Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Might Be Flawed, but Man Is It Fun.
As of late, I’ve been seeing people doing their year end reviews for 2023 (Yeah I know I’m behind). I have a few friends that have blogs elsewhere that review anything from movies, to Goosebumps books, some of it inspiring me to do this blog thing I got going on here. As for the ones that have reviewed movies, I keep seeing one movie that gets brought up time and time again that’s not the culture phenomena of “Barbenheimer” that we got early last year.
The movie is Godzilla: Minus One. I for one have not seen the movie myself but every person that I know that has seen it has loved it. I kind of got late into Toho’s Monster Metaverse as my first exposure to Godzilla was that really bad 1998 US Godzilla movie and it sort of turned me away from Godzilla and friends. It was not until my early college years I started watching GOOD Godzilla movies, so yeah I’m a little late to the party in anything involving the King of the Monsters. Seeing how Godzilla Minus One is the current hot ticket in the box office, what better time than to take advantage of the Godzilla craze then reviewing the only Godzilla movie I’ve played? Ok that’s a lie I’ve played a little bit of Super Godzilla on the SNES but for like a half hour.
The only Godzilla game I can say I’ve played a good deal of is Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee. It is a fighting game developed by Pipeworks Software and published by Infogrames (under the Atari brand) in the early GameCube days. Destroy All Monsters would get a release the year after in 2003 for the Xbox with better graphics. The one I remember playing was the original GameCube version, because when you want to get friends together and play Melee on the Nintendo GameCube, what else would you play? Of course you can only be talking about Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee right? RIGHT!?.
My first experience was at a college party and someone told me that Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is a hidden gem and that we should play it. I chose to give it a shot because why the heck not? After all I was curious about the game. Can you blame me? The idea of playing as giant monsters, destroying cities, and beating the hell out of your friends sounds like a good time to be had. I was expecting a half-done lame fighting game but I ended up having a good time playing it. I was expecting the worst seeing how movie tie-in video games especially in this timeframe are always subpar at best.
So what do you do in this game? Well you pick a giant monster from the Toho Monster universe and fight other monsters in large cities and other environments. I think that’s the main appeal of Godzilla, there’s not many things as simple but as satisfying as seeing giant monsters destroying the city and wrecking everything in their path. Of course when you go see a Godzilla movie, there’s got to be plot, but let’s be honest, most people that go see a Godzilla movie want to see Godzilla kick ass and take names. That’s kind of the appeal to this game as well, just have two players play as giant monsters and be as destructive as you can be. Who doesn't want that?
The game’s main single player mode called adventure mode. Not really as much as an adventure as it’s a standard fighting game gauntlet of match after match until you get to the end. The story goes like this… An alien race known as the Vortaak invades Earth via controlling all the monsters to destroy all the major cities and take over. One monster (the one you play as) breaks free from the mind control and it’s up to you to well…. destroy all monsters! The opening cutscene is kind of funny as it shows the game is not made to be taken seriously and I respect that this game knows what it is and never tries to be something it isn't.
The gameplay is that of a 3D style fighting game where you can move around freely in all directions, you have health and special bars that you can do special moves depending on the monster, for example King Ghidorah can use his iconic ray to attack you from a distance. There’s also powerups you can find around the fight area to get an advantage over the CPU or a friend. You can play in the normal single player campaign but Destroy All Monsters Melee is no doubt best played with other players.
On the surface, Destroy All Monsters Melee is a fun fighting game that is not meant to be taken seriously. One you start picking at the game deep and in more detail, you start to notice the flaws of the game. The controls can be quite sluggish and slow and as a balanced fighting game, I can’t really say this one hits it out of the park. Godzilla is a very fun fighting game if you treat it as a causal game you play with friends, but once you start taking it seriously and really look at the game past face value, then the cracks begin to show.
A sequel of this game called Godzilla: Save The Earth in 2004 and a 3rd game titled Godzilla: Unleashed in 2007. I have not played the other two games in the trilogy so I can’t really say much about them. Sorry guys.
Overall if you don’t take it as a serous fighting game and just treat it as a fun time with friends to just play something just to have fun, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is a surprisingly good pick. Is it a good fighting game? Not at all and is no doubt not the best fighting game on the GameCube with the word Melee in it. Is it a good party game? Likely not if you really want to get into the details and really dive deep into it, but if you just want to have a good ole fashion monster throw down with friends, then Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee will keep you occupied for a good while. It’s a surprisingly fun game if you’re looking for something to pop into the GameCube and just want a fighting game that you really don’t want to think too much about or be competitive with, then Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is not the worst pick you can make.
