Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Game Review

A straight-up, earnest remaster of something is always a tad difficult to review; are you looking at it from the lens of someone who has never encountered it before, are you looking at it from the perspective of modern design and sensibility, or are you looking at it from how much it meshes with nostalgic feelings for the original experience? It often feels unfair to compare a game from twenty years ago to modern designs, but there's also a sense that a game that was fun when you were twenty years younger is no longer as fun because you've changed. When the original Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee was released in 2002, I remember putting a lot of hours into it with friends on the couch, and often that social experience was enough to overcome some of the larger issues we had with the game. As I play through this remastered version of the game in 2026, from the comfort of my computer and with gigabyte internet, I found that the saying “They just don't make them like they used to” also covers the experience of playing games, not just the games themselves.

But before I get too ahead of myself, let's talk about what you actually do in Godzilla DAMMR: Players take control of one of the iconic Kaiju from Godzilla's oeuvre (up to 2002, anyway), including characters like Anguirus, Megalon, King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, and more. Combat occurs in large, generally flat arenas populated by buildings or natural constructs, giving the game a stage-destroying vibe to go along with the slugfests of fighting other kaiju. There are numerous modes in the game, from a general sort of “story” in which you take your chosen kaiju through a series of battles, to modes that present various different challenges that focus on objectives other than just beating the ever-loving hell out of one another. There is also, for this release, online gameplay, which is probably the biggest savior of the release against the landscape of games it has to compete with (Cheekily, Atari has joked that the game was the only one that would be willing to challenge GTA6 in terms of release window).

The problem is that this Remaster is perfect in replicating the original game, with the damning praise that comes with it. The game looks great, updating the original's graphics to very crisp and clean-looking visuals that occasionally get a little uncanny; Anguirus, for example, tends to give off the vibe of “Are they supposed to look like people in suits, or does it just look like that by accident?” The controls are fast and responsive to the original schemes, but don't evolve or update to anything making the game more intricate, fun to play, or less shallow. The balance of the game remains as much of a somewhat lopsided mess as it was originally; some kaiju are just blatantly better than others, and no, Godzilla is not one of them (Rodan, who can fly, is just inherently better than almost all other characters). When it came to playing through the campaign of the game, I often found myself just repeating the same string of attacks on just about every kaiju I played, largely a combination of quick attacks, blocking, and then repeating, with the occasional beam attack when an opening presented itself. There are grabs and other attacks and abilities that can be used, but the game never really rewarded me for trying to get more creative or complex with what I did; jab, jab, block, jab, jab, block, beam took me to victory with very little effort or stimulation.

When I think back to playing it with my friends on a couch, though, I recall that we never really cared about the mechanically best options to play, and instead just did stupid things: only throwing, picking up buildings or rocks, and generally just having a great time. So, I will say that if you happen to get Remastered and have friends locally who can play it with you on your console or even PC, the game is probably going to be ten times more entertaining to play. The online play option does also add some life into the game if local versus is not something you're able to pursue, but it also lacks that sort of manic late night/weekend gaming session with your friends that was something that would often elevate a middling game to the heights of entertainment twenty years ago, because the magic ingredient that can't be remastered is the social aspect, sadly. From a preservation aspect, I really do appreciate that this game is exactly what I used to play when it first released, but as someone who has changed a great deal since I played the game originally, it was a little conflicting to see this release had not, similarly, changed. There's not a lot to do or added to the game to make it attractive to people who haven't played the original, and there also isn't much that makes this better or fixes the problems of the original; instead, you are simply getting the same game, just with better graphics and not requiring a twenty-year-old console to play it on. There certainly is fun to be had, but unless curiosity or nostalgia is enough to encourage you to seek it out, then the game remains as likely to remain a cult hit as it was the first time around.