a perfectly adequate gamecube-era arena fighter if you’re willing to overlook a lot about what makes a fighting game good and instead focus on the sheer chaotic glee of seeing your favorite big monsters wonkily hitting each other, an exercise that becomes as effortless as breathing to any die-hard fan of the endearingly scrappy source material. it’s not tekken, hell, even when the game is firing on all cylinders and you and a friend are a little tipsy off your favorite substance of choice, it struggles to even hang with a sloppy punch fest like power stone, but that’s kind of inconsequential to me. would i love to see what a team like arc system works could do with a property as legendary and storied as godzilla? to see my beloved video james receive their own artful elevation of my favorite big lizard á la hideaki anno’s shin godzilla? to see biollante perfect parry a cross up from baragon? obviously, but i also think that this game’s janky joyousness, that quick and dirty glorious trashiness, is kind of exactly what the spirit of kaiju and tokusatsu stuff is all about. is it a perfectly balanced test of skill and reflex with near bottomless character customization. no, and i don’t care, man. to a monster freak like me, it’s still food and i’m still starving. does your favorite ultra-polished competitive fighting game have a playable anguirus? i thought so.

every time i try to rate this anything below 5 stars my own inner monologue starts bullying the shit out of me.
“oh you have notes? do you have some suggestions for some of the greatest creators the medium has known putting their whole dicks/pussies on the line while bringing the art form into an entire new dimension? was the way they translated the staples of the still-young platforming genre into a more detailed and engrossing environment not your most favorite? no, really what didn’t you like? was it the fact that the barely-attempted-before-this 3D movement is pristinely perfect in a way that’s not only mechanically legible to a child who won’t be able to write their own name for two more years (me, age 4) but with a high enough skill ceiling that speedrunners are still creaming their jeans over the mere thought of it nearly two decades on? was the soundtrack having some of the catchiest melodies put to MIDI and a range that simultaneously scrapes the stratosphere and mariana’s trench not good enough for you? guys hold up, this picky ass f-slur has notes! guys!”
so weird…..

a red hot reminder that a game doesn’t need to have a complex plot, deep interwoven systems, or cutting edge graphics to be a masterpiece. it simply needs to let you hit a little frog with a big hammer. we lost something grand when game soundtracks moved away from that solid gold Saturday morning cartoon, super bouncy Y2K almost-ska that coated even the most inconsequential of menu screens of the games of the late PS1/early PS2 era like Super Monkey Ball, Chocobo Racing and of course the legendary Ribbit King. it’s not worth the triple digit price tag you’ll pay if you want to get it physically, but i dare you to show me a video game that is. you’re guaranteed at least a chuckle every time you line up a shot and launch that low-poly amphibian skywards (provided your brain’s synapses are still capable of firing off the neurons needed to approximate something like joy). extremely smokable game.