There are many other areas of clumsiness in the game that are laughable when up close to the camera in the one-on-one battles, but these fade away in importance in the four-player battle which is the clear focus of the game. When the monster is held up he'll still be stuck in one pose unless the player tries to fight to wiggle free. The monster being grabbed suddenly goes completely stiff and straight and then slides towards the grabber as if by tractor beam. A personal favorite is the grabbing move when one monster picks up another. This clumsiness has other effects in the battle system with moves that are forcibly linked together that show off many seams in the design.
chunks can get taken out), but the feeling of the game is like seeing a movie being filmed on a set that's filled with cardboard boxes painted up as office towers. There are a few skyscrapers that have some damage (i.e. The building shakes a bit and slowly slides to the ground as a little pile of rubble grows to meet it.
The buildings almost all share the same way of falling down. This lack of polish is seen in many other parts of the game in several different areas. The overall effect doesn't seem to be that much more evolved that the movies with the overheated men in the stuffy rubber suits. If anything, this is a B-game for the B-movies with the slow controls for the characters and the slow movements in the animations themselves. One of the biggest assets and problems with the game is that it mirrors pretty closely the action of the movies. It's a party game with a little bit of depth, but nothing to really dig into with a buddy over several sessions. After that there is a bit of strategy to learn and some tactics, but to be honest it's not really that much. It's entirely possible to jump into the four-player mode and duke it out with some friends and have a great time doing it, pulling off some cartoonish moves like spinning Godzilla on a spike, and not worry at all what the buttons really do. The fighting in the game is deceptively simple at first and deceptively deep as it progresses even further. The title is also a complete lie since much of the game is about destruction of buildings by bashing them or even throwing them around. To up the ante there are now a total of 18 monsters to fight with, an increase from the original 11. There's lots of breathing of fire, punches, tail whips, and even monsters tossing each other into skyscrapers. The appeal of Save the Earth is the same as before: up to four classic monsters from the Godzilla movies get on screen to duke it out.