In 1991, game designers SNK created King of the Monsters, which was a city smashing kaiju wrestling game. Six giant monsters fought each other in “rings” that consisted of cities surrounded by electrified barriers to keep the beasties inside. The monsters were variations on established kaiju favorites: the giant spiked dinosaur Geon; the over-sized ape Woo; the towering spandex-clad superhero Astro Guy; the hulking golem Rocky; the toxic waste pile Poison Ghost; and the world’s biggest insect Beetle Mania. Though I enjoyed the shit out of KotM, as with every other Godzilla-phile I was still pining for a similar game to star the genuine article. It would be another decade until finally the people at Atari and Pipeworks Software would figure this out for themselves and give Toho lovers a reason to pitch their tents at the game stores…

2002 was the year that giddy rubber suit fantasizing geeks (like myself) would get their sweaty paws on Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee and hope for a perfect world would be rekindled. Originally an exclusive title for the Nintendo GameCube (before eventually finding its way to Microsoft’s XBox), the title finally gave fans of the Godzilla mythos the chance to play as 11 different kaiju: Anguirus, Destoroyah, Gigan, King Ghidorah, MechaGodzilla 2, Mecha-King Ghidorah, Megalon, Orga, Rodan and two versions of Heavy G himself: the ‘90s version and the Godzilla 2000 incarnation. The XBox version would also include MechaGodzilla 3 (aka “Kiryu” circa Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.) and the PlayStation 2 version was supposed to include Baragon, but the game was aborted in it’s third trimester and never made it to the system. There were also two “supporting cast monsters” included into the title. Mothra would do a dive-bomb attack on your behalf if you picked up a medallion bearing her likeness, while Hedorah would randomly appear in flight mode and fart poison on everyone, retarding their health regeneration.

The story was really basic: an alien race called the Vortaak (the extra ‘a’ is for ‘ass-less chaps’!) come to Earth with an army of evil monsters to destroy the world, taking mental control of the planet’s own monsters to help speed things along. Of course one monster (whichever you choose to play as) is unaffected by the V-Squad’s brainwashing and goes on a global mission to knock sense into the rest of his kaiju homies before taking on the Vortaaks’ big guns (King Ghidorah and Orga) in the final stages, all the while being targeted by military forces who just never took the hint to keep their nose out of the monsters’ domestic disputes. Meh, I didn’t really care why they were fighting, I just wanted some sweaty monster-on-monster action, damn it! Speaking of which, each character had attacks based on their cinematic counter parts. Godzilla had his atomic breath. Rodan could whip up sonic boom attacks. Megalon could spear opponents with his drill-bit arms. Anguirus, uhm, shouts a lot… Fuck it man, I was just happy to take hold of Godzilla’s spiky little Gilligan and let him kick the ass for once!

Two years after this first glorious game, Atari and Pipeworks would bring Godzilla: Save the Earth to the XBox and PS2 consoles. The Vortaak, unhappy with the 60-story spanking given to them by the Toho crew last time, would return again to take another stab at wiping out mankind. This time they brought some bigger muscle in the form of SpaceGodzilla, but the Earth would bring its own defenders too, upping the roster of playable characters to 18 with the inclusion of Baragon, Jet Jaguar, Megaguirus, M.O.G.U.E.R.A., the aforementioned SpaceGodzilla, and the one kaiju that everybody wanted to play as in the first game: Mothra. Filling in for Mothra as the “air support” would be Mothra’s bad-ass counterpart Battra, as well as the mighty human attack craft Super X-3. Ebirah and Millenian (Orga’s second form after its “spaceship” stage) would cameo in mini-games but not be made available as playable characters… a fact that gave me gal stones… Hedorah didn’t make it into the sequel, even as a support character, which left a number of fans irked and still waiting for their chance to control their favorite pile of toxic waste.

And that all brings us here, 3 years (and 5 paragraphs) later: Godzilla: Unleashed. Pipeworks Software and the “teetering on bankruptcy” Atari have brought the Vortaak to Earth yet again, this time 2 decades following their last defeat in Save the Earth. The planet is in utter chaos as a freak meteor shower has created a series of giant crystal structures, popping up in major cities across the globe and ravaging the landscape with disaster after disaster. Seattle is now covered in rivers of molten lava from an impromptu volcano. Tokyo is almost entirely underwater from relentless tsunamis. San Francisco has been beat to shit by, of course, earthquakes. Fortunately for our monsters, these crystals provide them with power-ups, including renewed strength, recharged energy attacks, and the always fun “Critical Mass” mode in which the monsters’ bodies grow and crackle with energy (ala Godzilla in the finale to Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah) and their attacks become much stronger… while their defense becomes much weaker. In other words, use “Critical Mass” wisely, lest ye find yourself getting a mouthful of tentacle like some rape victim in a hentai flick. Speaking of tentacles…

The roster for Unleashed is the biggest yet. The PS2 version boasts 20 total beasts, including system exclusive kaiju Battra (finally playable!) and the original ‘70s Gigan as opposed to the modern Godzilla: Final Wars model. The Wii version (which I’m reviewing) doesn’t include Battra (damn it!) and only offers the Final Wars “Tim Taylor Overkill” version of Gigan. However, the Wii version also offers 6 more monsters than those seen in the PS2 version: King Caesar, Varan (whose inclusion is almost as unbelievable as his namesake), the original MechaGodzilla, Titanosaurus, Biollante (woooo!), original 1954 paint job Godzilla, and Krystalak… and no, that last one’s not a typo of “Hedorah” on my part.

In an effort to make the game even more interesting, Atari and Pipeworks decided to create a few original monsters to add to the roster (a concept that players of Super Godzilla might remember as amounting to absolutely nothing in the big picture of Godzilla lore…). As such, they came up with four or five new kaiju and put it forth to the gaming community to choose which would eventually find itself as the low monster on the totem in the Godzilla locker room. I can’t remember all of them (I know there was a fire-breathing lion and a giant bug, both of which failed to win the vote), but I think I voted for the winner, Obsidious. Obsidious is a big golem creature born of volcanic rock and space crystal activity that spews lava from his gaping maw. Now, while Obsidious was included in both the Wii and PS2 versions, another of the candidate monsters, Krystalak, was also included into the Wii version… likely to try and distract the fanboys and girls pissed off that Hedorah was once again passed over for inclusion in the monster mash. Anyway, Krys is a rodent looking mutant born of the crystal meteor shower with various bits of crystal jutting out of him, hence his name. Unlike the shiny shards covering his face, Krystalak has not grown on me.

Oh yeah, as for the support monsters, they’re gone. No Super X-3, Battra’s been relegated to the PS2, and we can’t even have Hedorah as a cameo, let alone a playable character! For further venting, where the fuck are Ebirah and Manda?! I know, there’re not exactly cornerstones in the Toho mythos and they’re not about to win any popularity contests, but they were both in Final Wars and that should count for something! I’d like to say I’m holding out faith that they’ll make it into the next Godzilla game, but since I don’t see Atari surviving past the second quarter of 2008, fat fuck of a chance of that happening…

Each of the monsters that did make it into the game belongs to one of four factions: Earth Defenders, Global Defense Force, Aliens, and Mutants. The setup for story mode plays out like this: no matter which monster from whichever faction you choose, you’ll go to the various obliterated cities and tear shit up with each level being based on one of approximately 20 days of fighting. In the end you’ll either save the Earth or enslave it dependant on which faction you choose. The “story” is told between levels with uninspired static comic book images of either the Vortaak mother ship or the Global Defense Force war room as the human and Vortaak characters chatter about the crystals and harnessing their power and blah blah blah. Thankfully, you can skip through this tripe, because it’s REALLY Osiris damned irritating. Though you can easily write off the story elements in a game like this (just like a lot of people tend to do for the movies it’s based on), that’s not the only problem I had with the game…

Right around the 16th or 17th day of your mission, the captain of the Atoragon (I always thought it was supposed to be “Atragon” or “Gotengo”…) will be driven mad by his continued failure to stop the monsters and will harness the power of the crystals to create a powerful laser beam weapon to defeat them. The entire level consists of your monster running around a city, dodging the air ship’s beam, missile, and massive drill attacks while whittling it’s energy bar down to nil and sending trillions of dollars in tax payer money up in smoke. Though this is a cool idea and my geek heart skipped a beat when the ship first appeared, it’s disgustingly easy to defeat the Global Defense Force’s “greatest” weapon. While you’re free to trample through the city as you see fit, the Atoragon is practically on rails as it can only position itself over the city’s streets when mounting at attack. This means that all you need to do is pick up buildings and throw them at the ship while it sits there firing its “unstoppable” crystal beam cannon at nothing in particular… The same problem occurs when they use the giant drill bit too. The only time the ship is of any real threat is when the captain pulls up next to your monster and starts firing the Atoragon’s broadside missiles. These barrages can be very damaging, but even here the ship’s hardly a threat as it remains stationary in its position while you’re free to just escape just out of range of the attack and toss more buildings at it from a safe distance… If you can’t get past this level, the fact that you made it to this level was obviously a fluke and you need to never play videogames ever again.

Continuing the nit-picking, you’re given points for each level based on the amount of destruction you do to the level. If you manage to defeat the monsters in the level that’s all well and good for you, but you only receive 500 points per monster vanquished and if they’re killed by another monster or a military attack you get nada. As such, I suggest spending a good amount of time smashing buildings and stopping military units if you ever hope to earn enough points to add somebody like Orga or SpaceGodzilla to your selectable cast (more on that later). The problem with the “points for destruction” concept is that even if you’re one of the GDF characters you’re still given more points based on the more damage you cause, despite the fact that you’re trying to save humanity by NOT destroying everything! Granted, this makes everything fair between the factions, but it would’ve shown a little more effort and imagination on Pipeworks’ part if they’d used a point system for GDF characters along the lines of giving a base number of points for each level, then subtracting from those points based on the amount of damage done to the city by the end, both by yourself and what you allow your opponent to get away with. I’d go to game design college if only I weren’t so lazy and scatter brained…

Gamers unhappy with Godzilla’s last incarnation due to the “purchasing” system, bite your tongue now because it’s back to befoul your good time once again. Way back in GodDAMM, all you had to do to unlock more monsters to play with was beat them in a battle in story mode. Very simple but at the same time very satisfying. In Save the Earth, you earned points based on your destructive capabilities and had to buy the monsters from a store mode before you could add them to your roster. This pissed off a lot of people who weren’t willing to play through the game numerous times just to get their hands on the specific monsters they wanted. I’m a total dickhead completist though when it comes to shit like this, so I just kept it up until I unlocked everybody. For those who felt the white hot scald of hatred for “store mode”, you’re about to get doubly scalded this time around because not only do you need to purchased your additional monsters, but a number of them need to be “unlocked” by completing certain conditions in the game before you even have the opportunity to save up the points to buy them! On the plus side, you can earn points by fighting it out in melee mode with your friends or against the computer, but on the really really really negative side, as if it weren’t bad enough that you have to complete special conditions just to unlock the monsters, the game doesn’t tell you what conditions you need to satisfy! All you’ll get is a level condition of “Reveal New Monster”… which brings me to my next good excuse to burn down Atari!

Each day/level requires you to fulfill a condition. First of all, you aren’t even given the requirements of victory unless you pause the game! Each level starts with a brief story description of where you are and what’s going on in regards to the environment, but there’s NOTHING about what you need to do to actually COMPLETE the level in the intro! This isn’t even something I stumbled upon myself, I actually had to read this in someone else’s review to find out why I wasn’t getting credit for finishing the levels! Sometimes it’s something very basic like defeating another monster or smashing the crystals that are giving the monster special abilities. This “just smash the crystals” option is irritating because you can avoid fighting the monster entirely but still advance. On the other hand, this makes many of the levels much faster to complete and is a nice option for people getting tired of having to play through the fucking story mode twelve times just to unlock everything. Also, if you don’t puss out and you opt to defeat the monster, you gain a “Power Surge” that gives you special powers during fights and renews between battles. Kinda cool, no?

In one level you’re required to destroy three crystal towers in the blizzard battered remains of Sydney Australia. A lot of people comment on how much they hate this level because there are no other monsters involved, you just need to smash three of these ridiculous towers that defend themselves with obnoxious freeze beams, ice missiles, and glacial walls. You might be tempted to throw your Wii remote through the TV on this level and this time you won’t be blaming a “strap malfunction”. The worst levels though are the ones with really oblique, ambiguous level conditions like “support your allies and defeat your enemies”. In some of these stages you’ll be dropped into a fight with two other monsters, neither of which is actually from your faction. In these stages you can usually just go about smashing the cityscape while they duke it out. If your ally (whichever one it is) wins then you win the stage and if your ally loses, then at least your opponent’s probably been softened up enough by the end that you shouldn’t have much trouble pummeling him to death with buildings. Sometimes in these levels you’re left to just kinda stomp around and hit things until you either figure out what you have to do for yourself, or the stage just seems to randomly end in your favor… In the name of the holiest of defecations, my dislike for the people who thought this up is tearing pieces from my sanity at an alarming rate.

As for controlling the monsters, the Wii specific design takes a bit of getting used to. I’d like to start by saying that the game’s tutorial mode is very basic and seems more like an afterthought than an actual part of the game. Your main attacks are punching with the ‘A’ button, kicking with the ‘B’, and fierce attacking with the ‘A’ + ‘B’ buttons. Other actions include blocking with the ‘Z’ button, energy attacks with the ‘C’ button, but activating your power surges with the ‘1’ button and taunting your opponent with the ‘2’ button aren’t even covered in the tutorial, which also leaves out the “special attack” combo of pressing ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘Z’ at the same time. To further show off the ineptness of the tutorial mode, Pipeworks didn’t feel the need to inform players that for punching, kicking, and fierce attacking, you can wave the Wii remote in a different direction and press the desired button to do a different style of attack. This is cool and adds a nice pile of variation while keeping it fairly simple and mapped to two basic buttons, it just would’ve been nice to have been told as such by the fucking half-assed tutorial. Recharging your energy attack is irritating at times, because it requires you to hold down both the ‘Z’ and ‘C’ buttons at the same time, but I’ve noticed that if you’re all out of energy attack bars, you can get away with just holding down ‘C’ and it will charge just as well. Unfortunately, though you can continue to attack while you’re recharging, your freedom of motion becomes grossly limited.

You can flick the nunchuk controller back to make your monster jump and you can dip both controllers forward to pick up a weapon (i.e. a rock or a building) or grapple with an opponent. Once grappling with an opponent you press ‘A’ to attempt a crippling throw attack. Megalon’s is still great, but I think Biollante is my new favorite for the “Coolest Throw” award. The big problem with the grab/grapple mechanism is where the motion detection tech of the Wii can be a big reeking hemorrhoid in your gaming experience. If you move the nunchuk too much, you’ll make your monster jump instead, which could have you in a straight jacket and bouncing your skull off some padded walls if you play too long. Don’t blame the system for this fuck up though, blame the developers for yet another layer of polish they were too lazy to apply.

I’ve had the game for a week now and have put probably 15 hours or more into it in that time. Trust me when I say that this isn’t a testament to how good the game is. If you think that, you haven’t been reading the review up to this point and I could say pretty much anything right now and you wouldn’t notice. Something like, oh, I don’t know, Oprah once gave me a rim-job while we were doing ecstasy. Or, I like to go from town to town raping and impregnating minority girls under the name Taco Suave because I’m trying to thin out their own heritage with my Anglo-Saxon contamination. What would you say if I said I once gave hand jobs to all the members of Hootie and the Blowfish? Pureed an aborted fetus and drank it down on a dare from Betty White? Inserted an entire umbrella into my colon, then opened it? Yeah, you’re not paying attention…

For those of you who are still here are actually reading this, I never did any of those things… or did I? All I know is that the only reason I’m still playing Godzilla: Unleashed is because I’m a Tohophile. The music’s great, the monsters’ signature roars are all there and it’s great to burrow underground as Megalon and just sit there while your opponents kick each other around or burn up in lava or just generally get plastered with missiles. I will eventually unlock Varan, I will one day purchase SpaceGodzilla, and I will beat the stupid thing with all 26 monsters. At two-hours of game play for each monster in story mode, that means I still have at least 40 hours of play time ahead of me. Uggh. If you’re looking to buy this puppy for the G-Fan in your life during the holidaze, make sure they rent it first. You don’t want to ruin their hopes and dreams and be out $50+ in the process if you don’t have to. As for me, I’m gonna go dig up my King of the Monsters rom and my Neo Geo emulator and party like it’s 1991.

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