Bandai Namco's 2014/15 Godzilla game is a weird duck, man. It's so close to being decent. It looks and sounds kind of freaking amazing, but it plays like absolute booty. It also, strangely enough, offers a PS3 and PS4 version with wildly different amounts of content (Spoilers: The PS4 version has a lot more stuff). Even more strangely, Bandai Namco only licensed big G for a ridiculously short amount of time, so the game only had a tiny physical print run and was taken off digital storefronts almost as soon as it appeared. It's a mess. Read on for more on the PS3 version of Godzilla Vs. and to watch gameplay.
The first thing you need to know about Godzilla 2014 / Godzilla Vs. / Godzilla: The Game - take your pick on what to call it - is that you can't find it anymore. The PS4 physical copy is hard to find and very expensive and it wasn't ever released physically in the USA. The digital versions of the game were taken down ages ago, too, so you can't download it anymore, either. So, na na na na na nyah and can still play it because I bought it on PS3 years ago but you can't. Or something.
I suppose you aren't missing out on much, though. The game isn't very good. I mean, it looks and sounds kind of perfect and is easily the best presentation we've ever had in a Godzilla game, but the gameplay itself is seriously lacking. The main mode has you traveling around Japan and destroying G-Energy tanks and by doing so Godzilla gets bigger and stronger. Other monsters appear, along with the JSDF, and you have to fight them off. It's kind of a cool concept, and it's impressive how much Godzilla's scale changes over the course of the story, but the gameplay is awful.
It's kind of like a modern version of Godzilla Generations on Dreamcast, which was another game where you just slowly walked around and destroyed stuff. Where Godzilla Generations was kind of mindless so it didn't matter as much that the game was slow as balls and the controls were terrible and stiff, Godzilla Vs. asks a lot more of you as a player that the gameplay just can't keep up with. This makes it frustrating because Godzilla moves like a slow ass tank and you just can't react fast enough to avoid anything. It isn't fun. It's freaking awful. I hate it.
On the plus side, the game has a secondary mode where you just have one-on-one fights with other kaiju, and this mode is actually kind of decent. It isn't as cool and dynamic as the Pipeworks Godzilla trilogy, but it looks great and feels good enough. The PS4 version has a ton more playable characters, but the PS3 version only lets you control Godzilla (Heisei or US 2014 versions).
All in all, this is pretty damn disappointing all around, particularly the PS3 version which is all I have. Imagine a game that looked this great but played like the Pipeworks games? Oh, em, gee.
