War of the Monsters - PS2 Game (Retro Fam)

when i first heard about this game, i remembered the old Neo-Geo games King of the Monsters 1 and 2. they were great! they were fighting games where you played giant, mutant monsters, and you could pick up buildings and stuff and throw them. i was hoping this game would be similar. it was; unfortunately, too similar.the environments are very real and very interactive. when i saw that this game was developed by Incog Inc, the people that developed Twisted Metal Black (one of ny favorite games), i got my hopes up. what really killed this game is the controls and the difficulty. each monster has its own unique attacks, and to do them, you have to push the buttons in the right order and combination. whenever i tried to do them, it didn't seem to make any difference than button-bashing. there is a block button, but it doesn't do squat; the enemies can still knock you out while blocking.the difficulty was something else. i played on Easy for a while, and it was too easy at times. when i played on Medium, it was often WAY too hard.i was hoping that this game's saving grace would be its Unlockable secret features, but even those aren't too special. you can unlock primarily different graphical layouts for the characters (the game calls them "costumes"). the costumes make no difference in gameplay. you can also unlock two secret characters and a few minigames such as "Dodgeball." to unlock things, you use Game Tokens, of which you win a different amount after each level. different Unlo.

After playing with "War" for a bit, you start to find little gems to pull on your competiton. Like using an I-beam as a baseball bat to whack thrown debris back at your opponents. Or, try to catch objects and then toss them back. These plus the combos are just the kind of gems that turn this fun little toy into a game that won't easily get old! Too bad it doen't have 4 player or net connection. I'd give it a 5 for either.

The monsters were great. I enjoyed playing the game with my 12 year old son.