Godzilla: Unleashed: Unleash the Monsters Company: Atari Godzilla: Unleashed will bring you all the super-sized monster destroying action that any gamer would expect out of a self-respecting Godzilla game. This game has 23 different playable monsters from throughout the Godzilla universe. Well, most of them are from the movies; Toho, the original Godzilla creators, had a hand in creating a few new monsters just for this game. Anyway, this upscaled brawler will have up to four monsters fighting everywhere from Monster Island to Tokyo to New York and the Vortaak Mothership. Actually there are a total of nine different locations that span all around the world. So who all is available in Godzilla: Unleashed? The monsters are divided into four factions; Earth Defenders, GDF, Mutants and Aliens. Fans of the series will probably be able to guess how most of the monsters are divided. The two Godzillas (Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla 1990's) as well as Mothra, Fire Rodan and a few others fall into the Earth Defenders group. The various giant Mecha monsters (MechaGodzilla, Mecha-King Ghidorah, Kiryu, etc.) are under the control of the GDF (Global Defense Force), while the alien monsters are those under the control of the Vortaak. These are creatures like Gigan, Megalon and King Ghidorah. The final faction feels more like a catch-all; Mutants have characters like SpaceGodzilla, Destorotah and Megaguirus under their category. Godzilla: Unleashed's Story Mode will have you going through various locations around the world fighting off, as you would expect, many different monsters. The overall story is that crystals are falling from space and they are causing chaos all over the place. Where these crystals land, the various giant monsters of Earth are gathering in order to consume their strange powers. One of the interesting aspects of many of these missions is that when you have fellow faction-members on the field, you can't just attack anyone that moves. Instead, you need to avoid dealing damage to them. Typically the mission objectives that have allies on them say simply "Protect your allies, defeat your enemies." With the time I put into Godzilla: Unleashed for this preview, I found it a multi-ton of destruction fun. While there were some issues of the game slowing down immensely when there were several monsters, as well as various particle effects on the screen, I'm confident the developers will have that little issue ironed out before its street date. Godzilla: Unleashed is expected to be release mid-November on both the PS2 and the Wii. -J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer Related Links: Godzilla: Unleashed Official Home Page