GENRE
	Action/Fighting
	DEVELOPER
	Pipeworks Software
	PUBLISHER
	Atari
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-4
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	No
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
	BUY NOW AT

Besides the obvious question the game's title begs us to ask (How did they manage to put a leash around Godzilla anyway?), Godzilla Unleashed for Wii raises one other big issue: How can a game about monsters stomping around destroying buildings and each other go wrong? In quite a few ways, it turns out.

visuals

Aside from the monster models, which are faithfully recreated, the rest of the game is generic and boring. Although Godzilla and the rest of the monster gang battle all across the world, every locale fails to distinguish itself from any of the other environments, with the same buildings and vehicles populating every stage. Frame rates are consistently smooth and lighting effects during some monster attacks are vibrant, but as a whole the visual presentation in-game is a disappointment that fails to push Wii's hardware capabilities.

Cutscenes during the game consist of storyboard presentations in the vein of a comic book, with slideshows moving along the game's story mode. Unfortunately, the cutscenes don't bring any life or excitement to the story, limiting the engagement of the player to it.

audio

In a word, ineffective. The voice acting that accompanies cutscenes are terribly overacted, leading to unintentionally funny moments during story mode, and the music that plays throughout the game is repetitive. On the plus side, all the monster cries and noises are in full effect, although during battle, the monsters are a little too quiet for a bunch of rampaging colossi.

gameplay

The story mode of Godzilla Unleashed revolves around an eruption of monster-mind-altering crystals around the world, causing a slew of the towering titans to go mad. Godzilla and a roster of good monsters are thus employed to traverse the globe and take down the evil monsters and crystals while dealing with a generically maniacal army marshal that doesn't distinguish between good or bad monsters. The plot doesn't make sense and isn't helped with the poorly paced and presented cutscenes. Missions during story mode are quite repetitive, consisting of one-on-one battles, crystal destroying rampages and a battle royale featuring three or four monsters duking it out at the same time.

As far as the gameplay itself, Godzilla Unleashed functions as a fairly standard fighting game. Unfortunately, despite a fairly large roster of monsters to choose to fight with, each character controls in largely the same fashion. Gesture controls are used to perform actions like grabbing opposing monsters for the purpose of tossing them around the city and picking up buildings to hurl at enemies and jumping. The player's motions, however, aren't recognized all that well by the game, resulting in jumps occurring when a building grab was meant and unnecessary damage incurred by your monster fighter because of errant gesture recognition.

The fights are at their most tedious during breath ray standoffs, which should, if done correctly, have been one of the more exciting features of the game. After sufficiently charging up your special meter, you can unleash a flashy breath ray attack on your opponent. It's too bad that the attack's direction is dictated by wonky gesture and motion detection, leading to beam attacks usually flying anywhere but at the intended target. When you do fire correctly, chances are the opposing monster will be firing back, leading to a beam battle. Properly targeting the beam while trying to figure out how to win the breath ray battle unnecessarily drags out the fight and turns what should be one of the more epic moments of the game into a borefest.

At least Godzilla Unleashed should do a pretty good job of keeping serious Godzilla enthusiasts happy with the amount of unlockable content. Most, if not all, of the monsters who have stomped alongside the Big Green Monster make an appearance in this game as a playable character. A great deal of them are unlockable by playing the game's story mode multiple times, which adds some longevity to an otherwise short game mode.

multiplayer

Godzilla Unleashed features a traditional versus mode, pitting two players against each other as their monsters of choice in an all-out brawl. A classic melee mode functions much like versus mode, but turning battles into more of a technical affair, awarding points on the basis of knockdowns and fighting skill.

Last Man Standing and Classic Destruction are the two multiplayer modes that gamers will have the most fun with, as the former allows up to four monsters to brawl until one titan is left standing. The latter plays out in the vein of Rampage, as monsters run around a city looking to destroy as many buildings and structures as possible.

overall

Godzilla Unleashed does too many things poorly to be recommended to anyone but the most diehard of Godzilla fans, who will be attracted to some of the game's attempted fan service, like the impressive roster of monsters. You'll have more fun watching the old movies, or better yet, scouring the used games at your local game shop for GameCube's decent Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee.

4.0/10