The PS2 era turns out was indeed a golden age for kaiju and monster games in general, as not only we had Atari hit gold with the Pipeworks trilogy of Godzilla games, Rampage was back with Rampage Total Destruction, but we also had a PS2 exclusive 3D brawler, War Of The Monsters.
Which i sadly don’t own anymore (i remember owning it at some point), and for convenience sake i’ll use the PS4 and PS5 upscaled rerelease Sony made available, played on PS5.
No better time now that the Destroy All Monsters Melee Remaster drops, indeed.
As weird as it seems, yes, back in the day Sony took on itself to publish a 3D arena fighter about giant monsters, aliens and 50s robots, developed by Incognito Entertaiment, which Sony absorbed as a first party studio, previously did Twisted Metal Black and would later work on some of the last titles of that series, including the PSP entry, Head On.
Most likely even if you didn’t had the game, you would still have played it on a demo disc, because yes, once upon a time there were print magazines about gaming that would include a DVD containing both trailer and playable demos of upcoming demos.
Or straight up kiosks where you could play demo versions of upcoming games, i’m so old i remember doing so for the original Luigi’s Mansion.
Here i would make some razionalization about the game looks aged, but the upscaling on the PS4-PS5 digital rerelease helps, and frankly i wouldn’t have minded much anyway, since the game presentation is already top notch, is simply perfect, i might even say.
It’s all stylized as a throw back to 50s sci fi b-movies, and the attention to details extends even to menus, which have that “50s american diner” fonts and drive-in aesthetic down perfectly, plus the plot is indeed a big ass tribute, since it is set in the 50s, with aliens that do not come in peace, and start attacking cities all over the globe via UFOs.
The aliens have the upper hand initially, but scientists devise a weapon to disrupt and attack the flying saucers, so the humans win… or do they?
From the UFOs a green ooze spills, resulting in radiated giant monsters popping up everywhere, so oopsie kadoopsie, a kaiju invasion happens, and humans can only stand back and watch this “war of the monsters” unfold…
Every stage is basically a mini-movie, complete with fake poster in the loading screen, and every monster is a legally distinct knock-off of other famous ones, but there are also original ones that are inspired by more niche films, like a big electric eyeball monster possibly a reference to The Trollenberg Terror.
To be honest, i’m surprised they actually got away with these designs, and apparently they were even less subtle before… how i cannot really imagine, besides being straight up lifted from older monster movie games.
Regardless, you get all the classic b-movies giant monsters archetypes, including “King Ding”, a Gojira X Anguirus mash up, “Mazonger”, a magma Daimajin (actually 2), the alien with the robot suit and the see though brain in a glass jar or sphere, not-Rodan, etc.
The only gripe is that the roster is relatively small, just 11 characters, 2 to be unlocked (plus a skin of Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal and a cyborg-mecha skin for Kongar), and to be pedantic, i think we could have used just 1 magma-rock-vulcan monster, mashed Agamo and Magmo (which are even anagrams of each other) into 1, two feels overkill, we could have made space for an Ultraman bootleg humanoid giant, maybe a knock off of the mutated giant from The Amazing Colossal Man.
That or have the mutant venus flytrap boss be playable.
Seems like an odd omission, since the other two boss characters are playable.
Gameplay wise it’s pretty much 3D Rampage (FIY, World Destruction Tour wasn’t out yet), an arena fighter, but unlike Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee (which from now on will be referred to as GDAMM), it doesn’t opt for the more distanced camera à-la Power Stone, it’s more of a typical third person camera, and controls might feel a bit tankish at first, but it fits perfectly with the choice to have every character equipped with a ranged projectile attack, which is the same input as the light attack button, meaning you can easily keep the pressure while locking into the enemy.
It’s really bloody good, heck, compared to GDAAM it has even bigger, more interactive and more destructable 3D arenas, again, as this really feel like the perfect evolution-iteration in 3D of the Rampage formula, even if there’s no snacking on people to replenish health, but there are also stage gimmicks that don’t invalite the basic combat and some unique quirks like some objects impaling your kaiju or robot and needing to mash to remove them.
Frankly it controls pretty well too (and there are multiple setups if you don’t like the standard one), and aside from a slightly more distanced camera, i wouldn’t really change much if they actually remade this, maybe it would have be nicer to have a separated button for ranged and melee, but given the balance and arcade inspired nature, it won’t have mattered much anyway.
despite the fairly simple combo system (you can mash light attacks or slower strong ones, but not really combine them) there is strategy also because they opted to have every monster have a projectile attack by default instead of limiting it to the specials, here you have an AOE close ranged special or a long range single target special that are gained by charging extra the energy meter.
Projectiles attacks also drawn from an energy meter, as to avoid overspamming, it’s not really a stamina meter, as curiously i thought even melee combos consumed energy for robots character, but nope, it’s just that while the energy meter is completely depleted you go into a state where you can’t perform certain actions, while otherwise you can achieve a buffed “Rage” state by keeping overclocking the energy meter, and while this lasts you can even spam specials.
it’s still an arcade fighter at heart, meaning you play aggressively and play as dirty as possible, channelling Sun Tzu in the sense of “do everything it takes to win”.
War Of The Monsters is not the kind of game you expect to be balanced….and it isn’t. It really isn’t.
you just are never gonna see it at EVO, but i do think it still better balanced than GDAMM, as in here all characters are actually viable and there are no real “trash tiers”, amongst the small roster there are some character with abilities or quirks that give them advantage, but even the flying monsters pay off the ability with faster energy consumption.
Still, nothing will make it clearer how unbalanced and arcade inspired by design than facing two IA controlled monsters, because boy it can become cheap, since even at the Medium difficulty setting the bot IA is good, maybe a bit too smart, i was surprised to see how at low health the IA prioritizes not engaging at all, not before it went around to collect health pickup and restore a good amount, even more dickish since they just know where the big health recovery items are, and dart to them first in order to deprive you, since those don’t actually respawn
nothing gonna stop the IA or human players ganging up on the other player, but especially in the single player story mode, it can be cheap and annoying to see the two bot monsters decide to team up and just fight the meatbag, in a sort of “clanker solidarity”, it’s them computer against you.
Speaking of which, i was surprised to see this game having an actual story mode, since Adventure did try to give some variety instead of stringing 6 fights together and slapping some brief cutscene at the end showing the creation of the monster (which do are there and are pretty fun), by having new monster enter the stage, fight smaller hordes of another kaiju, and there are also unique boss fights, aside ones using specialized bigger and toughers versions of the roster.
Aside from Adventure mode, single player offering include a free for all where you can set up rules and fight up to 3 other CPU controlled foes, and a Survival mode.
The 2 players mode is the classic local splitscreen versus, you can also change rules, add 2 extra CPU monsters if you want complete chaos, play Elimination mode, where you have limited respawns, or play the unlocked minigames.
Curiously the GDAMM comparisons continue here too, since these are also exclusive to multiplayer, as Destruction mode was in its original release of GDAMM… and what do you know, one of 3 unlockable minigames is just Rampage. 🙂
I’d complain about this game being just 2 players…. but this was a PS2 exclusive, plus, realistically how many times you had enough willing players in a local co-op setting for a game like this?
Not a big issue since the PS2 required a multitap, and i’ve never seen a single one of those during “my days”, and having 4 human players would have destroyed any pretense of balance, so…
To encourage replayability and pace out some sense of progression, the game opts to reward you by giving you points/token you can spend in the Extra section to unlock not only extra skins for the playable character, but also make playable two of the bosses, unlock some arenas for usage in multiplayer or free play, and of course to unlock the minigames.
the unlock system via points i also think it’s fair because a single playthrough nets you a good chunk, but not too much, so you have reasons to use the other players and see their endings in Adventure mode, as beating that is the easier way to get the most tokens/points, and it avoids you just farming points so quickly that it breaks the progression system.
I don’t have to much in technical terms, the upscaling helps, i had just a couple of “framerate hiccups” during my experience, alongside a graphical glitchhat had my character stuck in a loop in its get up animation while i had lost the stage for a minute or two, but that might have already existed in the original PS2 release, even if it once had me exit out of a story mode run entirely.
So yeah, this was a very underrated game of the kind we barely get anymore today (there is the Oveeride series and some others, but are pretty recent), unbalanced but also a fun as hell evolution of Rampage that delivered kaijus against kaju violence during the earlier PS2/GCN/XBOX era.
it’s pretty good and i think it’s a pity we didn’t get a sequel of sorts the following years, but honestly in hindsight i’m glad we even got this to begin with, and the release
Absolute must for fans of the genre and kaiju in general as well.
