Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee

"Could have been better..."

Well, lemme start by saying my review on this game is just, in that I am an extreme hard core Godzilla fan. Unlike my review of GTA: Vice City, I am more critical on aspects of this game, because of the topic. To begin, I bought this game immediately as it came out. I didn't expect much out of it, as it is a NOVELTY game. A game in which is only sold for the topic and not game play. This game was enjoyable, but mainly because I got to see all my favorite Godzilla characters doing what they do best, killing everything in sight. As with previous Godzilla games, this wasn't that great of a game, but could have been so much better if the right people had madeit. So, let us delve deeper into this game to see what makes it tick.

Gameplay
4

Now, don't get my wrong, this game was fun. It was. But it could have been 100x funner if they changed some aspects to it. I liked how they had many styles of play, and even more how they included up to four people. I liked how they allowed the extra environment so that you could destroy cities around you. Now, here were the problems:
1. Poor control. Unfortunately, the controls were subpar. While they were ''easy'' They all did the same thing with every character, and there was no real move diversity. The only real differences were that: Ghidorah/Mecha Ghidorah uses his heads as Arms, Ghidorah/Mecha Ghidorah/Rodan can fly, and that Megalon can tunnel under ground. Other then that, almost all the attacks are the same.
2. No combos. This game is a button mashers delight. Most good fighting games allow you to execute hundreds of endless strings of combos and have tons of different things you can do to make yourself invincible in the heat of battle. Sadly this game lacks it. Because the monsters are so big, and unmovable, they have no combos.
3. The monsters are slow. Yes, I admit that a 75 Ton gargantuas monster shouldn't exactly be fast, it would be mad fun if they were. Jut imagine Godzilla dashing through the screen at 100 mph for no apparent reason? It'd be chaos! and Chaos in Fighting games=Fun.
4. Too much effort to destroy buildings. If this game was Free Roam, and you could run around the screen at any direction like a maniac tearing buildings apart, this game would be ALOT more fun. Yes, I do know there is something like that in Destruction mode, but they coulda tweaked it about. And besides, I dont think a building could withstand an atomic blast as well as it does...
5. Story thrown together within 5 minutes, but I wont go into that.

Media
4

Well, I dont usually like to combine Graphics with Sound, but in some games its a must. This games sound is atrocious for lack of a better word. The announcer is HORRIBLE, the Music is Substandard, and most of the roars (if I rememeber correctly) Do NOT sound like that... (I'm look at you Ghidorah...) While I will admit, that the sound effects (From my knowlegde, they used the same sounds from most of the plasma attacks as they did from all the movies).

Graphics

The Graphics, I can't really criticize since any good godzilla fan will know that in the original movies, all the characters were men in costumes. Besides the fact, the Special attacks aren't flashy because they look EXACTLY the same as they did in the movie. King Ghidorah's attack was always a triple burst of crappy looking lightning bolts, etc. I don't give this a bad score, but I don't give it a good score, because Game Cube has given us incredible graphics in the past, and they could have done somewhat better.

Overall
5

Not a bad game, but not that great either. Its moderately fun for multiple people, and a time killer for one person.
One thing I didn't like...was how the instruction manual gave away all the locked characters. It would have been a tad bit more of a surprise if they didn't, but its understandable. This game was alright, but with the right makers, (i.e my favorite fighting game developers, Activision/Eighting/Hudson). And, althought it would have made this game somewhat insane, it would have been more fun. This game is a renter for people who know NOTHING of Godzilla, but if you're a real godzilla fan like me...You may want to invest in a cheap copy of this... Hope i've been of assistance.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/02, Updated 12/30/02