Godzilla review

The downside to this manufactured sensation of heaviness is, of course, fights that play out incredibly slowly. When the only speed is ‘shuffle like you’re a man in 200 pounds of heavy-duty rubber’, there’s not much to combat besides wading into each other and windmilling like drunken bridesmaids at a wedding. There’s no block button, and since strafing is about as effective as trying to sidestep a shark underwater, there’s little reason to move in any direction but forward, then back while you wait for your special to recharge, then forward again. It’s essentially a reskinned Rock'em Sock'em Robots.
Soon you’ll work out which move is most effective and stick rigidly to it. A typical battle with Classic Godzilla, the default kaiju unlocked, involves pressing X (on PS4) to close the gap by charging, weathering a few blows, then pressing the right trigger to stagger your foe with a roar. That’s it through the entire story. Enemies stick to the same cheesy tactics, too: at one point a caravan-sized maggot headbuts then shoots silly string at me and I’m helplessly staggered for 15 agonising seconds.
Speaking of which, it’s one of the strangest, most tonally confused campaigns in some time. A triumphant jingle plays after beating a level before abruptly cutting to a mournful refrain as if the game suddenly remembers all the livelihoods you’ve ruined. And for some reason a G-Force operative who appears in the corner of the screen to inadvertently guide you in the right direction by saying things like, “The kaiju is dead, so he’ll surely head for the generators!” unaccountably seems to know the name of every monster when they arrive, announcing them like they’re heading down the ramp at the Royal Rumble. The awful writing is the only consistent thing about it.

Although in God of Destruction you’re limited to playing as Godzilla, a spin on the mode called Invade lets you pick any kaiju you want, while Defend sees you again play a kaiju of your choice but this time attempting to limit the destruction of whoever you’re up against (note: it’s pretty hard not to cause collateral damage when you’re a giant space worm). Nothing here adds much to the game, though.
Meanwhile the King of Kaiju mode is a barebones time-trial in which players see how long it takes to defeat a string of six opponents, and finally there’s a Vs mode which unfortunately focuses on 1v1 online-only fights. It’s a baffling decision since this is such perfect, stupid, split-screen fodder.
The Kaiju Guide is about the only well-designed thing here, an in-game encyclopedia featuring pictures and paragraphs detailing Godzilla’s weird and wonderful monsters. Did you know that Baragon burrowed underground and survived the Cretaceous extinction event while most other dinosaurs died? Now you do.