Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee

"Your average fighter. The unbiased review starts now."

Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee is a fighting game that includes 11 monsters from the history of Godzilla. You can choose from favorites like Godzilla and king Ghidorah. Of course this game is also a fighting game. You can perform combos and such by pressing buttons in a continued motion. You can hurl buildings at your foes,but I will discuss all of that in the actual review.

Graphics 9/10

Very nice. The monsters are as life like as it gets. The buildings and cities have a distinguished realism to them. The only problem in the graphics that I found so far is the fact that a monsters body will sometimes go through a building,but that problem occurs in most games anyway.

Gameplay 7/10

This is the main emphasis of the review. This game is a fighting game and the setting is in the middle of real life city. You will be fighting in places such as Tokyo Japan and San Francisco. 1 to 4 players can participate in a match. You can attack your opponent with the A,X and B button. Pressing a same button three times will often lead to a three hit combo. If you press one of those buttons and the left or right button at the same time,you can perform a single attack with higher damage than usual. If you press the Z button,your monster will fire a ball of energy at the opponent. If you hold the Z button,you will fire a beam with long distance. If you don't let go of the Z button while holding it down,you can charge your projectile and do more damage and you will be able to knock your opponent down. However,your opponent can run to you before you finish charging and get a hit on you.

Some monsters have special attacks that only they can perform. For example,Megalon can burrow in the ground by pressing the A and Y button at the same time. Gigan can teleport behind the opponent by doing the same thing. Some monsters such as Godzilla have no special attack.

During your battle,you will often come across strange looking objects. These are power ups. The blue raindrop looking one puts you in rage mode. While in rage mode,your monster will do more damage with attacks and they can perform a special rage attack by pressing the A and X button at the same time. Rage attacks are very powerful and every monster has one.

I gave the gameplay a 7 because battles can get rather dull and your opponent slowly becomes more predictable each time you play. And also because of the fact that when you play versus mode,you can't have four people play unless you have 4 friends over. 4 player matches with only 1 player and 3 computers would have probably boosted the replay value. And I only know 1 friend who likes this game and 2 player matches can get rather boring.

Music/Sound 6/10

I gave it a 6 because of the fact the monster attacks,grunts,and roaring sounds are very realistic and appropriate. However,the actual battle music is very low pitched and you can't hear it until after you either win or lose a fight.That's why I turn off the music in the options mode since there technically isn't any music throughout the entire match.

Story 7/10

It does match Godzilla criteria. An alien species by the name of the Vortex have decided to seize Earth and plunder it's resources. To encourage the cooperation of the inhabitants of Earth,the Vortex have brain washed all of the monsters except the one you chose to terrorize Earth and destroy it. Your objective is to defeat 8 opponents,the 8th one being Mechagodzilla who is a nasty blend of cheap and hard. It only got a 7 because there are no plot twists at all. You only get updated on the short story twice. Three times when you beat the game.

Replay value 4/10

I knew that fighting games suffered from replay value and this was no different. Sure you only start with 3 monsters and must unlock the other 8 and you also have to unlock the 13 hidden stages,but this can be accomplished in a fair amount of time. You unlock a city for every 4 levels you beat in adventure mode. You unlock a monster when you beat the game with a monster except for Destroyah and Mechagodzilla. Once you accomplish this there's nothing left to do except to collect the Atari tokens which unlock pictures in the gallery mode,but that isn't enough. If you could do 4 player matches with 1 player the replay value would've gone up by probably 2 points. But they couldn't do that so the only way to do 4 player matches is to have 4 friends over and if your friends have no experience whatsoever,you will cream them and that's not fun. You also need at least 2 people to play the three other modes. So if your alone you can only do three modes and there's no point in doing adventure mode when you unlocked everything. I guess you can try to beat your KO records in the survival mode.

Overall

This game didn't have enough 1 player features. The ability to do 4 player matched with 1 player would have made this game so much better. Atari better be working on a sequel,but I still admit that this game is a good game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/02, Updated 11/05/02