A few games flew in under the radar that had were centered around the giant monster menace. Canopy Games was one of the first studios to revisit the genre in the early 2000's. Their PC game I Was An Atomic Mutant followed the classic Epyx Movie Monster formula almost to the letter. The 2003 game used the movie theater as a set up for character and mission selection. The main difference was in the diversity of monsters made playable. The Canopy title made a nod to several classic b-films including the 1958 feature Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and the 1957 movie the Brain from Planet Arous. Talk about going way back to the archives!
The game was very simplistic. Players went around destroying things with one of the available monsters until they met an objective or died along the way. The graphics were okay, the effects were good and character designs very predictable. Just like Movie Monster the level would start and end inside a movie theater. The control was good but the gameplay was flat. Players went from town to town repeating themselves. Sort of like a wandering 3D version of Rampage. Although the game didn't make any waves with critics it did remind me of the era where PC titles allowed players to suspend their disbelief and once again get drawn into the experience. Part of the way the studio accomplished this was through their patented Canopy-Vision 3D screens. Audiences could play through a level in full screen mode, in black-and-white, or with a movie theater frame or while projected onto an outdoor drive-in screen.
Some giant monster titles never got the chance to shine. The cancelled Big Freakin Monsters game was being developed by 3DO (yes, that 3DO) for the Sony Playstation 2. The environments being created seemed very spacious for the genre. A sort of free-roaming Rampage that would have made it unique for the console.
Other games came out of the woodwork and surprised a lot of players by their ease of use, features and even price point. Eat Them! was a downloadable by FluffyLogic from the Playstation Network. The game featured cel shaded graphics and a cast of player-created monsters. The diversity of missions, decent controls, creation mode, weapons and unique visuals made it one of the more interesting giant monster games released in the past decade.
Sadly it was a bit difficult and lacked some depth once the various modes were explored. There was little else behind Eat Them! and not one daikaiju cameo, yet for $10 it was tough to argue about the price.
A different indy studio had a more popular take on the giant monster genre. Double Fine had a reputation for coming up with refreshing new ideas and turning them into games. The 2005 cult favorite Psychonauts was no exception. The main character, Raz, could enter the minds of people and see memories and subconscious thoughts. In one he became a giant monster named Goggalor. The world of Lungfishopolis was presented in a smaller scale for him to terrorize. Double Fine mimicked the b-movie trumpet blasts during the orchestration of the level music to bring back a certain sense of nostalgia. Goggalor maintained the same abilities of Raz as he traversed the tiny town and collected memories to unlock.
Five years later the studio released Costume Quest. The game centered around a group of kids trying to save Halloween. Players could freely roam a neighborhood but all of the combat used a traditional RPG turn-based system. When in the combat mode the children became gigantic avatars of the costumes they were wearing. A cardboard box covered in paint and foil became an impressive giant mech, while a plastic helmet and glowing wand turned into a space ranger. The town that they were traveling through was recreated in miniature while fighting the candy-stealing goblins. The details included tiny pumpkins on the fronts of houses, smoke rising from chimneys and the perfect autumnal lighting. It was a fantastic visual that helped sell the imagination of the kids involved. Every battle seemed epic in that mode and was reminiscent of the final battle in the first God of War. Double Fine demonstrated that giant monsters could be the subject of a memorable gaming experience without falling into the traps of other developers. With all of these innovations there was still something missing.
Gamers wanted to have the freedom to play as giant monsters, not against them. They wanted to experience the sense of unstoppable fury from creatures several stories tall. Creatures that could shrug off the most powerful military strikes and topple the largest skyscrapers. Players wanted new heroes and villains added into game history instead of tired licensed characters. They wanted to see monsters pulled from the darkest corners of our collective subconscious and made playable. They wanted to be immersed in the experience in the same ways that only great books or movies could. There was one game that did all of that and more. We shall look at this title in the next blog.
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