Godzilla: Unleashed First Impressions

February 24th, 2007, 02:58 Posted By: wraggster

As Pipeworks cranks down on the Wii version of Godzilla: Unleashed, Santa Cruz Games, the development studio that worked on Superman Returns for the dual-screen handheld, is hard at work on a Nintendo DS version of Atari's giant monster franchise. Atari was in the office today showing off Godzilla: Unleashed, and while the Wii version's more of a fighting game, the DS edition's taking the form of an old-school arcade-style action game. The Wii version was way early, but the Nintendo DS version was even further away from "not quite ready for Prime Time". At least in this early stage we could see the concepts that the designers at Santa Cruz are aiming for as their game's working through its development cycle.

Godzilla: Unleashed is a side-scrolling game that puts focus on two monster cooperative play -- the scrolling environments spread across both screens vertically, with flying monsters taking care of the upper-screen and ground creatures marching along the bottom. It's almost like a cross between a horizontal shooter and Double Dragon, and players are encouraged to swap between their two selected characters to wipe out enemies that wander across both screens.

Though the game is strictly a 2D affair, at least in its action, the game pushes a 3D engine across both screens of the DS. The visuals are more stylized for this handheld-outing -- creatures are a bit more "deformed" with larger and more exaggerated body shapes, and the addition of a cel-shade across the characters, enemies, and environments jazz things up a bit. Boss creatures can be half-screen, full-screen...even two screens tall.

Because the game has a huge multiplayer focus, the developers have enabled the Nintendo DS system's Download Play feature so that only one copy of the game is needed in the networked two player cooperative option.

The Nintendo DS version is clearly in more of a "conceptual" pre-Alpha stage at this point since only one stage could be played and the multiplayer wasn't enabled quite yet. And though the style of the 3D in Godzilla: Unleashed, with its cel-shaded look and huge monsters, certainly looked impressive, the framerate was not. Hopefully this less-than-fluid frame rate is an area of focus as the game's worked on back at the studio.

We'll have more on the Nintendo DS version of Godzilla: Unleashed as we creep closer to its Fall 2007 release date. Click the links below for the first screens and artwork of the handheld game in action.

via ign

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