Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee was released in 2002 and can be played on the Gamecube and Xbox.  You can play as Godzilla along with a host of other Toho monsters.  This is an alright game that would be great if it didn’t suffer from a few key issues.

The roster is disappointingly small with only 11 playable characters with most of these being locked at the beginning of the game including Rodan.  Really?  Rodan???  One of the original monsters is a locked character?  That aside, though the roster is small, at least they hit all the important monsters including Ghidorah, Anguirus, and Gigan.  I would have liked to see Titanosaurus, Spacegodzilla, and King Caesar included in the roster as well.  That would really make this game more dynamic.  Other one-off monsters such as Orga, Destroyah, and Megalon were included so there’s no good excuse why these monsters weren’t included as well.

To the game’s credit though, the characters are diverse and really play to the uniqueness of that monster.  Gigan’s stomach buzzsaw, Godzilla’s atomic breath, and Mechagodzilla and Mechaghidorah’s weapons all give the monster their own style of fighting.  Megalon, however, is a cheap character as you can dig underground and avoid being attacked from the opponent; then you could then pop out, grab the opponent, throw him, and repeat the process.

Unlocking these characters is a drag, especially if you are new to fighting games.  You have to do it via Adventure Mode where you fight a series of monsters and then battle Mechagodzilla as the final boss.  The infuriating thing about this is that battling the monsters is easy but once you get to MechaG then the difficulty is ramped up.  Tanks and airplanes are firing at you constantly and MechaG attacks relentlessly.  I have to throw buildings at him and fire from a distance if I have a shred of hope in defeating him.

A big issue for this game is the camera angle.  Being a 3D fighting game, the camera has to swivel constantly in order to compensate the monsters’ movement.  As such, if I’m trying to get to a power-up, the camera angle can change and I’ll have no clue where it is and I inadvertently miss it while my opponent snatches it up.  This has happened many times and is quite frustrating.

The controls are responsive and the combos are easy to do but the game’s pacing is sluggish.  Attacks take their time and the monsters lumber along at a slow pace.  If this game was maybe 30% faster, it would be a fun and intense brawler.

Two big pluses are the cities and the team battles.  You can throw buildings, kick cars, crumble skyscrapers and just annihilate cities.  As such, stages like Monster Island aren’t that fun but others like North Seattle are a blast.  It really hammers in the point that this is a Godzilla game and that you’re supposed to destroy shit and have fun.  The team battles are great as you can do classic line ups like Godzilla and Anguirus vs. Gigan and Ghidorah.

I haven’t played the other Godzilla games, but from what I heard, those were baaaaaad.  I might give them a shot one day but I’m not in any rush.  This game can satisfy any Godzilla needs I have though only just.  Only to Godzilla fans could I recommend this game and even then that may be pushing it.