As a video game, Godzilla has a lot in common with the eponymous, iconic fire-breathing lizard of movie legend. It’s big, loud, and lumbering, and you get exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. PSU was lucky enough to hands-on with the game at Bandai Namco’s London HQ this week, and while there was undeniable fun to be had with Godzilla, there’s still a few things that had me concerned for the overall package when it launches next week.
First and foremost, it is abundantly clear that Godzilla has been made with series aficionados in mind. While I can’t claim to fall into that particular camp—I saw the 1998 Godzilla and the modern reboot, that’s it—there is no doubt that fans of the lumbering lizard will be right at home here. Whether it’s the diverse lineup of Kaiju, the legions of cities ripe for rampaging across or the repertoire of classic Godzilla attacks, Bandai Namco Games has crafted this destroy-’em-up for the hardcore fans.
Unsurprisingly, the nucleus of Godzilla is destruction. Our hands-on gave us time with two distinct game modes: God of Destruction and King of the Kaiju. The former seemed like a good place to start, and saw us in the scaley shoes of the mighty Godzilla himself as he embarks on a city-wide rampage. It wasn’t long before we were getting to grips with the core controls, which felt a little wonky at first—you steer Godzilla with the analog stick and make him turn with L1/R1—but aren’t particularly difficult to master. There’s three main attacks: square’s your standard claw strike, triangle is a meatier tail-spin attack, and circle unleashes your fiery breath once your temperature gauge is full. You can also press X to lunge forward and speed things up, which is just as well as Godzilla plods along at a leisurely pace.
We were tasked with blowing up a series of generators as the main objective, although there’s plenty more to do. For starters, the humans defense initiative, G-Force, isn’t just going to sit about as you level an entire city; they throw everything they’ve got at you, from ships, tanks and aircraft, which means plenty of opportunity to blow stuff up and become more powerful. Godzilla’s strength lies in his size, which swells as you raise your destruction level, either by destroying enemies or levelling buildings. Occasionally you’ll also face a Kaiju that pops up to ruin Godzilla’s stomp-a-thon, and essentially act as boss battles more than anything else. These encounters freshen up the bread-and-butter combat (I use that term loosely), and requires some strategizing on the player’s part in order to topple your opponents.
While combat is pretty rudimentary, there’s a great sense of satisfaction to be had levelling buildings, destroying humanity’s war machines and generally wreaking havoc wherever you go. Once you get used to Godzilla’s lumbering nature you settle into an appealing, destructive rhythm that becomes strangely addictive. Collecting various materials also gives you the chance to upgrade your monster, allowing to unlock new attacks and various other buffs via Evolution Mode.
The second mode I gave a spin was King of Kaiju, a wave-based battle mode that sees Godzilla (or whatever beast you opt to play as; more are unlocked as you progress) battling against five fellow Kaiju. The faster you vanquish each creature, the better your score. This mode evokes some of the great clashes between Godzilla and his various adversaries over his lengthy movie career, and aesthetically there’s some great sights to behold as to titans lamp each other with oversized appendages; it feels highly cinematic, and I imagine hardcore Godzilla fans will really appreciate it.
Bizarrely, there’s no block button, which is where our major concern comes in. Godzilla is inherently sluggish, and as such avoiding enemy attack can prove exceedingly difficult; more so if your opponent happens to be capable of flight, which some Kaiju are. A lot of the time, I was forced to literally take a barrage of abuse from an enemy before I could retaliate, as there’s no way to block or dodge. There is, however, a special combo breaker that slaps your opponent away and uses up temperature gauge, and it can prove very useful if timed correctly. Still, the omission of a block button is baffling.
Yet despite this, I still found myself compelled to keep going, and Godzilla proves strangely addicting once you get these past these problems. It’s also worth pointing out that there’s a huge lineup of playable monsters, and a Versus mode that I wasn’t able to try out, so there’s plenty of content tucked away. Quite how the full game will shape up remains to be seen, but to say I didn’t have fun with Godzilla during my two hours would be disingenuous.
Godzilla is due out on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 on July 14 in the U.S. and July 17 in the U.K.