I haven’t been on this board for very long, so I’m not sure if there’s a thread like this already, but I had remembered a core part of my gaming history lately that doesn’t seem to get a lot of discussion or modern games like it.
One of the first games that I got for PS2 was War of the Monsters, a 3D fighting game that had you battling b-movie monsters.
This became one of my favorite games to play, and I would eventually move onto a couple of the Godzilla games for PS2, namely Save the Earth
So the thing about me is that I don’t like most fighting games. I find that there is usually a skill barrier that not only makes them not very fun if you don’t pass, but that when you do get good enough the general atmosphere becomes a little overly competitive. I’m not trying to make this an anti-fighting game thread, this is just how I generally feel about the genre
These Kaiju games however seem to be a major exeption to me. One thing that may contribute to this is how slow and clumsy the movement is to emulate the experience of being a huge monster. There’s also an emphasis on interacting with the arena itself, climbing and destroying buildings and picking up debris to toss at your enemies. It winds up feeling like an actual party game, rather than a death match that has you gritting your teeth the whole time.
So are there more games like this? There’s probably a ton of mech games that have similar game feel, with the main modulation being that you have a gun. The other modern analog might be those ragdoll party games like Party Animals that take some of the same design principals but simplify them to a Smash Bros style experience.
Anyone remember these or have similar experiences with this little niche of brawlers?
my sister and i played a lot of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee on the gamecube, that game rocked. more than anything i felt like a dipshit in a rubber suit more than a monster, and i loved it.
i don’t have much to add!! that’s the only game of this type i’ve played…but i think about it a lot…
I want to believe that I played Destroy all Monsters but I am pretty sure I only played Save the Earth. I really have been chasing that rubber suit dragon ever since
the ps4 godzilla game is easily the best kaiju game of all time imo, and it does have several modes where you fight other monsters. unfortunately, if you don’t already have it, you’ll need to either pirate it or pay £100+ to some ebay guy. it’s so good that i’ve actually found it difficult to go back to the gamecube/ps2 game that everyone online loves so much. (those two are essentially the same game as each other, or rather, the gc game feels like it’s a demo version of the ps2 game, which just has a ton more of everything)
godzilla: domination for the gba is also very good, being essentially a reskin of snk’s king of the monsters games, but with significantly easier ai opponents and actual toho monsters instead of original stand-ins. and great spritework by wayforward iirc
These are all more of less descendents of Rampage and King of the Monsters, not just thematically but in combining environmental destruction and mascot-suit clumsiness in controls
@falsedan this definitely looks rad, but leans towards the Monster Hunter side of things, a fairly well developed genre of game. Thinking about these Kaiju games has made me feel like there’s a connection to me loving those games growing up and liking soulsborne games now in that they both have a slower pace with emphasis on your positioning in the field of play. Might be a tenuous connection but one that may be made
@loki I saw that when looking up info on Godzilla games. I never played it but it looks good. My hesitation from looking at screenshots is that I’d hate for it to loose the goof factor that some of those other titles maintain.
I had one more pull that I know nothing about but may be very relevant: wrestling games! These Kaiju games are essentially monster wrestlers aren’t they?
on my watchlist for a while now, but the vibe in this trailer is somewhat off, i.e. the attacks feel a bit too quick for those huge monsters.
Also, the wrestling comparison is kinda spot-on!
Not that i have much wrestling experience, with a gameboy WWF game and Rumble Roses on my resume, but the momentum of a monster fight has only been matched by SotC colossi, Armored Core Arms Fortresses and Rumble Roses’ cast …
The NeoGeo “King of the Monsters” games (1 and 2) ARE quasi-wrestling-style fighting games ^ _^. (I’ve never managed to get into them but tastes may vary!)
It’s not a 1 on 1 fighter, but iirc one of the Hulk games drew a little bit from that well for inspiration, I wanna say it was Ultimate Destruction ? It makes perfect sense of course but it is still kind of surprising for a big western licensed game like that to do anything even remotely novel or quirky. Even harder to imagine these days.
I’ve only played the PS3 version of this game, but it is indeed excellent. I enjoy the timed destruction stages more than the 1v1 fighting stages though. I’m not sure if the PS3 version even has a player vs player fighting mode, but I expect it does. I’ve never played it with anyone else!
It’s a mech game but guns aren’t a major part of it: Remote Control Dandy for the PSX
It’s the precursor to Robot Alchemic Drive on the PS2 but I like it more because of the more retro super robot aesthetic
the screen shake, the on-foot camera angle, the intentionally fiddly controls, these all contribute to the feeling of commanding a large, unwieldy machine.
A fun challenge of the single player game (Sbutts mostly know remote control dandy multiplayer since I’ve included it in our kusoge tournaments two years in a row) is that you have to operate on a budget and will lose money if you let too much of the city environs get destroyed
I remember a giant bundle game named Test Tube Titans where I think you can randomly generate your own kaijus and have them fight others or smash environments. I’m not sure if it was any good but it fits the topic.
There’s a mostly forgotten PS3 downloadable game called Eat Them! that I’m not even sure you can buy anymore.
It’s just monster vs buildings gameplay, Rampage style, and I found it pretty unrewarding to play, but it came out during a time when I was desperate for anything interesting to be on consoles.
I played the demo of this last night. It was alright, definitely going for the exact gameplay as the old Godzilla games. You are right though that the movement is a little fast. Definitely has had the influence of modern fighting games seeped into it.
I’m going to keep it in the wishlist until the price drops significantly. It’s kind of a shame the older games of this type aren’t accessible though any means but piracy and make GigaBash one of the only titles that you can easily play. Not a revolutionary statement here or anything but still true.
I’m happy to see people contributing so much to the thread, a lot of these look sick as hell!
