Every once in a while I seem to get a game in my hands that can be described as a diamond in the rough. I open the sucker with low expectations and when I start playing my mind is blown by how amazing the game is, compared to my original expectations. Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash is not that game.

More accurately, it is the complete opposite. I had hopes, albeit low hopes, for this game. I thought that the guys at Santa Cruz Games could actually pull it off; a side-scroller featuring Godzilla. How could you mess that up anyway? It seems highly improbable. But… you guessed it - they did. Horribly.

Parents, I'm going to say this right now - and drill it into your head so a child doesn't have his or her Christmas destroyed. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! There. You don't even have to read the rest of the review. Technically, I could just write gibberish from this point onwards, because it still wouldn't change the fact that this game is a monstrosity greater than Godzilla himself and it won't change anyone's opinion of this game, unless it goes from 'disapproving' to 'how could they even put this game on the market?' To tell you the truth, I couldn't even finish the game. I couldn't even finish the second level. I just couldn't torture myself like that.

Continuing onward, I don't even know where to start. The broken gameplay? The prehistoric graphics? The lack of gameplay altogether? I can't even begin to explain to you what a horrendous joke it is. I wish it was a joke, because then children across America wouldn't receive a gift that could be considered worse than a piece of coal (because this game won't produce as much heat as said piece of coal when you chuck it on the fire). But sadly, it's not.

I might as well start off with the gameplay, so you can understand the main reason why this should be buried in the pits of Arizona along with ET for the Atari 2600. Godzilla Unleashed is a 2.5D side scroller where you take control of two of ten playable Godzilla characters, traveling to and through cities, blowing up enemies along the way to get to the boss of each stage. Sounds good so far. That's probably what an advertisement for the game would say. What they should be telling you is that Godzilla Unleashed is a poor excuse for a 2.5D side-scroller, where you take control of two Godzilla characters, because no one in their right mind will bother playing the game enough to unlock any others, traveling to and through monotonous and horribly designed cities, blowing up the same two enemies a thousand times because the developers were too lazy to put any diversity into the game, only to turn the game off in disgust, probably before reaching the boss of the opening level.

The gameplay is simple enough, but it's actually so simple that you'll get just as far in the game by slapping your face with your DS as actually playing it. Saying which one is more fun is debatable, but I'm leaning towards slapping my face. You move using the d-pad and attack with your single melee attack with B. I'm not kidding about that either. There's one melee attack. No combos, no different buttons, nothing. It's the same attack over and over again. The worst part is that your attacks aren't even effective. When you attack your enemy, the chances are you'll destroy it, but you'll also take damage yourself. Basically, this means that you're not even hitting your enemy; they're just running into you. Even when you swear you hit the enemy, I can tell you right now that you didn't - and you never will. If you push X you can charge up your Godzilla atomic ray. which is as useful closing your eyes for ten seconds and praying, because both actions produce the same results in terms of kills. If you don't charge enough then Godzilla doesn't even shoot out a lesser ray and you have to start the whole process all over again. I could swear I was playing a web game made by a kid experimenting with a Flash program, not a finished product.

Like I said earlier, you can choose two characters. To clarify, you can choose one ground-based monster (Godzilla) and one flying monster (Mothra). You can switch between the two using L, but neither is better than the other and quite frankly they're both useless. Your airborne monster can move about in the air, crashing into all the enemies she can and also shoot mini lasers, opposed to Godzilla's melee attack. Mothra or your other secondary character also has the charge up laser, which is just as useless as Godzilla's atomic ray.

The level design is downright pathetic, seemingly coming from the mind of a hyperactive five-year-old. Enemies appear without any specific pattern, like they went crazy dragging and dropping them onto the level. With the control scheme as bad as it is, because the enemies are placed so sporadically it's hard to actually hit anything, because they're coming from everywhere. If that isn't bad enough, here's an interesting tidbit of information: there are two enemies to attack. Two! You get reckless and hopeless plane, and reckless and hopeless plane Jr. I'm not making this up when I say you're going to be fighting the same planes over and over and over again, without anything else to liven up the mix. Not only is the enemy design horrible, but the levels themselves are rejects out of an old NES game. It's like they did one screen for the background and then called it a day.

The most ridiculous part… okay, I jest. Adding to one of the many ridiculous features of the game is a pointless-button pressing game. I know rhythm games are "in" these days, but in a Godzilla game? What were they thinking? If you actually somewhat can bear the gameplay and can actually get to these points in the game, which are unfortunately common, then you're going to want to immediately turn the game off at these parts. Basically, you come to a pile of purple shards of crystal and for some reason you have to destroy it. But you can't destroy it with, say a regular attack or blasting it with your atomic ray, oh no. Instead, you push random combinations of Y and B to a nonexistent beat. Maybe if these were two or three sequences long then it would be tolerable. But no - it goes on for ten or so sequences! It's like the developers are trying to get you to stop playing their game and go play something else that won't test your sanity!

The graphics are interesting. The first time I saw screenshots for the game, I thought the art style was interesting and looked nice. When I saw it in motion however, in my own hands, those thoughts immediately disappeared. The game has a 2.5D style, which means the characters are rendered in 3D but set in a 2D side-scroller. The models of the characters, when seen in motion, look like a poor Nintendo 64 game and really aren't visually pleasing. Not that the game is pleasing in the first place. The backgrounds are bland and both enemies are even more bland, as you can imagine. And that's all I've got regarding the graphics. They're bad and there's nothing more to it. I'm not going to blabber on about the sound either. It's there. It's forgettable. Like the rest of the game, it's not any good.

Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla. How could you do this to yourself? Your gameplay - horrendous. Your graphics - atrocious. Your sound - there's sound? I can't stress enough how bad of a game, no, a poor excuse of a game, Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash actually is. It is broken and much like Godzilla himself, will make children run in fear. There are no justifiable reasons for owning it and it feels more like it should be a new form of torture - perhaps as a punishment when your kids have been bad… "That's it, go to your room and play Godzilla for an hour!" They won't misbehave again in a hurry! There are so many great games coming out this holiday season that you can purchase for your children or yourself, so please do yourself, your children and indeed the whole gaming industry a favor and don't get this one. There are plenty of fun things you can do with Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash, but playing it isn't one of them.

Reviewed by Ryan Brenner for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).