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Message: [QUOTE="DietPepsi, post: 169362, member: 73697"] [HEADING=1][CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="349px" alt="1744301720760.png"]56565[/ATTACH][/CENTER][/HEADING] [HEADING=2]Foreword[/HEADING] [SIZE=16px]As someone who’s proudly stomped their way through [URL='https://retrogametalk.com/threads/godzilla-destroy-all-monsters-melee-big-lizard-make-japan-go-boom.6370/']Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee[/URL] I went into Godzilla: Unleashed hoping for more city-leveling and a more fleshed-out roster. And oh boy, did it deliver—just not always in the way I expected. This isn’t the most polished Godzilla game. If we're being totally honest, it’s more of a glitchy free-for-all held together with duct tape, naive ambition, and a lot of fan service. And I kind of love it for that.[/SIZE] [HEADING=2]Gameplay – A Beautifully, Busted Brawler[/HEADING] If Destroy All Monsters Melee was the tight and arcade-y Godzilla game, Unleashed is its looser, wildly unpredictable cousin. It features much larger-scale battles than the previous installations; with up to four monsters on screen, wreckable buildings, and a chaos meter that changes how the game plays depending on how destructive or heroic you are. There's also the addition of "critical mass" which acts similarly to rage mode in previous installments—gather enough energy and your monster turns into a glowing, supercharged version of itself for a limited time, dealing more damage and looking like it overdosed on neon. This is what I meant when I mentioned “fan service” earlier, Unleashed gives the player more freedom than any game before it. I’d say it’s one of the closest experiences to [B]playing [/B]an actual Godzilla movie that you can get. And a huge part of why I say this lies in the fighting. It feels floaty and sluggish at times, which is perfectly aligned (in my opinion) with the older Godzilla films of the Heisei era and Showa era. I also can’t deny, there’s a palpable joy in watching Megalon get bodied by a collapsing skyscraper while King Ghidorah lasers everyone from across the map. That said, while Unleashed tries to go bigger and bolder, it sometimes loses that pick-up-and-play appeal that Destroy All Monsters Melee was built on. The AI loves to gang up on you, and the story mode—while cool in concept—can drag if you're just in it for the raw fights. But with the right monster, in the right match, the chaos still totally delivers. [HEADING=2]The Roster – A Monster Lover’s Wet Dream… on Wii[/HEADING] Yes, the Wii version has more characters. No, I’m not bitter, I’m just emotionally devastated in a way that only a lack of Biollante can cause. Unleashed gave the PS2 the short end of the stick when it came to the roster. The Wii version of the game came with 26 characters, while the PS2 version only came with 20. The latter does have an interesting lineup of monsters though, including classics like Godzilla 2000, SpaceGodzilla 2, Gigan and King Ghidorah. However, where Unleashed really separates itself from Melee is in the deep cuts like M.O.G.U.E.R.A and Obsidius—the game is a true fan service goldmine. There's also a faction system, which adds a layer of lore-driven chaos, dividing the monsters into groups like Earth Defenders, Aliens, Mutants, and Global Defense Force. It’s not [B]super [/B]relevant to the actual gameplay, but it gives the single-player campaign some extra flavor. [HEADING=2]Graphics & Performance – Not Quite City-Toppling[/HEADING] I’m not gonna sugarcoat it: Unleashed on PS2 does not look great. The environments are muddy, the frame rate gets choppy during big fights, and the animations are clunky as all hell. If you squint hard enough, you might catch a glimpse of what this game wanted to be—something spectacular and destructive—but you’ll also see it struggling to run as it wheezes under the weight of four kaiju brawling in a flaming city. And yes, the Wii version looks better and has better controls. But we’re here for the PS2 experience, rough edges and all. Totally isn’t because I didn’t wanna go through the trouble of digging out my Wii sensor bar or anything… [HEADING=2]The Campaign – Ambitious, Confusing, and Kind of Awesome[/HEADING] The story mode goes full-on Saturday morning cartoon, featuring an alien invasion, corrupt crystals, factions fighting for the Earth’s future, and way too many cutscenes that sound like they were recorded in a kitchen. It’s ambitious and charming. Even if it doesn’t make much sense. Depending on your faction, you'll follow different branching paths across various cities (and then the same cities again), with dialogue between missions that reads like a sci-fi B-movie being acted out entirely by radio chatter and earnest scientists. The choices you make affect your reputation with each faction, which in turn affects what monsters you can recruit or fight. It’s a neat idea that adds replayability—but also a layer of complexity that maybe not [B]everyone[/B] asked for, when they instead just wanted to body slam Megalon into a parking garage. To be fair, it’s probably the most narrative-driven Godzilla game ever made, but the pacing can be really hit or miss. Some missions are quick skirmishes; others feel like entire endurance tests where you’re relegated to fighting a monster for 20 minutes, begging it to fall already so you can move on to the next weird sci-fi cutscene. [HEADING=2]Final Thoughts – A Flawed Gem for Diehard Kaiju Fans[/HEADING] On the weekends in the early 2000s, the air of my household was filled with my incessant pleading with my parents to go to the video store to rent a game, only to make a B-line to where Hollywood Video kept the Godzilla games. I have so many memories of playing Unleashed on the family PS2, taking up the game room for hours while my dad would be downstairs screaming at college football on the TV. As I type this, it strikes me as odd that my parents never bought me any Godzilla games for Christmas or my birthday as a kid given how often we rented it. I think I owned damn near every DS game known to man by age 11, but Godzilla was a rare commodity in my youth. It wouldn’t be until earlier this year that I finally acquired a copy, specifically for this review! All in all, Godzilla: Unleashed is by no means, the best Godzilla game, but it might be the [B]most[/B] Godzilla game. It’s messy, chaotic, and frequently buggy, but it swings for the fences in ways that few licensed games do. If you’ve got nostalgia for these kaiju fighting games like I do, there’s a lot of fun to be had here—as long as you’re willing to look past the jankyness. [HEADING=2]Rating: 7.9/10[/HEADING] A clunky love letter to Godzilla fans that’s way more charming than it has any right to be. [SIZE=1]I hate you Megalon.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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