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One of my
favorite games when I was younger was Rampage. For those too young
to remember, Rampage was an arcade game where you played some sort
of an overgrown monster whose entire purpose in life was to destroy
a series of cities, complete with inhabitants (whom you could grab
out of their apartments and eat, incidentally), helicopters shooting
at you, and buildings that needed to come down. With War of the
Monsters, Sony has gone one step further by taking the same concept
and turning it into an all-out 3D fighting game, complete with fully
destructible environments, super powers, and a whole bunch of ugly
monsters just waiting to pound each other into jelly.
On its most basic
level, War of the Monsters is to B-movies what last year’s PC game
Freedom Force was to comic books. The basic premise is fairly
simple: UFOs were assaulting the earth, until the nations of the
world came together and devised a system to incapacitate the alien
spacecraft. The problem, however, is that, while the plan was
successful, the end result was that the spacecraft came crashing
down to Earth, spilling intergalactic goo everywhere. This goo
transformed ordinary creatures into angry, Godzilla-sized mutants,
who are just itching to get at each other, property damage be
damned. That’s about the extent of the story; even in Adventure
mode, which allegedly follows a plot of sorts, the only real plot
advancement comes through “Origin Of…” cutscenes that are shown
after completing said mode.
Of course, what
War of the Monsters lacks in story depth, it more than makes up for
in presentation. One thing that the designers really took to heart
was the B-movie atmosphere. It’s little touches like the title
screen, which is made up like a drive-in theater screen, or the
splash screens before each level, which are B-movie posters
(complete with fold creases), that really add to the monster movie
feel. It’s this attention to detail that makes War of the Monsters
more than your average 3D fighting game.
As far as the
game itself is concerned, if you’re expecting anything more complex
than simple smash-‘em-up action, then War of the Monsters is not for
you. The gameplay is pure fighting, with the exception that the
arena, instead of being a limited fighting area as one would find in
a Soul Calibur or Tekken, is actually a full city. What this means
is that you’re not always locked in combat with your opponent; you
can run around collecting power-ups, or lie in wait for the enemy to
come to you. Furthermore, the cities are completely destructible; if
it’s there, chances are you can either knock it down, or you can
pick it up and use it as a weapon. In my mind, that’s the best thing
about War of the Monsters; the entire stage is almost like a third
character in the arena, and it can either work for you or against
you.
Other than that,
standard fighting game rules apply; be the last one standing and you
win. To this end, you have both a weak and strong attack, as well as
a long range attack and the aforementioned ability to pick up and
throw nearly anything you find in the stage. To keep things
balanced, each character also has an energy meter; using attacks
without resting will drain it, and running out of energy will leave
your character stunned and unable to defend himself for a short
amount of time. While this system can be frustrating in the thick of
battle, it does make the game more fair in the long run, eliminating
the “I’m going to swing my arms in front of me and walk forward”
strategy that could easily bring a game like this down, as the
long-range attacks are not all that powerful. Finally, each
character has two special attacks, one at close range and one at
long range. What I don’t like about this system is that you can only
store one at a time and can only earn more by either getting a lot
of extra energy (usually by collecting energy power-ups) or by
picking up a Special Attack power-up. It would be better if either
you got special attacks in the same manner as you do in the Capcom
“Vs.” games, which is to say that you get a meter that increases as
you hit and get hit. As the system stands, it’s far too inconsistent
as to how you earn special attacks.
In addition to
the expected two-player modes, there are also three one-player
modes: Adventure, Free-For-All, and Endurance. Free-For-All is
essentially a single battle against a predetermined computer
opponent. Adventure mode is apparently supposed to be the meat of
the game, but ends up being far too short; it ends up being not much
more than a series of free-for-alls with some very short cutscenes
and a couple of boss battles breaking up the action. One can easily
play right through that mode in a couple of hours, tops, which makes
it something of a disappointment. At least something with more depth
like a challenge mode or, at the very least, a unique set of
challenges for each character, could add to the replay value. As it
stands, you’ll likely play through Adventure mode once, and then not
again, unless you’re really dying to see the origin video for a
given character.
All that’s left
as far as single player value is concerned is Endurance mode, which
is analogous to survival mode; the game keeps throwing opponents at
you, one after the other, until you finally run out of life. While
this is arguably more fun than Adventure mode, it does bring to
light some serious flaws. One big problem is that the computer can
also pick up power-ups to heal itself. While this on its own is not
an issue, the computer AI obviously knows where all the power-ups
are, and, worse, when they respawn. What this means is that the
computer opponents are often considerably harder to beat while you
get left with few or no power-ups at all, and this knowledge should
have been toned down a bit. Another minor quibble is that the load
times are pretty bad when a new character jumps in. Again, this
wouldn’t be so bad were it not that the entire game locks up
entirely while you wait for the next opponent to load up. Some of
the load times were so bad that I was actually concerned that the
game had locked up entirely. While I understand that load time is a
fact of life these days, the designers could have made a better
effort to hide it a bit.
A fighting game
like War of the Monsters lives and dies by its control, and the
designers did a pretty good job of making wreaking havoc fairly
effortless. The basic controls are simple enough; X jumps, square
performs both quick attacks and long-range attacks (a wise move
given that that’s the button most often used anyway), circle picks
up and throws, and triangle performs the slower, strong attack.
While some of the lesser used attacks are slightly harder to pull
off (a dive attack requires pressing up and triangle at the apex of
a jump, which is difficult enough to remember, as one’s instinct is
to push down, not up), it’s easy enough to jump into the fray with
those basic controls. Unfortunately, the shoulder buttons are not as
well used. L1 and R1 are given double duty by both allowing the
character to strafe, and, when used together, to lock on to an
enemy. However, strafing is mainly useless when locked on, and it’s
uncomfortable to have to keep both shoulder buttons to keep your
enemy in your sights. Combine this with the decision to use R2 for
blocking, and you have some awkward finger gymnastics in close
combat. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it can be tricky at times.
Graphically, the
game looks fairly nice as compared with current PS2 games. The
characters are all nicely animated, and the framerate tends to keep
up with the action well. The destructible environments are an
extremely nice touch as well, and I never cease to be impressed when
a monster is slammed against a building, and the wall is shattered
into a thousand pieces, leaving only the steel frame behind. About
the only complaint I have graphically is that there are occasionally
some bugs in the building rendering, showing the building either
transparent or in wireframe. While the former may have been
intentional, so as not to obstruct the action, it does break the
suspension of disbelief when this solid building suddenly
disappears; perhaps a translucent effect might have been better used
there.
The game’s
soundtrack is easily the other highlight of War of the Monsters. All
the music is fully orchestrated and fits the setting quite well.
Much like the other little details like the title screen and the
splash screens, the music really adds to the feeling that you are
playing through a B-movie, and adds an element of intensity to every
scene. Sound effects are also realistic and well placed, including
the whirring of helicopter blades, screaming crowds, and falling
buildings. While some voice acting might have helped to tell the
story, the game gets along well enough without it, and sound overall
is very well done.
Overall, War of
the Monsters is a fun fighting game that would be well worth a
purchase if you’re going to have lots of people to play it with; in
other words, it’s a great dorm game. However, if you’re going to be
playing primarily by yourself, War of the Monsters will only give
you about as much play time as watching a couple of Godzilla movies;
after a few times through, the single player modes all get old very
quickly, as they do with most fighting games. However, as a concept,
and as a rental, War of the Monsters is an excellent game and good
for those moods when you just want to smash something up. Indeed,
while the single player may be lacking, War of the Monsters truly is
a smashing good time.
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