The first time I ever saw Japan's most famous kaiju on the big screen was in Godzilla 2000: Millennium. Like any nine-year-old kid, I was obsessed with Big G. I read the Dark Horse comics, and I taped all the movies I could on TV. Things were different then; Godzilla was a big deal, but theatrical releases for Godzilla films were incredibly rare in the States If you saw those movies, it was on TV and they were dubbed or edited versions released under different titles like Godzilla: King of the Monsters or Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. After Godzilla 2000 underperformed, it took another five years for the series to see a theatrical release in the U.S. – and into that void stomped 2002’s Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee.
It was the perfect mix of subject matter (big monsters who were super into professional wrestling), genre (3D fighting game), and time period (licensed games were still, like… a thing). It was the kind of game that could dominate a pizza-filled sleepover weekend or become your personality for an entire summer. One friend’s parents bought it for them, and that copy became communal: a holy thing, carried from place to place. Maybe it’s fitting that it’s back now in the form of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, 24 years later. The world (and Godzilla) has changed a lot, but original developer Pipeworks is still at the helm. It somehow feels just as relevant now as it did then, just in different ways, and revisiting it was a joy even removed from the nostalgia.
There is no one-to-one equivalent for what Destroy All Monsters Melee is, but the idea is pretty simple: you pick one of 12 monsters from Godzilla’s history (up through Godzilla 2000) – Godzilla, Gigan, Megalon, Ghidorah, etc. – then choose a real-world city or iconic Godzilla location to battle it out in. You’ll fight in classic rubber suit wrestling style while dodging environmental hazards, knocking down buildings, throwing rocks and skyscrapers at each other, and squashing the annoying military forces that really would prefer if you made a mess somewhere else. Last kaiju standing wins.
Despite the name, this isn't a straight remaster. You're not just looking at uprezzed models. It looks fantastic while also maintaining the “these are guys in rubber suits drop-kicking each other” vibe that defines the films it’s based on. The audio pulls its weight, too – the soundtrack has the booming authority you'd expect from a Godzilla film, buildings crumble and collapse spectacularly, beam attacks sound powerful and painful, the radio calls from military forces in the area let you know where they’ll be focusing their fire, and the announcer is having a blast. And the monsters, of course, sound like themselves. And yeah, Godzilla makes The Noise, just like you remember, even if it’s your first time here.
All of this is held together by a spit-and-duct-tape story that's just there to get you brawling: see, there's this alien race called the Vortaak. They're little green men with funky helmets, straight-from-the-‘50s fashion sense, flying saucers, and more than a little ego. They're here to take over the Earth, and what better way to do it than mind control the frankly absurd number of kaiju that are just hanging around, ready to smash a city at a moment's notice? Unfortunately for them, whichever Monster you pick breaks free of their mind control and decides the Earth is worth saving. Driving off the Vortaak means KOing the other monsters. All in a day's work, really.
That's Adventure mode, which is one of several single-player options for you to rearrange cities in. You've also got Destruction for the score chasers, where you have to wreck a city in a time limit, a souped-up Adventure mode for monsters who are at a higher level and have better stats (which you gain from experience you earn as you play certain modes), and Survival, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Listen, you can count the number of fighting games with good single-player modes on two hands (and several of those have the words “Soul Calibur” in their titles), but what's on offer here is solid if not spectacular. You only start with five monsters and a few stages unlocked, but Pipeworks has smartly reworked this remaster so you can unlock the rest in pretty much whatever order you like. You just have to meet the requirements, which you do by playing, following rumors, and unlocking research, and you can swap what you're focusing on whenever you like.
On the one hand, yeah, it's super satisfying to unlock Ghidorah because it's Ghidorah – as soon as he stops being a silhouette I can't select and starts being a gloriously golden three-headed dragon I can take into battle, some lizard part of my brain gets very happy because I can't wait to fly around and shoot lightning with that sumbitch. On the other hand, it's mad annoying to see Rodan or Ghidorah or Mecha Godzilla in Adventure mode and have the 12-year-old who lives in my head put down his slice of pizza long enough to be like “hell yeah, I wanna play that one” and then realize I can't, especially in multiplayer. Does it give you more reasons to keep playing? Absolutely, and this stuff was part and parcel of the original experience. But man, sometimes you just wanna throw down with your friends without worrying about unlocks, you know?
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/godzilla-destroy-all-monsters-melee-remastered-review
