Godzilla: Save the Earth is a superb game that fans will worship, and everyone else will greatly enjoy.
User Rating: 9 | Godzilla: Save the Earth PS2
When I first saw this game I viewed it with skepticism. It looked nice, but I never got into Godzilla, so I wasn't a Godzilla fan, and the game had gotten some bland reviews. On top of that I didn't feel like paying fourty dollars for a game, I usually wait until I can catch a game for twenty dollars about a year later. Anyways, I got some money and decided to order Risk and Judge Dredd for the PS2 online. I still had some money left over, and I was thinking of getting Jak 2, but then I played it at my friend's house and it didn't interest me. Instead, I was able to get twenty more dollars so that I finally had fourty dollars, and went looking for this game. The first place I looked was at Wal-Mart, they didn't have it, I then looked at EB Games, they didn't have, then another store, then Best Buy, no one had it. By this time I realised that finding this game was going to be hard, and now I was convinced to get it. I finally went to Toys R Us and was luckily able to get the last copy of it they had, and probably the last copy in town. After taking it home, I called my friend and he came over and we played two player, Godzilla was one of the few games that I wanted to play the two player mode more than I wanted to play the single player mode. Ok, enough chit chat, onto the review. Graphically, the game looks really nice. All the buildings and structures in the game can be destroyed and big chunks of them can be knocked out by hitting them. The buildings also collapse nicely, and when I first played in New York City, I was in awe as I watched a huge skyscraper fall to the ground. It looked like the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, and to be honest, I was very surprised that they would let you play in New York City given the fact that you can destroy the big skyscrapers and of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took place there. Don't get me wrong though, I like playing in New York City, and I'm not offended the least bit. Also, the city areas could be considered somewhat small, but there are a lot of different 'arenas' if you want to call it that, so all in all, you have a pretty big total area of play, but I think they could have made it larger. The cutscenes look just like you'd expect a game's cutscenes to look like, which is to say great. The monster models all look very nice and pay tribute to the Godzilla franchise. The only problem that this game has graphically is that the monsters' tails, feet, arms, etc. will often find themselves going through objects, and even though this isn't surprising considering all the solid objects in the game, it would have been nice to see this been improved upon. Sound wise, there isn't much to say about this game, and it falls a little flat if anything. There really isn't any background music, and the sound effects could have been better. The UFOs sound cartoonish, and considering that the world is getting rampaged by giant monsters, you'd expect there to be more noise, and that the noise that is there would be louder and have a little more of an impact, but oh well. The biggest problem with this game is that there is no background music and it would have been nice to be able to listen to Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult (yeah, it's never gonna happen), but the game does have one good sound quality, and that is that all the monsters sound appropriately good and that the announcer sounds a little too enthusiastic (in a funny kind of way). It's a good thing that a game's sound is usually the least important part of a game because Godzilla falls a little short in that area, but don't let the sound fool you, Godzilla's still a great game. Gameplay wise, the game is very fun. The worst thing gameplay wise is that the game's story mode if you want to call it that is short, but there are several things that make up for that and will keep you playing such as the two to four player modes, the point system that lets you gain points and then use the points to buy things such as monsters, cities, pictures, etc., challenges, and online play among other things. While it's brought up, I'll talk about the online play. I haven't been able to play the game online yet because when I looked, there were no games going on, so there really isn't anything to say about the game online wise. Playing the game itself is fun. You can pick up small to medium sized buildings and throw them, you can also pick up cars and boats and such and throw them which can be somewhat fun, and can help you out a lot if your attacks aren't doing much damage. Along with this, you can do the usual Godzilla like stuff like shoot ray beams out of your eyes and mouth and you can go into rage mode which gives you extra attack power. Also, there will be power ups and such strewn throughout the levels that will do several things from partially restoring your health to having your enemy bombarded by government planes. The powerups don't really have that much of an impact on the actual gameplay, but will come to your aid from time to time. There are also minigame like things in the game that can have you do things such as playing basketball with boulders to sinking navy ships. The minigames aren't good, but they aren't bad either, they're average. To put the gameplay simply, fighting gigantic monsters while destroying entire cities is just that fun. As I said earlier, fans of Godzilla will love this game, and even gamers that never got into the Godzilla thing will like this game. For fourty dollars, you get a good, fun game that shouldn't be passed by. 
