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Godzilla seems like the perfect gaming idea. You're a gigantic green lizard with the abiltity to stomp all over cities, take a million and a half bullets without receiving a scratch and breathe radioactive death from your mouth. Unfortunately, almost every attempt to bring the green behemoth into the realm of video games has failed. One of the most recent attempts includes Sega's Godzilla Generations on the Dreamcast, a quite tedious and admittedly boring game. Crave Entertainment, teamed up with Crawfish Interactive, have attempted to bring Godzilla to the small screen. The first thing that I noticed when flipping Godzilla: The Series on was the immense size that Godzilla is. Placing Godzilla on the left side of the screen, he fills all the way from the bottom with his enormous feet to the top. There is also a good use of the color palette, making for some interesting environments that can become somewhat the same after a little while (you'll see the same buildings repeated over and over and over). Most of the time there's quite a bit of action going on around the screen at the same time, too, with perhaps a group of tanks making their way on the ground while a few helicopters hover above seemingly just out of reach.
Being able to run rampant through a city breathing fire and smashing buildings is the dream of every child in America, and you'd think with Godzilla at the helm that notion would be possible. Unfortunately, the design of Godzilla limits the expansion of the gameplay. The only control you have over the creature is bobbing his head in different directions to spit out a fireball, whip his tail and block to deflect incoming projectiles. You can't move forward, left, right or backward, that's all controlled by the game. During my play time I always felt limited and just wanted to bust out and wreak some real havoc through the city. Another overlooked factor is how defending yourself is handled. By blocking, Godzilla will begin to regain his energy at a rapid pace. There is a time limit on how long you're able to regain back your energy, but it's long enough that most of your health bar can be recharged within the time limit. I was able to play through most of the game's stages without dying a single time, showing the game's lack of difficulty. A more reasonable way to regain health would be items placed throughout the level; as it stands, Godzilla is just a matter of holding down the block button at the right time. The lack of any real difficulty is what hurts Godzilla: The Series the most, but beyond that, I found that the little cartridge held a lot of action to be found. With all the Game Boy titles being released, however, there are better selections to be picked up before tackling this big, green machine.
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