Dull, repetitive, slow and utterly joyless, Godzilla is the complete antithesis of the camp fun found in its source material. It’s the equivalent of seeing a poor artist attempting to ape the great ideas of another man’s creation; taking the same ingredients and ideas, but putting them together with such ineptness it’s more a bad joke than a finished product.
The content here is exactly what you’d think it would be. You play as a Godzilla, stomp around Tokyo for a while as you fight your way inland, destroying JSDF units and kaiju alike in your rampage. Eventually you reach the final boss, and leave one way or another. There’s even a good or bad ending depending upon whether you reflect the heroic or brutal sides of his nature.
The problem is that Godzilla’s “rampage” is more of a stumbling drunken shamble, ruined by sluggish movement and controls which will leave you without any direction. Everything here is wrong on that front, from the insane decision to have the shoulder buttons slowly turn the monster about to the downright sadistic camera controls. This turns even the basic act of attacking buildings into a chore and fighting other kaiju into a nightmare, preventing you from properly judging distances. This results in your extremely short range punches relentlessly falling short, opening you up for a world of hurt. Of course, even if you manage to pull off a string of combos, the experience is tedious at best. With an extremely limited move-set of only five attacks, you’ll soon get bored of spamming punches and witnessing every other monster in the game happily no-selling your every strike. There are no tactics here, no planning and no rewarding skill, leaving you stuck in a brainless, slow slugging match. Lacking any weight or the kinetic fun of older Godzilla games, Namco Bandai manage to do the impossible and make destroying Tokyo utterly mundane.
Still, if all of that didn’t put you off of buying Godzilla, you’ll be happy to know that the game outright lies to the player. Anyone attempting to use Godzilla’s single “dodge” move will be very surprised to see him performing a laser attack, and nothing clues you in that the “cinematic” view required for the true ending has to be triggered by the player.
Godzilla looks, feels and plays like a budget game from two generations ago. Bogged down with bad ideas, poor mechanics, and an insultingly short campaign which barely lasts an hour, there is nothing of value to be found here. Stick to the classics folks, because this one does not do the King of Monsters any justice.
GODZILLA / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: NAMCO BANDAI GAMES / PLATFORM: PLAYSTATION 3, PLAYSTATION 4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
