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.
