Eat Them! preview: War of the Rampage
Somewhere there's an alternate dimension where monster games like Rampage and War of the Monsters are not oddities but rather fine examples of a whole "monsters destroying crap" genre. Eat Them!, which I played recently at PAX 2010, is a game directly from that dimension.
In Fluffy Logic's (Savage Moon) upcoming PSN release, you play as a monster that you've customized every slimy, scaly inch of, from his shoulder rockets to his tentacle legs. Then ... well, you destroy shit.
This is a game that's really difficult to preview because there's not some deeper level of sophistication I'm keeping from you, at least not from what I saw. As long as you're wreaking as much havoc as possible you're pretty much set. OK, and you've got to try not to die. So, two things. Don't die, kill other stuff. (Luckily, you keep up your health by snatching people off the ground and chomping them, so the two dovetail nicely.)
The real joy is seeing the city (drawn in a comic-inspired cel-shaded style) crumble as you sprint through it, buildings transformed by a single swipe into piles of granite chunks. You've got to be aware of the approaching hordes of tanks and soldiers, sure, but only in the ephemeral way I'm aware of my student loan debt. They're out there somewhere, but they're not such an immediate threat that I need to pay them much mind.
It sounds shallow, and I frankly have no reason to think it won't be. But the bit I saw at PAX was intriguing enough that I could be willing to get on board with some mindless destruction this December, especially if the price is right.
