King of the Monsters 2

It remains a mystery why we have not been treated to more games featuring giant monsters trampling around cities filled with innocent citizens. It seems like ideal videogame material to me, but obviously not to developers and publishers. Shame on them, but thanks to SNK my wish has been granted in the shape of King of the Monsters 2. God bless.

This time around you have only three characters to choose from - a Godzilla-a-like, an Ultraman rip-off and finally a mechanic King Kong duplicate. Each monster now has a more refined fighting style to go along with the enhanced controls. The three button system of the old game hasn't changed much - everything just feels neater and less random with throws and grapples now executed with ease. King of the Monsters 2 moves away from the awkward, lumbering wrestling of the first game to become a much smoother beast, more akin to King of Fighters than the Monster namesake. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.

To aid this new feel winning a bout no longer requires the player to pin his/her opponent to the ground, instead opting for a clean KO when the energy bar runs dry. Fights are now broken up into several segments too, taking time out to stomp around the city to your hearts content. This is one of the most important upgrades in King of the Monsters 2 as it provides a much needed break from the fighting action and lets you do what you really wanted to do - throw buildings at airplanes and trample cars underfoot. This guilty pleasure is executed with flair by SNK, as the high quality sprites allow for a lot of detail; and recognizable landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower lend a vindictive kind of enjoyment to the regular smashing and killing that goes with the job of being your average hundred foot tall Monster.

The first few levels are based around New York, Paris and the Grand Canyon, all three of which are great fun with plenty of features to play around with and relatively large in size. Now, King of the Monsters 2 is a very hard game no mistake. Yet SNK must have felt that it was so hard that no one was ever going to get past the third level, considering all of them after that are small, boring and unimaginative. Despite the improved fight mechanics, these latter levels are reminiscent of the predecessor, eschewing all the enhancements made in the first few levels and providing nothing more than a simple fight within a very boring arena. So, an improvement upon the first King of the Monsters, but again the flaws mean you won't be playing this for too long. A wasted opportunity.