War of the Monsters

Rampage is an arcade classic developed by Midway in 1986. Players had control over three monsters named George, Lizzie, and Ralph which represented monsters familiar to the history of monster movies. The objective was to destroy as much as possible until the player was done in by the forces of the military, racking up scores in the hundreds of thousands in the process. It was a popular game that was ported to every home console that was available for the time and one of the first instances of the player getting to play as the bad guy/the monster instead of attempting to defeat them. This review however is not a review of Rampage or any sequel to the original arcade game. This is a review of the 2003 PS2 game War of the Monsters, an arena fighting game that I grew up with that takes a heaping amount of inspiration from Rampage. War of the Monsters is a game that revels in the concept of controlling a crushing behemoth, pitting themselves against others with our beloved cities as their playgrounds. War of the Monsters was not the only game with this premise that was taken from the pages of Rampage. There was a slew of Godzilla arena fighting games during this time where the players could duke it out as giant monsters, destroying an urban setting in the process. However, these were licensed games that were restricted to the properties of the Godzilla film franchise. Like Rampage, War of the Monsters features a smattering of original monsters that share a strong resemblance to the classic ones. Even then, War of the Monsters is completely different from Rampage. Rampage was very light-hearted, silly, and comedic. The monsters can eat a guy sitting on the toilet for Christ's sake. The direction of War of the Monsters is to instead tribute the era of the monster movie and inspire the same thrills it once did.

To achieve this sense of serious tribute, the presentation of War of the Monsters is through the roof and is one of my favorite aspects of the game. The opening cutscene details the premise of the game competently; alien ships invade earth and we humans overcome them with science, but there is another unexpected threat on the horizon. The defeated alien ships crashland on Earth and leek a green ooze that transforms animals, objects, robots, and people to gargantuan size, creating twelve different monsters that fight with each other for either dominance or just for the sake of untethered chaos. The game’s opening screen displays the menu on a drive-in movie theater screen with some retro cars from the 1950s in the foreground. This game isn’t a parody of the cheese-factor of these B-movie monster flicks we’ve come to jab at in retrospect. This is the experience of bringing a date to the drive-in back in 1958 and having your date scream her head off as the popcorn explodes and rains down all over your leather seats. The presentation here is as unapologetically big as the monsters it’s presenting, a needed aspect of any monster movie. I’ve always loved the various sounds of the menu whilst scrolling through them, big bombastic sounds fit for a large theater. The foreground of the menus is misty and ominous like the people viewing this in the foreground are in for a thrilling time. All of this is accompanied by a full orchestral score that perfectly fits the grandiose scale of a monster film. With all of this presentation in mind, War of the Monsters is a passion project for those involved with its production. They want to exude all of the strong merits not only of the monster movie itself but of the monster movie viewing experience.

For being a sincere tribute to the monster movie genre, War of the Monsters is still a fun and accessible game nonetheless. One would have to fuck up pretty badly to make a game revolving around monsters fighting each other dull and unstimulating. While the presentation is great, it would be nothing without the cast of monsters to uphold it. Each of the twelve monsters is unique from one another and either is evident tributes to famous movie monsters (Togera is Godzilla and Congar couldn’t be anything else but King Kong), based on obscure movie monsters (I had to look up what monster Agamo was based off of. It’s some monster named Daimajin), vaguely based on familiar monsters from the classic films (Preytor is either a Godzilla enemy or based off of the film Them!), or seem like original creations (I don’t know what Magmo could be). While they have their differences, each of them functions similarly in combat. The controls in War of the Monsters are quite simple. Attacking is reserved between the square and triangle buttons, one initiating a light attack and the other initiating a heavier attack. The circle button picks up items and other monsters and throws them with the same button. R2 blocks and the X button jumps, rounding out the simple control scheme of the game. Two different special moves can be initiated with two separate button combinations when the player’s energy bar is full. One is a long-ranged attack and the other is a blast of energy that clears away nearby enemies. I appreciate the diversity present here with the monster selection, but the game is heavily unbalanced between all of them. Half of the roster is slower than the other half which gives the quicker monsters a total advantage. I always felt handicapped playing as either Agamo or Togera but felt spry and proficient with Preytor or Kineteclops because of their speed. For some reason, playing as Ultra-V felt way too easy, and slaughtered the other monsters with him. I guess he’s just a testament to superior Japanese engineering or something.

The environments are just as essential and dynamic to the monster movie as the monsters themselves. Like the monsters, they share a striking resemblance to real-world locations. Gambler’s Gulch is Las Vegas and Baytown with the Coit Tower and Golden Gate Bridge in the background is a no-brainer. Every level comes with its own unique musical accompaniment and the screams of the ant-sized humans are appropriate background noise for the setting. Every environment is completely combustible to the point where it might give the player the incentive to destroy the entire city. Vehicles and other objects from the environment can also be thrown at the other monsters. Any object that can impale another monster leaves them vulnerable enough to do a large amount of damage to them. Some states have their unique elements to them like the active volcano in Club Caldera or the ufo-triggered tsunamis in the Tokyo-inspired Tsunopolis. The variety here with the levels is as abundant as the roster of monsters.

War of the Monsters is also way more difficult than I remember. After years of not playing this game, I started it again for this review and found it saved on the easy difficulty. I chortled and confidently changed it to medium thinking I could handle it, but then I remembered why it was set too easy in the first place. Even on medium difficulty, War of the Monsters is merciless. The enemy monsters are ostensibly privy to all of the attack moves that the game keeps secret like the counter move, the headbutt, and then dive bomb move and will use all of these to pound you into the dirt. Even if the player knows how to do these, they will still find great difficulty in attempting to execute them. The dive-bomb seemingly needs 100% precision to execute, pressing triangle at the maximum height after a jump. I cannot execute this move for the life of me, yet I’ve seen CPU monsters do it with just a brisk hop in the air. The enemies will also routinely run after health and energy items, mostly to screw over the player rather than healing themselves. I shudder to think what hard difficulty is like if this is what medium difficulty is.

Like most fighting games, the optimal way to experience War of the Monsters is with friends. Unfortunately due to the game being a PS2 exclusive, there is a maximum of two players. I understand that this game was published by Sony, but limiting the number of players to only two is a waste of fun potential. In times when you can’t find one other person to experience this game with, War of the Monsters offers plenty of single-player experiences. Even the multiplayer modes can be played solo, but it’s a wonder why anyone would. There is a single-player campaign that takes the player’s monster of choice through a stream of levels with a few unique boss battles in between. The only problem is that it’s the same sequence of levels no matter which monster the player chooses, so replaying the campaign with the monsters is incredibly tedious. At the end of each monster’s campaign, there is an origin story cutscene detailing how the monster came to be. Each of these is brief and can only be seen again after the player finishes a specific monster’s campaign. It would’ve been great to have these saved to an extras menu, but the developers begged to differ. There are extra unlockables that can be purchased in the main menu. These include unlockable stages, characters, skins, and extra games. Most of the unlockable items are a great incentive to continually play through the game for tokens, but the extra games are laughably unfinished. I don’t understand why developers of fighting games implement extra modes to distract from the main course, but at least put some effort into them unlike the developers here.

War of the Monsters is a treat for anyone who is a fan of classic monster movies. Unlike the Rampage series, War of the Monsters takes its influences and treats them with a sense of dignity and respect. Its stellar presentation showcases the long-lost thrills of the monster movie genre and the culture surrounding it. Unfortunately, the game is beset by many shortcomings in the gameplay department. The unbalanced roster, the arduous movesets, and the punishing level of difficulty make War of the Monsters more trouble than just a simple excursion with giant monsters. Fortunately, the appeal of giant monsters beating the snot out of each other still resonates here regardless. It could be much worse, but it’s a shame that these lackluster aspects do not match the passion put into the presentation here. The legacy of War of the Monsters is a fun multiplayer romp buried in the crevices of the Sony back catalog of the early 2000s and nothing more.