War of the Monsters

Rip a radio mast out of the ground and it comes free with a shower of concrete, and now it's a javelin. That single idea carries the whole game. Incredible Technologies built its 2003 PS2 fighter around arenas that are not backdrops but ammunition: skyscrapers topple when you slam an opponent through them, cars get hurled, girders get swung, and a level that started as a functioning city ends as a field of rubble with two exhausted giants standing in it.

The cast is a deliberate raid on the drive-in era. A radioactive ape, a fire-breathing lizard, a robot built from industrial junk, a woman grown to skyscraper height, an alien saucer walking on tripod legs. None of it is licensed, all of it is recognisable, and the presentation commits hard, from the mock-newsreel framing to the Tokyo-by-way-of-Roger-Corman architecture. That confidence is why the game still reads as stylish rather than cheap.

Combat is closer to a 3D brawler than to a technical fighter. You circle in open arenas, dodge, grab, climb buildings and dive off them, and manage a super meter that powers a signature attack. Depth is modest by fighting-game standards; the pleasure is spatial. Knowing which building will give you cover, which one will fall on your head, and when to stop trading punches and go find a weapon is the real skill, and it separates good players from button-mashers more than any combo table would.

The adventure mode is a long ladder of fights with a few endurance and multi-opponent variations, and it unlocks skins and characters at a pace that keeps you grinding a little longer than the fighting quite justifies alone. Split-screen is where it lives. Two players, one city, no rules worth speaking of. The camera occasionally loses the plot in a collapsing street, and framerate takes a hit when enough debris is airborne, but for a game asking the PS2 to demolish whole blocks in real time the compromises are honest ones.

Sony never made a sequel, which still looks like a miscalculation. Two decades on, very few games have matched the specific, stupid joy of grabbing a water tower and clubbing a giant ape off a rooftop with it.