They say “never meet your heroes” and now I know why…

For some time now PlayStation has been steadily releasing PS2 remasters over on the PS4. The likes of GTA Vice City, Bully, Wild Arms 3 and, Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits are all available to download right this very moment, complete with full trophy support. It’s an entirely wonderful service and deliciously nostalgic for those of us who are so inclined to live in the past. A few days ago, I noticed that on this great list of PS2 classics, there was a certain game sitting quite happily on the PlayStation storefront. It was one that I never had the opportunity to play back on the PS2, but was one I’d always had an unfulfilled craving for. It was the the 3D beat-’em-up War of the Monsters.

Now War of the Monsters had been the tease of my entire PS2 experience since I had spied the trailer for it on an old Official PlayStation Magazine demo disk. Seeing those building-sized monsters duke it out, completely destroying cities and smashing each other’s ugly faces into a pulp of b-movie gristle, captivated my over-active 11-year-old mind. There was just no question about it, I needed to have this game.

Who wouldn’t want to play this!

Unfortunately, this search for War of the Monsters was never going to turn out the way I’d hoped. The miserable hole of a town I lived in didn’t have any video game retailers and the nearest one was a shoe box-sized GAME a few miles away in a larger, yet no less miserable, hole of a town. That GAME store never had the newest inventory of stock and you couldn’t really spend more than 5 minutes in there without contracting some sort of eye infection from all the residual stink. I regularly braved the risk of infection though and spent countless hours, perusing the shelves and holding my breath in the hope to find War of the Monsters. See, this was a time when people still feared the fresh-faced audacity of the internet; unsure of the mystery it held and not entirely trusting of the services it provided. My dad was no different, so I was never quite able to tease those debit card details out of him to get the game online. Good ol’ fashioned brick and mortar was my only chance.

War of the Monsters was nowhere to be found though. No matter how many times I checked that shoe-box sized Game, no matter how many ill-fated Woolworths stores I charged into, War of the Monsters was nowhere. Even the warehouse store of Christmas dreams, Argos, never had a copy in stock. Alas, I was never destined to succeed; never able to acquire my beloved War of the Monsters.

Eventually, I did forget about War of the Monsters, moved onto the PS3 and embraced the age of the internet with my very own debit card. The years went by, bank accounts got overdrawn and I went on my merry little way throughout the console generations.

Then, much to my surprise, last week I saw it, for the first time in probably 10 years. War of the Monsters was on the PS2 classics (apparently it’s been there since the beginning of the PS2 classics roll out – yes I’m an idiot). This elusive game, my own personal holy grail of interactive entertainment was right in front of me. And it had been there for months. After all that time spent flicking through pre-owned bins, after all those eye infections, after all that time watching that demo disk trailer over and over, it was there. A simple click away. I didn’t hesitate, I had to have it. I had to know if this crazy game was all I’d hoped. I needed to know if over a decade of waiting for War of the Monsters was really worth it all. £4.48 later, I had my answer.

War of the Monsters is utter toss…

It controls like nothing I’ve ever played, with every movement of the analog sticks leading your chosen monster in the completely opposite direction you input – it’s like some strange amalgamation of tank controls crossed with an underdeveloped modern day movement mechanic. The combat itself is about as responsive as my 75-year-old Nan, giving the computer an overly unfair advantage as it takes so long to register an input. And the camera, oh my god the camera. Whoever let this game go gold with that camera needs to reconsider their life choices.

As you can probably tell, I was a little let down by War of the Monsters. At first, I thought it was the fault of some generational distancing, that all of the PS2’s games were all this bad and I’d just forgotten about. But then I played Rockstar’s Bully and my word what a game that is. There’re some absolutely wonderful ideas oozing out from Bully, birthing a game that is genuinely better than most of what we’re subjected to today. So is War of the Monsters just a bad game? In a word, yes.

After all that time I waited with baited breath to get my hands on it, War of the Monsters is simply a bad game. I blew my expectations out of proportion and I was victim to a decade-long, self-inflicted hype machine. I wanted more from the game, it didn’t deliver and now I feel burnt.

I guess some things in video games never really change…