The name "Monster Attack" reminds me of when I was in my late teens staying up late on a Saturday night so I could record anime on the sci-fi channel using VHS. It wasn't so prevalent at the time. Whilst waiting I would watch whatever bad horror or sci-fi movies were being shown on the run up, it became such an ingrained memory as an adult I would later host bad movie night with friends where we would watch Sharknado, wolf cop, Killer Clowns from Outer space and other dubious films.
I guess it really helped solidify not only my love of B movies, but also due to the PS2 of just mid budget game equivalents as it seemed there were so many of these at the time before everything started being swallowed up in consolidations now days. Back on the PS2 this was such a line of thinking that a simple series) of extremely mid budget cheaper games was launched. A bizarre mix of titles some of which make Dead or Alive Volleyball look tame. A big selection of these got Western releases in the West and a couple even became successful enough to spin off their own series. Some of these are still going to this day such as Onechanbara and Monster Attack, you see Monster Attack is actually the first in the Earth Defence Force series.
The Simple Series 2000 was apparently named this because the games would cost 2000 yen which today is just over £10 and considering this fact, Monster Attack is really quite good. All the staples of the series are still here. There are giant ants, UFOs, walking robots and giant dinosaurs. You can get in tanks and helicopters and there is even a nifty hover bike. Buildings collapse in chunky explosions as your stray rocket accidently slams into it with smoke from the collapse. In some ways despite the progress made in a lot of areas in later games there is actually something extremely pleasant about the simplicity of the game here.
I feel the scale a lot more in Monster Attack. My character is small compared with the surroundings, it's slightly more claustrophobic in some ways. The music and designs have a lot more of a retro inspiration with purple spinning top robots and UFOS with purple bulging discs to the sound of music like it was played on a Theremin. Things collapse and explode with surprising impact through my headphones with beefy explosions and the game doesn't out stay it's welcome. An issue I have despite my love of the later games but at 25 missions it is easily played in a couple of evenings. You only have a generic trooper and as you kill enemies they will occasionally drop weapons and armour boxes to expand your overall health and give you combat options. The growth rate is such that at the moment playing through easy, normal and hard I haven't had to grind at all as it curves out nicely.
Where the game does fail for me though is on two fronts, original design and localisation short cutting. On the original design front it's incredibly easy to bounce off of this game from it's base controller setting, it's pretty evident even here on backloggd because the initial set up is truly abhorrent. This mode doesn't allow you to manually aim vertically or use the right analog stick. It's basically unplayable and it's utterly baffling how this was thought to be a good idea as the standard set up. There is a control option that allows you to move with the left stick and aim with the right like a traditional third person shooter in the settings that makes this infinitely more fun though you can't remap the other buttons which I would have preferred but that's the lesser of two evils here. Equally it has a cinematic cam that makes you watch the UFOs as they burn and descend into epic explosions when you destroy them. It gives a great field of view blurring you out and looks pretty awesome. What isn't so wonderful about this though is that enemies continue their relentless assault upon you with a fixed angle and no reticule. Just terrible idea, you need to turn that off in the settings to then the game plays pretty well.
The second issue is the localisation. It removed all the voice acting from the game. I get it might not have been worth dubbing it financially but it also didn't add subtitles to the point it even removed the tutorial messages at the start of the game for the controls. Such an odd decision and it makes the levels feel so silent without them. I had to watch a playthrough with the voices and subtitles to see what was actually missing. It's kind of night and day.
Those two pretty glaring flaws aside though I can see why this super cheap budget game got a franchise because 21 years later it is still extremely fun to play and the idea of giant insects, robots and monsters attacking cities will probably never get old. Whilst I would still recommend the later games over this, it's still not a bad place to start the series.
+ Basic idea is just fun to blast monsters and robots.
+ Has pretty good pacing and levelling curve compared with later games.
+ Holds up really well...
-...after changing the settings. The starting controls are bafflingly bad.
- Localisation removed all voice acting and even the tutorial boxes. Really impactful on the overall experience.
I guess it really helped solidify not only my love of B movies, but also due to the PS2 of just mid budget game equivalents as it seemed there were so many of these at the time before everything started being swallowed up in consolidations now days. Back on the PS2 this was such a line of thinking that a simple series) of extremely mid budget cheaper games was launched. A bizarre mix of titles some of which make Dead or Alive Volleyball look tame. A big selection of these got Western releases in the West and a couple even became successful enough to spin off their own series. Some of these are still going to this day such as Onechanbara and Monster Attack, you see Monster Attack is actually the first in the Earth Defence Force series.
The Simple Series 2000 was apparently named this because the games would cost 2000 yen which today is just over £10 and considering this fact, Monster Attack is really quite good. All the staples of the series are still here. There are giant ants, UFOs, walking robots and giant dinosaurs. You can get in tanks and helicopters and there is even a nifty hover bike. Buildings collapse in chunky explosions as your stray rocket accidently slams into it with smoke from the collapse. In some ways despite the progress made in a lot of areas in later games there is actually something extremely pleasant about the simplicity of the game here.
I feel the scale a lot more in Monster Attack. My character is small compared with the surroundings, it's slightly more claustrophobic in some ways. The music and designs have a lot more of a retro inspiration with purple spinning top robots and UFOS with purple bulging discs to the sound of music like it was played on a Theremin. Things collapse and explode with surprising impact through my headphones with beefy explosions and the game doesn't out stay it's welcome. An issue I have despite my love of the later games but at 25 missions it is easily played in a couple of evenings. You only have a generic trooper and as you kill enemies they will occasionally drop weapons and armour boxes to expand your overall health and give you combat options. The growth rate is such that at the moment playing through easy, normal and hard I haven't had to grind at all as it curves out nicely.
Where the game does fail for me though is on two fronts, original design and localisation short cutting. On the original design front it's incredibly easy to bounce off of this game from it's base controller setting, it's pretty evident even here on backloggd because the initial set up is truly abhorrent. This mode doesn't allow you to manually aim vertically or use the right analog stick. It's basically unplayable and it's utterly baffling how this was thought to be a good idea as the standard set up. There is a control option that allows you to move with the left stick and aim with the right like a traditional third person shooter in the settings that makes this infinitely more fun though you can't remap the other buttons which I would have preferred but that's the lesser of two evils here. Equally it has a cinematic cam that makes you watch the UFOs as they burn and descend into epic explosions when you destroy them. It gives a great field of view blurring you out and looks pretty awesome. What isn't so wonderful about this though is that enemies continue their relentless assault upon you with a fixed angle and no reticule. Just terrible idea, you need to turn that off in the settings to then the game plays pretty well.
The second issue is the localisation. It removed all the voice acting from the game. I get it might not have been worth dubbing it financially but it also didn't add subtitles to the point it even removed the tutorial messages at the start of the game for the controls. Such an odd decision and it makes the levels feel so silent without them. I had to watch a playthrough with the voices and subtitles to see what was actually missing. It's kind of night and day.
Those two pretty glaring flaws aside though I can see why this super cheap budget game got a franchise because 21 years later it is still extremely fun to play and the idea of giant insects, robots and monsters attacking cities will probably never get old. Whilst I would still recommend the later games over this, it's still not a bad place to start the series.
+ Basic idea is just fun to blast monsters and robots.
+ Has pretty good pacing and levelling curve compared with later games.
+ Holds up really well...
-...after changing the settings. The starting controls are bafflingly bad.
- Localisation removed all voice acting and even the tutorial boxes. Really impactful on the overall experience.
2 Comments
@TheQuietGamer - I need to try more of the Simple series. Rather ironically on one of the bad movie nights we watched the Onechanbara film but I've not tried any of the games yet. Maybe I'll try to play the first game this year.
TheQuietGamer
2 months ago