This was a game I played back a couple of years ago on PS4 but recently got a PS5 and a Premium version re release so I decided to play it again. When I first played War of the Monsters, I remember liking but there were a number of weird and awkward quirks about it that held the game back, however there were things about it that prevented me from dropping the game. Now playing it again, there is still fun to be had but it all really depends on how much you are willing to put up with all of those "quirks" I mentioned.
WotM is an arena fighter with a fully destructible 3D environment where the player characters can run and jump around, climb buildings, use weapons, grab enemies, or even have have a building collapse in an your opponent. In the moment, the amount crazy over the top specticle the game can provide is pretty impressive. The way buildings can tear apart or how the player can be thrown all away across the map with the scale the game has is quite impressive especially the kind of over the top giant monster movies the game is trying to emulate. It's also nice that the game comes with an adventure mode similar to the campaign routes of Twisted Metal Black where you need to fight bosses from time to time all though the lack of mid campaign route movies is missed.
With that said, in order to appreciate this stuff, there are the aforementioned quirks.
The first major one are the controls. The way WotM controls, it very much feels like it began it's life as a Sony Playstation game, not a Playstation 2 game. What I mean is that the game has tank controls in a fully 3D environment where you can turn the camera but can only see what's in front of you. So turning the analog stick left or right will turn your character to that direction but not move it the left or right side. In order to strafe, you need to press L1 or R1. The former to strafe left and the latter to strafe right. To top everything off you need to hold L1 and R1 to lock on and the right analog stick has no actual camera control. This is what I mean that it controls more like a PS1 game than a PS2 game. It sure did started to hurt my hands holding L1 and R1 together to remain locked on especially during bosses. You could bypass this with the PS5 emulation control options but I'm not sure about the lock on system since I never bothered to try to see if you could have a dedicated button press for holding L1 and R1.
The 2nd quirk is he opponent AI. If it's one on one fights then it isn't too bad. Just remember to hold L2 when they are about to attack you but when it's more than 1 opponent, it feels more like a handicap match than a geniune free for all battle. It's very easy to get attacked or thrown across the map after wailing on an enemy and then they can retreat, get health and recover from the massive whailing you gave them.
The final quirk is when you get impaled or the fatigue system where you need to mash certain buttons like crazy to remove the object out of your body. You can get fatigued when can do special moves and on top your special projectible attacks do very little damage to enemies, it takes awhile for the character to break out of his tired state and the meter can take a while to regenerate.
If you can get past all this then there is fun to be had with this game. Something this game does shockingly well is the lives system, it's done much better than any Twisted Metal game. You get 3 lives and a health refill upon each respawn. The battles usually not being more than 5-8 minutes. Combine that with health pickups scattered all over the map and the fact that you have all 3 lives refilled upon new battle in the campaign and it's a lives system in a game I can say that feels balanced. It's one big reason why the game can feel beatable in spite of it's many odd design decisions.
The bosses are decent too minus the final boss, they strike a decent balance of not being a damage spongey version of regular enemy fights with the puzzle element of throwing objects at them with every opening after evading their telegraphed attacks. The only exception being the final boss since it's laser beams can destroy the pillars in the arena that is supposed to block them with ease. Get past the 1st phase and it gets noticeably easier.
Overall, WotM in spite of it's issues I had with it's design is a game I still enjoyed there is still a lot of specticle and carnage to be found with it's over the top scale, production values and it's very premise. If you don't mind what I have mentioned there is fun to be had. It's a shame that the planned successor never really went anywhere with it's development.
No comments:
Post a Comment