well designed. Players can strategically topple buildings for instakills, or ground pound secret switches to activate disasters like lava rain, tsunamis, or nuclear meltdowns. Every stage has a great sense of character and learning them feels rewarding.

Adventure mode is where most of your time will be spent, as it's one of the best ways to grind for tokens to buy unlockables. It plays out like a traditional arcade mode. You fight the same order of monsters each time. And you fight 3 bosses.

The boss fights are mostly fine, but feel a little undercooked in some areas. Vegon is the biggest offender, as you are supposed to use debris to block her acid volleys, but it will always break after 3 blocks. So the player will have to strafe left (her acid hit box is broken in this direction) and deal with light grazed damage till she opens her self up for damage.

The final boss also has issues. You will take 10% damage in the first phase from his lasers. When it was clear that the pillars you use for cover were supposed to protect you fully, and his second phase is supposed to get staggered slightly after you throw debris at him, but it just stalls him for half a second.

The bosses are fine, but these moments of non polish reinforce how the game feels around only 90% complete.

Other modes include free battle, where two players can fight each other or you can fight a CPU, endurance, a survival mode, and the minigames.

Obviously, free battle is the mode devs wanted players to be playing the most. This is a MP party arena fighter after all. If you have friends that want to play this, or enjoy wailing on CPUs, you'll probably enjoy this. But for some reason you get no tokens from this mode. Which exarbates the grind for them.

Endurance is one player only, and it's really only worth playing because you can earn a lot of tokens. Picking a large stage is unadvised, as clearly the game is not designed around very long fights. So picking stages like Washington DC are optimal as it's small enough but also flat, and prevents enemies from stealing health pick ups.

The only characters you should use in this mode are Preytor and Congar. Since slower characters will only manage about 7 kills before going down. You'll be playing this mode for at least 3-4 hours after finishing adventure mode 8 times. So boredom will set in quickly.

The minigames are MP only, and in a party setting they can definitely be fun. You have a long jump, dodge ball, and a destruction derby esque game. They all play how you think they do and can be fun in bursts. But like Free Battle you don't get tokens from them. So they feel like they are there just cause.

War of the monsters is a mostly well designed, mechanically solid arena fighter that does a lot of things right. But the unfinished state of the story, the incomplete boss fights, and lack of replay value reduce a potentially great game to a good one.

7/10.

This was one of the earliest games I played in my childhood and I've never been more hooked to a game like this. It doesn't age well with its controls and AI behaviors being a bit too frustrating especially for the campaign, but I will always have a soft spot for this game for being my first PS2 game, one of the earliest games I've ever played, one of the first games I was addicted to to the point of unlocking all the characters, skins, minigames and stages. I literally went out of my way to get Twisted Metal Black on my PS2 just to get Agamo's 4th Costume.