Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: War of the Monsters

Written by Alex Fitzgerald on December 17, 2002

First Impressions: Oversized lizards, destructible cities, and a whole lot of carnage Ц what's not to love?

There are games that aim to astound. With their lush and colorful visuals, they garner sounds of astonishment amongst all that play it. Using their highly-complicated, yet unbelievably well put together orchestra scores, they move players to experiencing the feelings the game is trying to portray, from sorrow to happiness, glory to shame, and dead to living. Finally, with their unbelievably deep and intricate gameplay, they move gamers into using their minds to solve puzzles, using their hand-eye coordination to fend off opponents, and max out every last bit of their brain to finish the game, satisfied with the long and emotionally-driven ending cinema they are given in return.

And then there are games like War of the Monsters, where your only objective is to beat the living crap out of anything and everything.

Needless to say, War of the Monsters is not astoundingly deep. The game's plotline is much like old (and very cheesy) monster movies, such as King Kong, and old Godzilla flicks. The plotline goes like this: An alien race, hoping to thwart mankind, came and tried to attack Earth. Of course, the aliens did not succeed, as the human race destroyed them just in the nick of time (don't we always?). In the wreckage of this mighty multi-species war, some wreckage was left on Earth. Of course, some idiotic scientist tries to run a few tests on these remains, which (surprise!) go haywire, producing some of the biggest and most ferocious creatures this planet's ever seen.

This is the premise that leads into the game's gameplay, which can best be described as a Super Smash Brothers meets ZOE. In other words, it's like your basic fighting game, only with a lot more emphasis put on using the environment as a weapon. Everything within the game's levels, from the buildings your walking by to the planes that fly overhead, can be grabbed by your virtual monster, and used to change the tides of war. Needless to say, this high level of interactivity within the levels does make for interesting gameplay, and should really contribute to the game's fun factor when it comes out.

What makes the fighting system all the more cooler though is the game's wide array of cheesy monster-movie look alike characters. All the staple creatures of the movie genre are here, as inside you'll find giant bugs, huge apes that like to climb buildings (hmm, why does that sound familiar?), and even Japanese anime style robots. All of these monsters come with their own unique fighting styles, that are all very different from each other. Some will be big and slow, some will be small and quick, some will have weapons already available when they start, others will have to gather them, etc. As you can imagine, these fighting styles when used against each other, makes for interesting, exciting, and unique gameplay.

Using these old monster designs, and several other old-school elements, developer Incognito has managed to implement the monster-movie feel within the video game. From the moment you turn on the game and come face to face with the drive-in movie theatre menus, you will instantly feel as if you have been zapped into your TV during a Sci-Fi Godzilla marathon.

Of course, this being a game, all of this old-school gaming goodness has to be shaped into some sort of game modes. As such, War Of The Monsters features three modes of play for both single player and multiplayer gaming. The first single player mode, Adventure mode, is your basic fighting-game story mode, meaning you will fight several opponents in different surroundings, occasionally fighting a tough boss battle along the way. When you're done with each battle, you will be awarded tokens that will open up other extras in the game. The next mode, Free-for-All, plays exactly as it sounds. All you do in it is go up against three CPU fighters, and battle to the death. The final single-player mode, Endurance, is a survival mode of sorts, as the mode has you facing wave after wave of enemies, seeing how long you can last during the onslaught.

The three multiplayer modes are Free-for-All, Elimination, and minigames. Free-for-All let's you and your gaming homie fight each other or against others in this property destructing mode. Elimination is a last-man-standing style mode, where you and a gaming buddy can work either with or against each other in a four-player brawl (with other CPU opponents.) The final mode, minigames, allows you and your bud to duel in three unlockable games (called Dodge Ball, Big Shot, and Crush-O-Rama.)

To play through these modes though, you're going to have to learn how to master the game's controls. Fortunately, the game's control layout at this point is intuitive and easy to use, so you will learn how to maneuver your monsters quickly and efficiently in no time at all. That's a good thing too, because War of the Monsters would have been pretty lame had the monsters controlled anything like their movie counterparts.

You'll want to control these monsters too, as every action that you make them do onscreen will be beautifully played out in fluid realistic-looking animation. The cities themselves also look very good within the game thus far, as they realistically reflect city damage quite well, giving you a real sense of how much chaos you have caused within the game. Subtle smaller effects, such as running pedestrians and passing-by cars, are also present and accounted for, contributing their bit to the game's impressive graphical display. The game also boasts some nice particle and lighting effects to complement this, and best of all, the game runs at a steady framerate with all of this going. Another nifty feature that the graphics boast is the switch between a split screen to a full screen view depending on how close you are to your opponent (or ally) when you play multiplayer. Though a nifty idea, the concept has been a bit screwy in preview builds of the game. Let's just hope that this gets fixed by the game's release.

The game's audio is just as complex and well-done as the game's graphics. Incognito has really outdone itself in this department to keep everything sounding like a good old-fashioned monster flick. The music is very exaggerated in it's design, making it sound very melodramatic and appropriate for the game. Sound effects, such as buildings crashing and pedestrians screaming, sound just as they would in real-life (if a big eighty-foot ape ever did wreck a building that is).