Game #1279: Dawn of the Monsters

 Gozilla didn't sign the contract.

 If Japan and America have something in common is that they love giant monsters, and it seems Wayforward as well, because they have their own take with Dawn of the Monsters. As similar as it is, in name only, to War of the Monsters, it actually borrows more from SNK's King of the Monsters, as this is a 2.5D beat'em up.

 In DotM you can play as four different characters, once is a giant hero, much like Ultraman, there's the obligatory Godzilla stand-in, a giant-robot and another Kaijuu that is probably inspired by something, but I don't know. While the controls are the same for each monsters, they do have different moves. Y and X are weak and strong attacks, A is a dash atatck, each monster has three different gauge-costing special moves and a Rage Move, that uses a second energy gauge. You can also block or dodge moves, and the B button is used to pick up stuff or perform executions. Once an enemy is low on health, they start shining red, and pressing the B button murders them, healing you for a little bit and a giving you a nice score multiplier, at a cost of a single bar of the Special gauge.

 If anything, moving around sometimes feels a bit choppy. Be it because sometimes there's some sort of building or object obstructing your path or because the hit boxes, when it comes to depth perception isn't as generous as it could. The combat itself feels really nice, and later bosses will put your timing to the test when it comes to dodging or parrying their attacks. That said, the life bar of the final boss is ridiculous. I lost 5 minutes in, about a third of HP left and decided that it simply wasn't worth it. I know I can take it down now that I know how it fights, but I really don't care about trying again. Despite me saying this, the combat is decent enough, juggling enemies feels pretty neat, although it can get a bit repetitive by the end.

 Even better, you can customize every character with different color palettes and three Augments. Augments provide bonuses to your HP as well as extra effects, for instance, making executions heal you twice as much, stunning everything around you when you parry an attack or giving buildings a chance to spawn an item when you break them down. Building up characters feels really nice, and there's a lot of variety. The better you do in a stage, the better Augments you get to pick from after finishing a stage! Getting a S score also unlocks a new color palette for any of the four characters. And you'll have to work for that S, as getting anything less in a section of a level means you won't get the overall S score. It can be heart breaking to retry an entire stage only to fail at the last segment and having to redo everything again.

 I'd like to mention that graphics have this really neat 80's comicbook filter over them, so that characters have dotted textures on top of them. It gives it a very original look.

 Dawn of the Monsters is a fun time for a little while. It's not the most interesting game out there, but it accomplishes a lot thanks to its simple but effective mechanics.

 7.0