War of the Monsters (PS2/PS4)

 

War Of The Monsters (PS2/PS4) :

Big giant monsters! Ever since King Kong climbed the Empire State Building and Godzilla first rose up from the sea, huge creatures have been stomping all over our on-screen cities. Naturally it wasn't long before such creatures met up to battle each other to find out who was the best, and cause even more destruction! Once video games appeared on the scene, they also didn't wait very long before giving us control over these mega-sized monsters! 

This game then is similar to a few other monster beat-em-ups, but it is a very good example of the genre! There are eight characters unlocked at the start of the game, with a few more available to unlock. These characters will look fairly familiar to any fan of the aforementioned sci-fi flicks too, with a giant ape, a giant lizard, a huge robot...you get the idea! The game knows it's target audience and knows what they'll want to see!

Once you've listened to the 50's style music, watched the spinning newspapers of the intro and picked your favourite monster, you can play against a friend in fully 3D environments, smashing buildings, picking up cars or sharp pointy pieces of metal to throw at them, and using your characters unique abilities (radioactive breath, for example) to defeat the other player. You can also add an extra couple of fighters, although sadly these can only be computer controlled. If you can't find anybody else to play with, there is a fairly decent solo mode too, with the added feaature of slightly smaller monsters to battle in between the big fights!

The environments are pretty cool, often hiding little discoverable easter eggs such as extra weapons to use, and the way the buildings fall apart and add more things to lob at your opponent is pretty cool. There are apparently also a few mini-games to unlock, but I've never managed to unlock any of these yet, so can't really comment on those.

It all makes for a pretty enjoyable, suitably sci-fi, beast-filled brawler that's a bit of a hidden gem on Playstation 2. It took me a while to find a copy, but Im really glad I did, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a slightly unusual addition to their collection of fighting games!