Godzilla PS4 - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] big monkey is about to fight big lizard so to please the gaping eldridge maw that is the youtube algorithm let's talk about some giant monster and really you can't say the words giant monster before someone wait what about godzilla on the ps4 brings up godzilla on the ps4 hello alistair from dangerville a great online destination for all things giant and dangerous does your sudden appearance mean we're tag teaming on this why yes it does matthew mcmuscle sir yes it does then i'll start after eight years of over zero titles based on touhou's flagship franchise aside from some phone games nam kai bando decided to finally finally give fans of godzilla something to chew on as it was very much a fanbase not being served some may recall those old 6th gen pipeworks fighting games they're actually pretty popular in their day selling very well for the then license holder atari but in 2014 godzilla's stock was at an all-time high with the impending release of a big hollywood blockbuster so logically it would behoove a company to capitalize on that with a new video game so what happened in contrast to a lot of stories you've covered before namco's godzilla project didn't suffer through a disastrous engine switch or an out-of-touch director it was however released at a very awkward time came with certain expectations and baggage and as we'll see was designed in a very specific way to please very specific people i say namco's godzilla game but really they were just the publisher as they farmed out the project to natsume responsible for shatterhand pocky and rocky wild guns a bunch of great power ranger games and the ninja warriors they were very much a force to be reckoned with in the early to mid 90s after the advent of the ps3 wii and xbox 360 the company's output slowed down down confined to mostly just publishing in fact they only wound up publishing two games during the entirety of the ps3's life cycle and one of those was africa this lasted until 2013 when the japanese branch then merged with atari to become natsume atari no not not that atari but a completely different company called atari see natsume created a pachinko division in 2002 simply named atari and then merged with that this is because atari is a japanese word for hit or strike so this atari just just forget about it give it a big old dropkick and let's just move on after this merger natsume atari started to slowly develop its own internal titles again and that's when namco came calling with an offer that couldn't be refused being a japanese company and given the chance to work on godzilla a franchise that's been an institution for the better part of a century has to be a thrill it's like being a western studio and asked to make a game based on batman or indiana jones but just way cooler because it's godzilla now that of course meant touhou would keep a very close eye on the development of the game as they are notorious for approving and controlling a lot of creative decisions to direct the project namco chose kunio suzuki who had produced ninja warriors and wild guns directed dice if you remember that one and was fresh off directing a common rider game with 2009's dragon knight on the namco side was shinsuke fujita who previously had worked at the company in sales making this his first producing position we'll be hearing from him the most as he was essentially the mouthpiece for the game fielding all questions and interviews throughout its promotional period now even though the legendary movie had months if not years of building hype leading to its big may 2014 release date it was only after its premiere where godzilla for the ps3 was formally announced with a trailer that june this is because the game was never meant to piggyback off legendary's film that just happened to be a happy coincidence but rather it was because godzilla's 60th anniversary happened to be in 2014. this then anchored natsume atari down with an immovable release date it had to come out before the end of that year now that's the other curious thing why was this plan for the ps3 when the ps4 had been out for months while it's a little odd in north america or elsewhere it wasn't in japan the ps3 was an immensely popular console over there well into its twilight years especially once the wii started losing steam so this massive still active install base is why you saw ps3 versions of well-known franchises like persona and guilty gear far after the ps4's debut being on the playstation triple ballen also had the added benefit of being comparatively cheaper to develop for than hopping on the next gen bandwagon too early especially with a licensed title since the game was meant to coincide with the franchise's anniversary it was very much designed to appeal to fans of that cinephiles and hardcore stands of godzilla and his giant weird friends the initial ps3 release had a very limited amount of content with the big g spot being the only controllable kaiju and the game having a complete lack of multiplayer as well as several monsters being mia but the game highlighted tons of references to past films paying homage to godzilla's general cinematic career with unique filters and options that would replicate the look of the 50s and 60s classics there was silly stuff yanked straight from the showa period camera angles meant to shoot the action from a bystander's perspective all the way down to emulating the miniature style look to the levels cities and props in fact previews in famitsu straight out said who the game was aimed at godzilla is being made with the atmosphere dynamic camera angles and explosions that were iconic in the older movies which will be brought out using the latest graphical technologies so it'll feel as if you have full control of the old school films all of this stuff would be contained within the main mode god of destruction damn that's a money name but its gameplay loop was kept deliberately simple you move around which can charitably be described at a glacial pace destroying generators and then fighting the occasional kaiju now many took issue with all this generator trashing but it was something that the development team needed to carefully navigate around godzilla's nuclear origins have been de-emphasized or stripped out altogether since the 2011 earthquake and subsequent nuclear power plant disaster that devastated japan since then such depictions have been deemed a sensitive issue thus toho namco and natsume had to think of some alternate solution that would drive the campaign which then resulted in godzilla getting bigger via g energy or g fuel instead of the nuclear variety nuclear it's pronounced nuclear when asked about this subject all shinsuke vegeta would say is that we realize radiation is something that can never be disassociated with godzilla the game's music was also lifted directly from the old films and if all that wasn't enough there was also its elaborate diorama mode which would let would-be directors recreate famous cinematic scenes even the kaiju character models and textures were scanned and provided by sh monster arts a line from an action figure company which is owned by who else but bandai themselves this thing kind of explains the somewhat basic toy-like look of the game's roster when godzilla was released just under the wire of the 2014 mandate in japan on december 18th it sold a healthy amount given that it was a smaller release in the busy december period famitsu for their part rated it pretty fairly giving it a 29 out of 40. now i know some people tend not to put much stock in famitsu reviews but it's relevant here as it shows how the intended demographic viewed the game this success both critically and commercially spur namco to expand upon it with an improved director's cut style release which is something i would be saying to you if those dates synced up at all if you remember the unmemorable 2014 edition of the game awards held december 5th i am uh here now with the guys from bungie there was a trailer announcing that godzilla was going to be stomping all over the world but this time on the ps4 the vanilla ps3 game then came out 10 days after this announcement so this decision to bring it to other territories was made before it had sold a single copy so one of two things happened here one namco and natsume knew they wouldn't be able to finish all the content originally intended thus just shipped what they had to make good on their deal with touhou or 2 this was the plan all along make a basic ps3 version then double dip japanese fans and importers with a better one down the line it's kind of up to you as to which theory to subscribe to anyway the focus for this new version was just to add more more monsters online multiplayer additional modes options and graphical polish re-christened godzilla vs a name meant to drive home the multiplayer aspect the natsume team would only have roughly five to six months to get it all done in north america and elsewhere around the world the ps4 version would simply be titled godzilla and since now multiple people would be able to square up in online matches the map sizes also needed to be increased to accommodate those thick thighs and while the game was going to get some graphical enhancements the team were still working off a ps3 game and along with all the other new content they had to implement there wasn't a whole lot of time to take advantage of the new hardware this lack of time could mostly be attributed to the fact that with every kaiju added toho needed to approve of every single one which usually takes a lot of time now since the game was paying homage to godzilla's film history there's one glaring omission konkidong i mean king kong now i mean konki dong he was godzilla's opponent in the first coloured film and thus an important part of the series especially this one scene which i will play right now [Music] when asked if the big banana slammer was considered for the game sunshuki vegeta simply said we definitely wanted to put him in the rest will leave to your imagination so yeah while it would have been awesome to get the king of the swing in there it was totally out of namco or even touhou's hands right issues between universal legendary and warner bros raged all throughout 2014 and made acquiring the character a field of legal landmines it was only months after the game's release where warner bros was left standing clutching their little monkey trophy funnily enough natsume would sometimes put in characters when toho wasn't looking assuming it would be better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission one such mega chad was a modeler on the team that loved the limo riding jet plane flying freewheeling double dealing son of a gun jet jaguar so much that he simply added him into the game without approval fortunately when touhou did find out they didn't object and i mean who would object to jet freaking jaguar [Music] anyway scheduled for the release in summer of 2015 posed a problem for namco as being on the ps4 would raise certain expectations for the game as the console was still branded quite new but the technology powering it very much wasn't the old movies had a certain quality to the visuals and special effects and the team tried their best to replicate that and not say the order 1886. oh oh man that just that just hit me well i gotta i gotta tackle that someday so again the marketing team was given a game that they knew had a rabid starved fan base but they had a product that was a low budget license title originally made for the ps3 so they had an uphill battle trying to big up the game's positive features it had a very different approach than the one taken by pipe works a decade earlier in those games you could take any monster of your choosing through an arcade style ladder and accumulate points to unlock monsters and features those games were meant for a more worldwide video game fan demographic and was more in line with what most fans expected and wanted if it was made a few generations earlier you could easily see it not making the leap across the pond much like several godzilla games on their super famicon saturn or dreamcast it wasn't intended to be a big action-packed hollywood version of the game or a smash brothers-like party fighter it getting a worldwide release was a miracle in of itself and fujita made it clear who it was intended for we aimed for something that was as close to the original interpretations as possible the appeal of godzilla can't be easily explained in words it's not just about being scary and strong it's also about its ambience its shape its beauty like being an ore of a samurai castle this is a game made by people who love godzilla in which their love for godzilla has gone wild i know people who love godzilla will feel that love and he's not wrong there's tons of love and detail poured into every facet of the game down to the expansive kaisu biographies but that doesn't always equate to stellar reviews from the western press which it didn't wind up getting again when the ps4 version hit japan reviews were more favorable this time scoring a 30 out of 40 at famitsu with many being pleased with all its improvements the game's physical print run in the west was also minuscule as namco probably made a very conservative order of copies being such a niche product nowadays though this wound up being a bit of a problem since godzilla is a licensed ip nanko was forced to delist the game in 2017 having it removed from the playstation store entirely and unlike activision which would ship more copies of amazing spider-man 2 or mutants in manhattan than the total population of canada godzilla ps4 is now incredibly rare with physical copies going for hundreds and hundreds of dollars on ebay if you have or managed to snag a copy in the future you might be surprised when you pop it in online servers for the game are still very active with a small but dedicated fanbase still duking out in wacky three-way brawls and while namco's publishing rates for the kaiju's in this particular game expired they would continue their relationship with touhou in the subsequent years they publish both the shin godzilla vr experience as well as the city shrouded in shadow which features not only the g-master but lots of other tokusatsu genre characters as well if you want to see me struggle playing that game in japanese you can check out this video here as for natsume atari well thankfully only good news on that front they've been putting out fantastic remakes of their 16-bit classics like while guns reloaded the ninja saviors and right now are working on and rocky re-shrined things have been pretty quiet on the kaiju front ever since the critical and commercial failure of godzilla ps4 which is a bit of a shame because in a time with more movies animes and comic adaptations than ever there's still no big officially licensed game adaptation to take advantage of all this new found popularity there was at one point a godzilla vs kong mobile game scheduled for release but that's been cancelled due to the developer being quite busy with its own bankruptcy although in september 2020 fansite gomaru island asked shinsuke fujita about the possibility of future godzilla games and while saying nothing definitive at least gave fans a glimmer of hope if they wanted to see more titles then they should respectfully contact touhou and bandai namco's social media channels which i will now display on the screen it's very clear that this game failed due to a multitude of factors not designing it to appeal to a broader audience having it built on an older console and being shackled with a strict release date however the fanbase still has a very real thirst for a video game that lets them smash and bash through cities as their favorite monster a video game that balances the franchise trappings and being an exciting accessible video game and time will only tell if that's going to be in the cards for our giant lovable radioactive overlord thanks again alistair of dangerville for helping out on this no problem it's like i was i was godzilla and you're angerous and we teamed to take on a bigger threat yeah well i mean obviously i'm godzilla and and you're anguirus no i'm i'm i'm pretty sure i'm godzilla no i'm godzilla i mean have you seen me i bloody look like godzilla i smell like him we're a completely kaiju focus channel we put out like a video almost every day yep that's fair there we go thank you anyway where can the people at home find you you can find us over at dangerville where we're posting all sorts of news and theories and science videos about godzilla kong and all sorts of giant monsters i assume he'll probably put a link in the description so follow that and come watch us come become a resident today thanks matty for having me you muck musly man if you know of any other massive monstrous mock-ups let me know in the comments below stomp your way over to my twitter or scream over to the flophouse vip patreon and become a big boss to nominate the game or movie you'd like to see next see you next time and thanks for [Music] [Applause] [Music] watching [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 511,285

Keywords: Godzilla PS4, Godzilla vs. Kong, Matt McMuscles, Wha happun, What Happened?, Godzilla Video Games, Video Game Documentaries

Id: 7-NxDpYTfkA

Length: 19min 57sec (1197 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021