Kind of synthesizes the ideas of the two NES Godzilla games into something more interesting, more cohesive, and definitely more true to the source material.
... buuuuuuuuut it has a couple major problems that absolutely cripple it, and keep it from any kind of hidden gem status. And it's a REAL shame, because it's alllllllmost extremely cool.
On the positive side, the presentation is darn good. There's real work put into the story ideas, the art, and the VERY faithful music (when you get near the boss and the theme kicks in, omggggg), but especially impressive is the way the overworld gameplay is presented. The story conceit is that the humans have found a way to sort-of control Godzilla and are using him to fight off attacking aliens. So although you ARE controlling him, with your D-pad, you're also kind of not. You point him via a top-down map and he moves sluggishly forward automatically, square by square, and does not instantly respond to new directions, while also going into a little cutscene if he runs into a building he has to destroy or some tanks shooting at him. And yeah, all that SOUNDS horrible and non-gamey, but it's extremely successful at giving you the feeling that Godzilla is his own creature, a wild animal you're desperately trying to direct, and you're more or less just suggesting to him where to go and hoping he listens. (If you understand how it works, he'll always do what you want, he doesn't ignore inputs or anything, but it still feels very indirect. And I think in this case, that's actually pretty cool.) So, couple that with the other half of the screen opposite the map, in which we actually see Godzilla 'live', walking around and doing his thing, but shot from an oblique low angle as though we're watching a feed of someone on the ground relaying his actions back to the humans' home base ... this all confers a very unique vibe that replicates the movies' constant tension between man and Godzilla, even when he's being a 'good guy'. They really put some thought into it.
Unfortunately, despite its merits, this portion of the gameplay - the walking through levels to gather items and find the boss - is really, really slow, and filled with a billion unskippable mini-cutscenes. It succeeds at building up tension for the final battle of each stage against another kaiju, but you need to have some real patience if you're gonna get there. Again, it ties into Godzilla's character and is very true to the movies, but when you're playing this sort of thing as a video game, there's no way you don't just want him to hurry the eff up a bit.
Worse is the OTHER half of the game, the kaiju combat. I'm not going to try to explain it in any sort of real way here, but just suffice it to say that it is weird and dumb. An impenetrable, semi-randomized, tug-of-war, roulette wheel, ATB, rhythm-based ... I don't know what. But it sucks, and the ENTIRE time you're doing the fights you're gonna be wishing to the good lord that it was just some kind of standard fighting game thing instead. Oh and there's a cutscene every time someone does an attack. It's just boneheaded, I don't get it. Either they weren't confident that they could make good actual fighting (and judging by the first NES game, they were correct) or they were just too focused on making the battles cinematic rather than playable, and felt like if they didn't pile a bunch of non-standard weirdness on top of it, it would be too simple. Either way, sucks.
So yeah, this is really close to being the first awesome depiction of the big G in games and shows that they were still really thinking through how best to translate his unique qualities and style to games, and not afraid to take some creative risks to get there. But in a couple places they definitely overthought it a bit.
... buuuuuuuuut it has a couple major problems that absolutely cripple it, and keep it from any kind of hidden gem status. And it's a REAL shame, because it's alllllllmost extremely cool.
On the positive side, the presentation is darn good. There's real work put into the story ideas, the art, and the VERY faithful music (when you get near the boss and the theme kicks in, omggggg), but especially impressive is the way the overworld gameplay is presented. The story conceit is that the humans have found a way to sort-of control Godzilla and are using him to fight off attacking aliens. So although you ARE controlling him, with your D-pad, you're also kind of not. You point him via a top-down map and he moves sluggishly forward automatically, square by square, and does not instantly respond to new directions, while also going into a little cutscene if he runs into a building he has to destroy or some tanks shooting at him. And yeah, all that SOUNDS horrible and non-gamey, but it's extremely successful at giving you the feeling that Godzilla is his own creature, a wild animal you're desperately trying to direct, and you're more or less just suggesting to him where to go and hoping he listens. (If you understand how it works, he'll always do what you want, he doesn't ignore inputs or anything, but it still feels very indirect. And I think in this case, that's actually pretty cool.) So, couple that with the other half of the screen opposite the map, in which we actually see Godzilla 'live', walking around and doing his thing, but shot from an oblique low angle as though we're watching a feed of someone on the ground relaying his actions back to the humans' home base ... this all confers a very unique vibe that replicates the movies' constant tension between man and Godzilla, even when he's being a 'good guy'. They really put some thought into it.
Unfortunately, despite its merits, this portion of the gameplay - the walking through levels to gather items and find the boss - is really, really slow, and filled with a billion unskippable mini-cutscenes. It succeeds at building up tension for the final battle of each stage against another kaiju, but you need to have some real patience if you're gonna get there. Again, it ties into Godzilla's character and is very true to the movies, but when you're playing this sort of thing as a video game, there's no way you don't just want him to hurry the eff up a bit.
Worse is the OTHER half of the game, the kaiju combat. I'm not going to try to explain it in any sort of real way here, but just suffice it to say that it is weird and dumb. An impenetrable, semi-randomized, tug-of-war, roulette wheel, ATB, rhythm-based ... I don't know what. But it sucks, and the ENTIRE time you're doing the fights you're gonna be wishing to the good lord that it was just some kind of standard fighting game thing instead. Oh and there's a cutscene every time someone does an attack. It's just boneheaded, I don't get it. Either they weren't confident that they could make good actual fighting (and judging by the first NES game, they were correct) or they were just too focused on making the battles cinematic rather than playable, and felt like if they didn't pile a bunch of non-standard weirdness on top of it, it would be too simple. Either way, sucks.
So yeah, this is really close to being the first awesome depiction of the big G in games and shows that they were still really thinking through how best to translate his unique qualities and style to games, and not afraid to take some creative risks to get there. But in a couple places they definitely overthought it a bit.
DJSCheddar
1 month ago