First Impressions: *Points and moves mouth for 20 seconds* (Translation: “Godzilla!!”)
After being released on the Gamecube fairly recently, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters is now shipping over to the Xbox. Not simply a port, the Xbox version will feature improved graphics and sound, and, of course, some nice extra features.
First on that list is a new “character” and arena, making the grand total a dozen for the former and nearly that for the latter. Xbox Live functionality has also been added: Though you most unfortunately won’t be fighting online anytime soon, updates will be available via the service, likely just the basic things you’d expect – new maps and monsters. As with Splinter Cell, MX Superfly and the like, this should add some extra playability and some incentive to pick it up off your shelf once you’d thought you’d finished with it. As it is, this will likely be a game that’ll be used quite often – the Xbox has needed an insanely addictive fighter like Super Smash Brothers, and this may very well be it.
There are a variety of game modes at your disposal, such as destruction (which has you destroying a city of your choice), survival (much like MechAssault’s Grinder mode), versus (for some two player action), adventure mode (take on the other beasties of the Godzilla universe), team battle (two teams of two, either with bots or some pals) and the real guts and glory of the game, melee mode. Melee mode has you and 3 others (bots are available for your playing pleasure, though the real fun will be throwing three of your friends in on the action) duking it out, using hand-to-hand, special projectile and various short ranged attacks against each other. You can even throw buildings around – how cool is that?
The latest Godzilla game looks to have done an excellent job of creating a sense of massiveness – MechAssault recently did a decent job of this, and looking much farther back on the timeline, Slave Zero on the Dreamcast made you feel absolutely huge. Godzilla may well eclipse even that title, since you tower over most buildings easily and the arenas are simply enormous. The sense of size is aided by the graphical intensity of the game, which is quite impressive in itself. The Xbox hardware is being put to good use, and between the impressive crumbling of various buildings and the ridiculous poly counts of some of the fighters (as high as 10,000 polys, versus your typical count of say 3500 for some of the higher end Unreal Championship characters), simply watching the game should be an enjoyment in itself.
Pipeworks also threw in a crucial element of the Godzilla franchise – humor. What would Godzilla be without some cheese? Nothing too over the top it would seem, but players are sure to encounter a decent variety of events that should cause a chuckle or two. After all, the premise of the game is that aliens have let loose the creatures of monster island upon the inhabitants of the earth rather than actually invading, and EVERYONE knows that the aliens are going to invade themselves rather than having old and oddly rubbery looking creatures do it for them.
