Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered - Switch 2 Review

So Atari are just remastering anything they’ve got their hands on these days, huh? I just finished reviewing Toy Story: Retro Roundup and Toy Story 3: Complete Edition; now I’ve got Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered dropping on my plate. I had the original game on the Xbox when I was a kid and while I did play it quite a lot and it was my introduction to Godzilla, I don’t remember enjoying it very much. So here's hoping this new remastered version strikes my fancy.

The Good

Something I enjoyed when I played games as a kid was unlocking new content in games; in fact, when I would unlock everything a game had, I would immediately delete my save file and start over again (I was a weird kid). Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered scratches that very niche itch of mine with a dedicated unlocks menu that shows you all of the requirements needed to unlock new characters, stages, etc. Some unlock methods have changed from the original game in such a way that they allow the player to work on unlocking multiple things at once and lessen the need to repeat adventure mode over and over again.

Speaking of Adventure mode, each playable kaiju now has two additional campaign modes, each more difficult than the last with the addition of more enemies per match and the black and white and Technicolor filters that were unlockables in the original game. This new addition singlehandedly triples the single-player content of the original, which was one of that game’s biggest pain points.

It wouldn’t be a modern fighting game port without the ability to play online. While I wouldn’t call it perfect, there are some hiccups here and there with connectivity, but it's still a major addition to the game and would’ve been sorely missed if not included.

TL;DR

• Always working on unlocking something
• New campaign modes for each kaiju
• Online Multiplayer

The Bad

The combat in Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is unfortunately very shallow. It seems good on the surface, with each kaiju having a punch, kick, fierce, special and grab, but outside of a handful of characters, you can’t really make any combos for more than two or three hits. Personally I found most fights devolve to either throwing buildings at each other or seeing which player can chain grab the other to death first.

I guess this lack of combat complexity explains why there is no practice mode or move lists (unless you count Destruction mode as practice mode like the game does but personally I don't because there is nothing to practice your moves on other than the environment and you’re on a timer.) I will admit I had a bit of a “game journalist” moment where it took me an embarrassingly long time to even figure out how to jump.

The additions of the new adventure modes for each kaiju add possibly the most annoying change to the game in my opinion and that is a levelling system. If you wish to try the new adventure modes, you are going to need to get to levels 4 and 7 for each kaiju INDIVIDUALLY. That doesn’t sound like a lot but going from level 1 to 4 can take 2-3 full playthroughs of the original adventure mode depending on how well you perform, which somehow makes adventure mode feel even more tedious than it did before.

It may have been a bit too much to ask but I really wanted there to be new playable kaijus in this remaster because the base roster is very lacklustre. Yeah, you got most of the big hitters like Gigan, Anguirus and Rodan but you also have two Godzillas, two MechaGodzillas and two King Ghidoras. That's half of the entire roster occupied by a character and their clone.

TL;DR

• Combat is very shallow
• No practice mode or move lists
• Levelling up characters is a pain
• Too many clone characters

Final Score: 4/10

Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is faithfully miserable to play. It's exactly how I remember it playing as a kid but with some extra bells and whistles. I know the Godzilla fanbase are pretty rabid and this game in particular has its fans but personally I do not believe this deserved to be remastered.

Thank you for checking out our Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered Switch 2 review, thank you to Atari (via Plan of Attack) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
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