photo: galactic.supermarket – flikr
The giant, scaled dino-monster has returned and is coming to a cinema near you, but bypassing your consoles. For a movie that has some hype surrounding it, why haven’t they incorporated a full-on console title?
The tie-in game for the movie (this time around) is called Godzilla: Smash3. It is a mobile game that involves a pissed-off Godzilla terrorizing cities and smashing them down. Cool, yeah? Well to make Godzilla unleash his fury you have to solve a multitude of puzzles while he stays put in the background.
It’s a change from the usual games where you have active control over how Godzilla moves and where exactly he is thrashing around. The last titles to be
released were in 2007/8 – Godzilla: Unleashed for the PS2 and Wii consoles with Godzilla: Unleashed Double Smash released for Nintendo DS. The games were not received well among reviewers with many criticizing them for unresponsive controls and poor graphics. Godzilla was sent away for a while until he was to rise again… and the stink from the last games had cleared.
Godzilla: Smash3 however, does have some allure for modern audiences. For a mobile game, the puzzle mechanics seem to work. The game becomes accessible to a more casual gamer through its puzzler gameplay and uses this to make your Godzilla smash boats, buildings, people, and other monsters. The array of bosses you encounter as you progress through the game produce different effects on the game board. Some cause the tiles to become ineffective by lighting them on fire – rendering them useless and others can turn into mines which explode to cause damage to your Godzilla. Oh No! This shakes up the gameplay and provides challenges to overcome. The player can also construct patterns to power up the atomic symbol on the power bar on top of game board – said to “unleash the full power of Godzilla.”
Nate Adams from Rouge Play Inc. talks more about the title in this interview with Simon Sage at GDC 2014.
While some may not be impressed with the new title “laming it out” by being a mobile puzzler, maybe this is a good way to go, instead of another tie-in fighter game that fails to deliver, like many movie tie-ins. While you don’t get ultimate control over the unbridled destruction Godzilla brings, It is still is a decent little game with a Godzilla in the background destroying stuff.
The game is being released on IOS and Android May 16th (One day after the movie!)
In the meantime, you can check out this mod of Skyrim by Quechus13. A giant Godzilla and MechaGodzilla battle it out, featuring Rodan. It’s pretty awesome.
