And the next Godzilla game will be: CITY SHROUDED IN SHADOW

Started by JasonPratt, June 29, 2017, 08:29:30 AM

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JasonPratt

Man, Bandai/Namco doesn't want to give the fans what they want. Are they frightened of money?!?

Look, what the fans want is a reasonably updated version of the 3D fighting series, with all monsters included so far. Those things were great, and the last one had some major bug problems on some platforms (also it took out some fan favorite monsters for replacements that in some cases didn't work very well.)

Their recent Godzilla console game from a few years ago hugely teased fans with the monster battles, but they chose designs where the kaiju were semi-realistically clumsy (in the Heisei series way, I guess?), and you had to grind, grind, grind the main game modes not only in order to unlock the monsters but to slowwwlly level them up to the point where they fought half-competently. I don't know of any reviewers who praised the game overall, and a lot of fans (like myself) were ticced at spending around $60 for that. (Also, for no good reason at all other than marketing for modern consoles, the PS3 version shipped permanently nerfed in what monsters and abilities you could even unlock. Considering that the game engine looked like a high-end PS2 game even on the then-new PS4, that was dogcrap as the icing on the vomitous cake.)


I mention all this as context, because while I appreciate the artistic design intentions of the new game, titled only CITY SHROUDED IN SHADOW, it's going to be annoying for similar reasons: (1) graphics that look like a high-end PS2 game except stuttery and glitchy (objectively worse than the last good game in Bandai's series, GODZILLA SAVE THE EARTH); and (2) to hell with you if you wanted to monster fight.  :pullhair: :uglystupid2: :tickedoff:

Instead, the new game will focus on one of two protagonists (male or female your choice) stuck in a Japanese city one night as a kaiju fight erupts. It's very much Cloverfield, but with Toho kaiju. The developers don't even seem to want you to focus on any monster fights going on; the kaiju simply environmental dangers to navigate while you accomplish various things.

What burns even more, is that Bandai got permission to include Ultraman (who in one of the promotional snapshots is simply fighting another exactly similar Ultraman, both of them the original 60s version, which makes no sense and suggests that their random-story generator doesn't have some basic design sensibilities out of the gate); Gamera; and at least one Evangelion suit.


It isn't that I don't theoretically appreciate the design thought: the system generates a somewhat random 'movie' each game, with different monsters threatening the city, as the player's character races around the city accomplishing various mission goals (which may also be somewhat randomly picked. There will be a subway sequence that looks straight out of Cloverfield, too). But the engine is super-cheap looking, and doesn't seem up to solidly rendering this ambitious idea. Also, in my experience kaiju movie fans RARELY CARE MUCH FOR THE HUMAN STORY GOING ON! We accept it as a plot framework, and for budgetary reasons to get a feature-long production. But, as the story trope goes, we're "just here for Godzilla". The prior Bandai games all understood this, even the sucky prior one released to cash in on LegendaryG's opening film. (Even the sucky match-3 game Bandai released before that one, using the LegendaryG kaiju, understood that.)

If Bandai had released this game as a followup to a solid kaiju fighting game, I'd be a lot more pumped for it -- even though I'd still have problems with the engine looking super-clunky and the story generation system showing evidence of bad design.

As it is... well, I'm certainly not buying a PS4 for it. Much less a PS Vita. (In fact it looks like a PS2 game ported to the Vita, which will also get a PS4 release in the same engine.)




To be fair, this commercial "shrouds" the kaiju so that you can't tell who's supposed to be in the game, although at least one of the "shadows" is obviously Godzilla. There are still pix released by Bandai showing G often and clearly (evidently using the main 90s "Heisei" series suit, which is a fine choice, although they seem to have scaled the kaijus' sizes down to more like the Showa or Millennium series, presumably so that they're more "seeable" at human eye-level in the game) but a bunch of other kaiju, too.
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