Any GOOD Pacific Rim-style games?

I watched Pacific Rim yesterday and had a glorious time. Now I'm jonesing for a good video game dealing with the same sort of theme. With the XBLA game being a total turd, is there anything else that is thematically comparable in recent gaming memory?

Any mech game would probably be loads better than Pacific Rim, but most lack the whole "robot vs monster" deathmatch vibe.

I think it's War of the Monsters on the PS2 I've heard good things about. According to one Giantbomb.com you can get it on the PS3N as well.

@oraknabo: ooh fuck RAD was so awesome

I played a whole lot of War of the Monsters back when it was released. Really good, mindless-fun game. A nice set of playable monsters and arenas, with a lot of buildings capable of being destroyed. It might not have aged entirely well, but I still think it's worth looking into.

Zone of the enders 1 and 2

This. Play as the robot dude, fight the monster dudes. Victory!

War of the Monsters

Xenogears. You can even snag it on PSN. It is a must play, and features giant robots.

@oraknabo said:

Stole the words out of my mouth. MAN, I need to play that game again.

If you're looking for giant mechs you can't go wrong with Zone of The Enders or Armored Core.

No Kaiju, but there's a bunch of Front Mission games out there. Front Mission 3 being the best of the bunch, by my account.

And, although you don't do any fighting, Attack of the Friday Monsters! on 3DS focuses around a bunch of kids who live in town where Kaiju fight on the outskirts.

Or, you know, you could just watch Gurren Lagaan.

Primal Rage obv

Front Mission 3 is the best mech game of all time I suppose, but it doesn't have monsters and isn't a fighting game *gasp*

Xenogears is really fucking boring after the first 10-15 hours or so; Xenosaga is much more tightly paced plus it just has a better story overall, 2nd and 3rd one have independent mech combat which is generally pretty interesting.

Also, Virtual On.

I remember thinking the mech boss fights in Goemon's Great Adventure were pretty good.

The Pacific Rim game on XBLA is unbelievably good. It's probably the best game released on Live in the last 2-3 years.

The obvious ones were already mentioned in this thread but King of the Monsters and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee (fucking horrible title) are worth a look. The former's a Neo-Geo (and Nick Arcade) staple, the latter was a dumb Godzilla game, emphasis on dumb.

War of the Monsters and Godzilla: Save the Earth.

@warchief said:

War of the Monsters

An unloved classic!

...is 1994 "recent"?

One Must Fall: 2097 is a hell of a giant robot fighting game, if you can get past the DOS-ass graphics. It has ranged attacks, combos, upgrades, throws, arena hazards, secret characters, secret levels, an extensive and ridiculous story mode, hyper moves, cheat codes, destruction moves, and characters with radically different play styles. One robot can teleport and alter time, another has wings, a third is a repurposed industrial demolition machine with huge chain flails, etc.

It's abandonware now, so there's really no reason not to grab it and fire up DosBox.

I had to go see Pacific Rim today after listening to the Bombcast, didn't even care that I had nobody to go with. Man that film is dumb yet great at the same time.

@mooninaut: I have so many fond memories of OMF: 2097. I played the shareware version for years.

@mooninaut: OMF is fantastic; also, I believe it's officially freeware.

Hm, maybe I should replay it again...

What? No. Xenosaga was three, 40+ hour games of incoherent boredom consisting mostly of cutscene. You're better off just watching the cutscenes spliced together on Youtube. At least Xenogears crammed all its convolution into one game, with many more outstanding moments of awesome, and some actual gameplay. Even if disc 2 was all fucked up.

I agree that it was dumb and silly, but it was still neat! They had like 3 versions of Godzilla! And multiple robot versions of characters! Gah, it wasn't great. I just liked it a lot I guess. Part of the attraction was that they made two Godzilla fighting games which in itself is pretty bizarre and risky.

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee certainly has some redeeming qualities to it, but I don't know that I'd go as far as calling it good. Definitely better than it could have been, though.

@sinusoidal I don't know if this is true, but I heard that the main reason why disc 2 is the way it is was that Squaresoft ran out of money earlier than they had planned. So what was supposed to be a much more elaborate conclusion to the story turned into "shit, we need to wrap this up now. And we don't have any money for new assets, so just have everyone monologue in front of a black background or something!"

BEST FUCKING GAME EVAR!!!111!1!

I believe there was a sequel for the Wii that had more monsters playable as well. Dunno if it was any better than the original, though, as I never played it.

Maaan, how has no one made a good giant stuff fightin' other giant stuff game in the recent past? There's been such a mech resurgence with Mechwarrior Online and Hawken, too.

I know it's not really the same thing at all, but watching the movie a second time kind of got me in the mood for Lost Planet. Since I only own the second one and don't really want to play it again, I bought the first for $5 last night since that Capcom sale was still going on. It sort of satisfies the need to destroy a variety of giant alien creatures, sometimes with mech suits.

I couldn't help but notice that the opening to Pacific Rim and the opening to LP1 are more than a little similar, though. It's actually really weird.

Earth Defense Force is pretty fun. You spend most of the time on foot, so it's not exactly Pacific Rim style, but there is a mech you can pilot. However, the mechs are pretty disposable and will blow up in like thirty seconds. You're better off just going it on foot most of the time.

@sinusoidal: Dude rips off his own head and regenerates it in Xenosaga; it's the best voiced scene in the history of video games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0yr8WdYS8M starting at 1:30

@warchief:

@cloudenvy said:

@warchief said:

War of the Monsters

An unloved classic!

This game was awesome. Destructible environments too

@quarters said:

@oraknabo said:

Stole the words out of my mouth. MAN, I need to play that game again.

Not only is it Robot fighting and so forth. But the anime ness of it is very Pac Rim. or Pac Blue?

Touché!

Honestly, I've only played the third, and it was a chore.

Finally watched the movie. It really gave me a Terror From the Deep vibe.