You’d think a game about an absurdly large radioactive dinosaur that spends half its time smashing urban infrastructure for fun and the other half duking it out with other bizarre monsters and robot versions of itself would be a sure-fire good time. Yet Bandai Namco’s latest attempt to capture that Kaiju magic in interactive form follows the trend set by almost every Godzilla game that has come before it: little more than some fan-pleasing movie references heaped atop a towering pile of mediocrity.

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The first thing most people will probably notice is that Godzilla does not look like a current-gen game. While the character models of the Kaiju themselves look respectably good - particularly fan favorites like Mothra and Destroyah, as well as the several versions of Godzilla - the destructible environments that surround them are far from impressive. The city blocks in each area look as though they’ve been copied and pasted to fill space, aside from the few unique structures that mark the difference between one nondescript urban location and the next. Even in the midst of a monstrous rampage, these structures all explode and crumble in a similar fashion, breaking apart into the same standard chunks as the building before it. Even on PS3 or Xbox 360, I’d have described these settings as lackluster.

Godzilla also suffers from a minor identity crisis. I can’t tell what it wants itself to be - a smash-and-go action game in the vein of Rampage, or a monstrous fighting game like the previous Godzilla game Destroy All Monsters. The main game mode centers around increasing Godzilla’s size by destroying as much as possible, specifically large power generators and other Kaiju. There isn’t much else to it beyond that: blow up the generators, kill the other monsters before they kill you. It’s not particularly challenging, either - the military tanks and planes were never more than a nuisance; and unless a rival Kaiju spawned at twice my current size (which rarely happens and may have been a bug), I barely saw the orange haze that appeared when Godzilla takes too much damage. After finally getting used to the unorthodox control scheme (I never thought I’d have to use two separate buttons to turn left or right after the advent of thumbsticks) I found crashing through a downtown area somewhat entertaining... for a while.

Keeping a combo going while on a rampage essentially boils down to using the same few attacks over and over again, and thanks to Godzilla’s slow speed and ponderous controls, it’s easy to miss a step or get stuck turning around and lose your combo. Things get especially muddy once another Kaiju enters the picture: battles quickly became a frustrating game of chance that had me spamming the same five attacks, hoping that I would land more hits than my opponent. There is a blocking move available, but even the short time it takes to charge up renders it practically useless. I can appreciate a certain amount of novelty that comes with the slow-paced controls, but I’m supposed to be controlling Godzilla: King of the Monsters; I don’t think it’s supposed to actually feel like being a sweaty teamster in a rubber monster suit.

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That said, the spirit of the old-school monster movie is where Bandai Namco absolutely nails it. Whether it’s intentional or not, the half-campy, half-deadly-serious spirit of the Godzilla films is alive and well in almost every aspect of this game. Dialogue from one of the four human characters is cringeworthy, but delivered with such sincerity that it becomes almost plausible. Also included is a massive compendium for fans that includes bios on almost every monster that has ever appeared in a Godzilla film. While it makes for some interesting reading material, you could probably find that info online, and it doesn’t make up for the game’s lack of substantial gameplay.

The real downfall of Godzilla is its repetitive nature. In order to access other playable Kaiju, or an extended ending sequence, or any of the other dozens of unlockables, you can expect to be forced to play through the two main game modes many, many times. To unlock the endings, for example, you’ll have to find all the data locations in each arena - which you can only collect by playing through the branching campaign at least four times. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a huge issue, as it only takes an hour or two to get through one run. Because the gameplay is so repetitive, though - smash, smash, smash, super, smash, smash, smash, super, etc - getting through each stage becomes more of a grueling endurance test than anything else.

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In an apparent attempt to combat this monotony, there are a few game modes which offer slightly different experiences from the main God of Destruction missions. The most interesting is the Defense Mode, which casts players as a “friendly” Kaiju that must defend the world from Godzilla and other destructive monsters - but even then, it just boils down to beating up the other monster. There’s also the King of Kaiju mode, which challenges you to defeat six monsters as quickly as possible, a la a typical fighting game’s tower mode. Lastly, there’s a Versus Mode that lets you challenge another player to a 1v1 monster smackdown, using these same clunky fighting mechanics. None of these extra modes do very much to liven things up, since they’re still based on Godzilla’s slow-paced and often tedious gameplay.