So as announced earlier on, a demo for the upcoming remaster of Godzilla Destroy All Monsters released yesterday on Steam, i played 1 hour of it (roughly), and since i did boot up and played a bit of the old version on Gamecube couple weeks ago… let’s talk about it.
Also because it will either be delisted or deactivated entirely October 28th, it’s also not clear if the save will carry over from the demo to the full game on Steam.
That said, it’s so very good to be back, this is indeed what it was sold as, a remaster to mostly update the technical side of things since the original game is ancient by gaming standard… and having replayed the original release from 2002, yeah, this needed a graphical refresh, but under the hood it’s the same game, i was able to hook up a 360 pad and after a couple minutes to readapt, i was able to easily throw buildings, use specials, grab enemies and all the good shizzle.
Kinda surprised not so much that it has Italian, but that it does retain the old voice acting and announcement dialogue, for better or worse it is exactly as you might remember it… because it is the same audio (and i assume the same goes for the other European language it came originally with).
The demo is actually fairly meaty, as it lets you play as 3 (out of 12) kaijus, Godzilla (curiosly swapping the DAM Melee “Godzilla 90s” for one that the game says is from 1984’s Return Of Godzilla but actually looks more like the “”MoseGoji” design from Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla), Gigan in its Showa era design and also King Ghidorah in its classic Showa design, try out Destruction Mode, the local free-for-all and even the new online multiplayer mode.
From the roster you can already tell how much it has been streamlined, for the better, as you can see each character stats, their level/rank, their rate of health regen, various strenghts or weaknesses to specific kinds of attacks or elements, if their rage attacks is unlocked, and look up the various moves and combos, which now you can also do in the pause menu.
The game is still an intuitive arcade-souled fighter so you can learny by practice alone, but it’s nice to just have a move list to access at any time, since the monsters aren’t too many by today standards, but are quite different, even stuff like the jumping move can have quirks, like how for Gigan lets him teleport, since he can’t fly or hover like Ghidorah, to name an example.
More importantly, it’s lots of fun, very Power Stone if it was crossed with the ol’ Rampage titles, not too balanced but also a blast to play, even more so with friends, and indeed now you can also play online, which in my experience was quite stable and relieable, one of the few things that today might seems odd to tout as “new”, but remember, it was a 2002 console game, so it wasn’t a given, at all.
Speaking of new, aside from a decent but not too deep Training Mode (which i don’t remember being in the Gamecube release at all), the modes are mostly the same (Adventure and Survival are still there, but are locked because its a demo), buit there’s also a new G Lab thing, which i assume is tied to the new progression system to unlock characters, upgrade them, and unlock the various arenas, skins and other elements, since the menu says Single Player modes will net Exp Points alongside Research points, Personalized Match nets Reseach points and there you might find Gallery tokens (to unlock stuff there like you did in the old version) and Online just nets Research points.
I assume because it is not available in the demo, but i understand why implement this system, and it’s definitely better than beating Adventure mode and hoping it eventually did unlock something… heck, it’s surprising that if you were to remake War Of The Monsters (which came out a little later than Godzilla DAM Melee), you wouldn’t even need to do much in this regard anyway, since that game had a points based unlock system.
This demo made me more eager to get around the complete game releasing in little more than a couple of weeks, but i also call upon younger kaiju fans to give it a go if you’ve never played this or the “sequels”, this is the occasion to geet a good feeling if you’re gonna like it, though.
