#260 - Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters

SPOILER ALERT! The game is awful, but this cover is amazing. Godzilla looks truly terrifying.

 I'm all for precursors to Advance Wars, but not when my beloved Godzilla is involved.

Godzilla 2sees developer Toho starting from scratch, which is, admittedly, not a bad idea. The original Godzillashould have been a bash-and-smash delight, but it suffered from irritable AI syndrome and all-around boring gameplay. In War of Monsters, bash-and-smash has been replaced by sit-and-think. Yes, friends, Godzilla 2is a real-time-strategy game. What does that mean for you, the player? Well, instead of controlling Godzilla and his monster buds, you control... the army. Writing as a gamer and Godzilla fan, I'm already tapping out. I don't play a Godzilla game to go against Godzilla. I want to control him, destroy other monsters and the human race, and be done with it! Bah. Anyways, there are twelve scenarios to choose from on the main menu. It doesn't matter which one you choose, as all of them involve shifting your fighter jets, tanks, and other weaponry closer to the monsters in order to fight against them. Often your goal is to "Stop Godzilla/Mothra/whoever from destroying this structure!" which is funny because the monsters never have any set pattern to their movement. They destroy whatever they want whenever they want, and if you don't directly engage them, they won't necessarily engage you; logical, I suppose, but still curious. Well, whatever. The point is, Toho destroyed yet another beloved genre, the RTS: firstly, by bringing in an iconic character that never belonged in said genre to begin with, and secondly, by making the back-and-forth gameplay neither strategic or interesting. Sadly, Toho continued their wave of Godzilla treachery further on the SNES, but (all praises due) I'm not covering that system, so if you're curious – if you dare – check it out for yourself.

F

#259 - Godzilla: Monster of Monsters

Ah, the Nuclear Age was a real treat, wasn't it? Good thing society has moved on... oh wait.

                          Now now, nobody likes a one-eyed octopus jerk!

I'm not sure if kids today appreciate Godzilla as much as children of the 80s and 90s did, but by garr, I couldn't get enough cheesy rubber monster movies back in the day. Godzilla was the king of them all (sorry Kong), which is why I was so excited when I saw this game at my local Blockbuster back in '91 or '92. I rented the crap out of this thing, but even then, I remember thinking to myself, is this it? Shouldn't Godzilla have more to it? Twenty years later and brimming with wisdom and insight, I can honestly say that my seven-year-old self was on to something. Is this it, indeed. Was the gameplay contained in Godzilla all Toho can think of to satisfy the Godzilla diehards?

Perhaps I'm being too harsh on Godzilla, so I'll let my description of the gameplay allow you to form your own opinion. The game starts you off on a grid board, with Godzilla and Mothra on one end and other random monsters on the opposite end. You can choose to move Mothra or Godzilla two spaces ahead, and when your turn is over, whichever character you decided to move enters into a side-scrolling area. These areas are all the same: avoid the large amounts of artillery fire at Mothra/Godzilla. There is no real reward for destroying the enemies, other than hoping that their mangled remains will contain some health. In essence, these sections felt pointless, despite the logicality of them being there. Of course you, as a monster, would fight the military, but why does it have to feel so boring? Next up: the monster battle sections. These were slightly more entertaining, if only because it felt right seeing two hideous large monster aliens duke it out with one another. It's button-mashing goodness, but right away, some of the evil monsters' power moves turn out to be down right cheap. One particular monster (Megaura, I think?) killed Mothra with one hit! If you're thinking to yourself, that's disgraceful, you're correct. Godzilla is, by logic, slower and has less manueverability than Mothra. He didn't seem stronger either, which meant he died a lot sooner. It's a shame considering this is supposed to be Godzilla's game! Make him the badass he was meant to be!

If you can get past the fact that the side-scrolling stages are worthless (especially with Mothra, who can fly over the artillery and basically bypass everything) and the monster battles take some figuring out, it's not an awful game. Still, it's not the Godzillagame fans the world over were hoping over. That would come later with the King of Monsters. If Toho could have found a way to combine the over-the-top hysterical fighting of the King of Monsters with the smash-and-bash Rampage, there's a chance a sweet Godzilla game could have been birthed from such an experiment. But hey! This particular Godzilla game was popular enough to birth a sequel, so we'll see how that goes tomorrow.

C-

On another note, according to the number of NES games currently chronicled over at Nintendoage.com (the incredibly reliable site which I use to keep track of the games I play), I am officially one-third of the way through the NES library. I passed this "landmark" without realizing it back at #256, so hoorah! And woopee! And the like. I can not honestly believe I have gotten this far, and worse yet, that I still have two-thirds more to go! The NES churned out a lot of games in its nine years. Thank goodness that, for the most part, this reviewing gig has yet to grow old! Here's to 509 more reviews, and then, sweet, sweet rest.

#258 - Goal! Two

It'd be one thing if this was just some poorly rendered cover art, but... this is a picture of an actual person. And Jaleco still used it!

                                                             Hey look! Soccer!

Sequels are supposed to improve things in a series, not make you hate the game more. Goal! Two apparently didn't get the memo for this, and while they added a whole slew of features, they forgot to add that simple ingredient that would have tied the whole game together: fun. Cliche'? Sure. Trite? Absolutely, but the unvarnished truth, by gum. This time, instead of choosing from four countries for the World Cup, you can choose from about sixteen countries. Improvement! If you play a simple VS. Game, you have more options for countries, such is the game's odd logic. Unlike in the first game, there are stats here, but I can't read gibberish, so I didn't change any of them and just went out and tried to play. Now, the gameplay... let's stop here. Goal!, for all its flaws, was a simple arcade soccer game. I'm sure if you could figure out how to pass appropriately, it would have been a solid game. Goal! Twotries to go for bigger and better, but forgets that the NES, bless its dusty heart, can only handle so much. In addition to adding stats and other "big boy" options, the game's soccer field is about two to three times larger than the one in the original. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the size of the original game's soccer field. It was perfect! Also, the game's AI is so hard, cheap, and blindingly fast compared to your team, that it's nigh impossible to advance even to halfway across the field. Thankfully, your goalie has it going on and can block potential goals like he was protecting the mayor or something, but what's the point of blocking if that's all you're going to do? Finally, as in the first game, you don't actually kick to your teammates. You kick in their general direction. Not only that, your kicks seem like little wiener kid kicks: slow and useless. It's a shame, as I was really looking forward to kicking out some soccer jams on the NES, but the Goal! series is not where you come to satisfy those particular jollies.

F

#257 - Goal!

                That guy's hair has great lift... but wait, is that kid flipping him off?

                  Your players slightly resemble shuffling zombies. Blame society.

If you suck at soccer and you know it, clap your hands! I used to love soccer when I was a kid, but haven't gotten to play it since, oh, first grade. This leads me to believe that my soccer skills – whatever they were then – have all but deteriorated over twenty years. But that's life, and in life, we get back on our feet, or forbidding that, we play video games. Goal! is probably one of the earliest soccer games for the NES, and as a result, its structure is incredibly simplistic. There are four options on the main menu: World Cup, Tournament, Shoot (competition), and Continue (which I believe continues your progress from the World Cup. Of these, World Cup and Tournament are actual gameplay. A Tournament is a series of games held between states in the U.S., while the World Cup is... well, the World Cup. You are only allowed four choices for countries, all of them Western first-world countries, but no heavies like Britain, Brazil, Egypt, etc. The gameplay is pick-up-and-play, which is good; no obnoxious stats or sim management stuff. The only problem – which ruins the entire game – is the passing system. When you pass the ball, you shoot it in the direction of your other players, but not actually to the other players, like you would in any basketball, baseball, or football game. I can't tell you how many times I would have gotten goals(!) had the ball just gone to the person I assumed I passed it to. Trying to be a one-man show and carry the ball all the way across the field without passing, results in the other team crowding your grill and slowing the game way down. Perhaps I should just take up soccer again instead. Exercise, fresh air, and when I pass the ball, the likelihood of my team mate getting it is higher than in Goal!

D

#256 - Ghoul School

Can you believe admission to this place is $20,000 a year? I better learn so much, my brain literally explodes with knowledge.

Not realizing that the pink creature with the giant eyeball is really a P.E. instructor, you beat him to death with reckless abandonment.

You are random Joe Gamer, Esq. at a used game store. You are searching through a bin of cheap NES games. Nothing is intriguing you, until you happen upon a title named Ghoul School. All it comes with is the cartridge, no manual, nothing. It costs two dollars. You shrug, buy it, and walk out of the store. Once you get home, you plug it in, play it and wonder what exactly you're supposed to do. The main character is an "edgy" teenager who has to defeat the ghouls that have overrun the school with a baseball bat. The ghouls all have specific movement patterns and most of them are easy to learn. You realize quickly that you have to learn them. If you get hit, you fly in the opposite direction away from the enemy. This makes you frustrated when you're trying to ascend or descend stairs and clusters of enemies congregate around the stairs. In the school, there are hundreds of lockers that line the wall. The teenager can hide in them, but you don't know why. Surely this has purpose later in the game...? There are also classroom doors that line the wall. Your character enters every single classroom door that you can find. The only thing they seem to contain are more obnoxious enemies and health. Ironically, the teenager didn't need the health until he went into the classroom and faced the enemies. Nothing is making any sense at this point. Classrooms lead nowhere. Going up or down stairs and seemingly progressing have literally led to dead-ends. At one point, the teenager runs into a barrier of human bones and a Medusa head that can kill him with one hit. What are you, Mr. Gamer, to make of this? The angry side of you wants to run it over with your car in front of the used game store that sold it to you and drive away cackling maniacally. The rational side of you wants to put it in your collection and save it for another day; perhaps you're missing something. What you actually end up doing is going back to the used game store and, when the clerk isn't looking, put the cartridge back in the used game bin. Now some other unlucky schmuck will know what it feels like to enroll in Ghoul School. You leave satisfied.

F

#255 - Ghosts 'N Goblins

Brilliant box art, but high resolution graphics? Really, Capcom?I struggle to think of any NES game with high-resolution graphics. Maybe Kirby's Adventure...

                     Tuck those boxers into your armor, Arthur, it's go time!

Ghosts 'N Goblins: you play as a knight named Arthur and your goal is to get across six stages filled with zombies and goblins and red devils and crows and those plants from the "Little Shop of Horrors." You get two hits before you're dead. Any sort of armor replenishment is rare and hard to come by. The graphics are glitchy, making it easier to mistake enemy projectiles for background pixels. You basically need to be throwing your weapon constantly whether enemies are on the screen or not. It doesn't eliminate your chances of getting hit, but it does decrease them. Yes, the game is beatable, thanks to unlimited continues and perhaps some Johnny Walker by your side. Yes, you will feel a sense of accomplishment when you beat it because it is so hard. But really, Ghosts and Goblins at its core, just isn't very fun.

And now, an op-ed piece:

I'm not exactly sure why this game is so widely renowned, but I have a couple ideas. It was made by the young bucks at Capcom, and people widely consider their work on the NES to be some of their best. It came out in 1986 when the NES didn't have much going for it beyond some of the original launch titles. And it was- er, is hard as balls. It is punishingly hard, like fall down to your knees, throw your NES controller at the wall, and sob because you thoughtyou were a decent gamer hard. And yet, old-school gamers thrive on brutal difficulty, which is ultimately, to me, the main reason why this game is so well-remembered, even now. I don't understand it. Why would you want to punish yourself? I can understand wanting a challenge especially as games today have really made challenge more of an option and less of a reality. Still, the older I get, the more I play games to relax, to take a sit down and not think about real world struggles and problems. When faced with Arthur and his skivvies throwing javelins wildly, jumping this way and that, I can't help but get anxious. Despite that, critical consensus still sways me. I can't help but think of Ghosts 'N Goblins as a series as anything less than "classic." That doesn't mean I have to like it.

D

#254 - Ghostbusters II

I think Dan Aykroyd makes his own vodka now. "Two shots and you won't be afraid of no ghosts, or your stomach contents back!"

Dan Aykroyd: "Alright, boys, we're going to drink my vodka until this game's playable!" Many deaths...

 

Remember when I said Ghostbusters would be better if it were a side-scrolling action game?...

I LIED!

Ghostbusters IImay be worse than the first. What am I saying, "may"! It's totally worse than the first game, bro! In the first game, there was the possibility for progression, if you drove long enough, set the traps in the right position, actually managed to wrangle the ghosts. Zael's Tower was impossible, but hey, you could get there. Ghostbusters IIshatters any thought of progression. How anyone would ever manage to get past the first level – or indeed, would even wantto – is only if you shook hands and made a pact with Vigo the Carpathian himself. Truly his evil power is what you need to get past even the simplest and stupidest of circumstances i.e. the first level

Grievances(only from the first level, mind you):

• Not being able to jump over a tiny spider that your character, as nimble as he is, should be able to clearly jump over. Should you attempt to leap past it, it will jump up and take a "life," which leads me to...

• Lives? What lives? The lower left-hand side of the screen shows that you have three lives, but in reality, you have one life and you can only get hit three times. If you get hit, the screen pauses for a second while your character lies splayed out on the sewer floor. A "life" is then taken away and you're free to move away from the spider that you will never be able to jump over. JUST FACE IT, IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN!

• You have a slime gun, but it's resistant against 80% of all enemies (not an accurate percentage, but pretty darn close). Seriously. Why would they give you a weapon to use if it's not going to work against more than half of the enemies?

That's three grievances over a level that I may or may not have even came close to beating. You know what that means? Potential for even more grievances. Who knows how long that sewer goes on. It is New York City, after all. According to GameFAQS, those kings of archaic gaming knowledge, there are driving levels in this game too. Because if anyone asked Activision what they wanted to see more of in the Ghostbusters sequel, it's driving. Really, what more could you ask for? A competent "Ghostbusters" game? Congratulations, they released one a couple years ago. It's about damn time.

F