Here is my personal list, if you deem any of it worthy enough to post to the first page of the topic, go for it!
DO:
1 - Large roster straight from the box. Don't give us 9 characters and make us wait for DLC/a potential sequel. Needs to be a mix of familiar faces and obscure characters. Almost as important as the size is the variety. Not every monster needs to play the damn same. Someone like Kong or the Gargantuas does not need a beam attack just for the hell of it (more on this later). Some characters should focus on strikes, some speed, some ranged attacks, and some grapple-based...you know, like CAPCOM figured out 20 years ago.
2 - Large amount of fighters unlocked from the start. I think 10 is a good number. Some people would rather jump straight into multi-player (Not me, personally) and having only 4 characters to play as kind of sucks. With that said, I love unlocking things, so give us tons of monsters to unlock.
3 - STRONG single player game. We really need a good story, and not the glitch-fest of broken promises that G:U or the entirely scrapped story that G:STE was. Branching paths, hooray. Being able to change alliances and alignments, awesome. A local co-op storyline would be AMAZING. Give me a good, 20+ hour campaign where I can be Godzilla and my wife can be Mothra and we team up the entire time, and I'd throw all my money and credit card numbers at the TV without hesitation. I know that a fighting game might not seem like the best "fit" for this, but, look at what MK9 and Injustice did. Do THAT...with Toho characters, and make a separate single player AND a co-op story.
4 - MOVIE ACCURACY. Can't stress this enough. Monsters need to look, act, and sound like their "real life" counterparts. In this day and age there is literally NO excuse for incorrect sound effects. Stop giving monsters abilities they never had in any other official form of Toho media, it's not creative. Making varied and fun move-sets that work within the limitations of the established universe, THAT is true creativity. Movie accurate soundtracks. I'd like custom soundtrack support, but the one thing those CAN'T do is change the music based on what is happening on screen. I'd like each monster to have their theme song, music changing when fights get down to the wire and someone is close to death, etc.
5 - Skins/alt attires. Really got tired of Pipeworks' excuses that they couldn't make this work. Every WWE game for the past 15 years had this. Street Fighter IV has this. Just imagine if there were 3 Godzilla character slots, Showa, Heisei, Millennium, to capture the different moves/mannerisms each "era" had. Then imagine if Showa Godzilla could choose from 4 or 5 different suits.
6 - Realistic moves. I don't want a pop-up/juggle based fighter. Just heavy hitting moves, lots of impact, and for Godz sake, a strong grapple system. Half of the fun of the earlier games was hurling the opponents across the screen and into buildings, G:U's horrible grapple system of 1 move per character ruined this.
7 - Ultra/Finishing moves. No I don't need super-gory fatalities, but, how many kaiju fights end with someone getting punched or a regular beam attack? (The MUTO tail smash in G14 notwithstanding, but even THAT was pretty brutal). Heisei G's red spiral fire is a perfect example. These should be context sensitive, for example, in SFIV, an Ultra Combo that doesn't end a fight does massive damage, but if you use it to finish a match, you get special visual effects. Say you hit the move here, same deal, massive damage in the middle of a fight, but if you end the fight with it you get a cool cinematic of Godzilla powering up and blasting the opponent who then explodes in a shower of sparks. Combo moves would be awesome too, like a Godzilla/Anguirus tandem move where Goji holds the opponent for Anguirus to slam into, before hurling them away.
8 - Different modes. Story, Vs, Team battle, survival, practice, destruction....I'd like an Unlimited Destruction mode where you can just travel a never-ending landscape with randomly generated buildings, military opposition, and other monsters (You can toggle all these on and off) and just stomp as much as you want.
9 - Movie accurate (Or at the very least, interesting) levels. Yes it'd be awesome to stomp some true to life real cities, but I'd also like to fight on Planet X with that AWESOME painted backdrop from Monster Zero as a background, with flying saucers zipping around....World Children's Land with a smashable Godzilla Tower, and for the first time ever, a Monster Island that ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE MONSTER ISLAND, with non-playable monsters in the background as interactive hazards.
10 - Lengthy fights. Perhaps make this an option where you can set characters' vitality levels, but, I want epic 10 minute fights. Certainly not for EVERY fight, but, if done right this could be awesome.
DON'T:
1 - MESS UP THE MONSTERS! Jet Jaguar doesn't throw energy from his hands. He doesn't need to. Why does Gigan need to teleport? He's a flying, cybernetic monstrosity with hooked claws for hands and a buzzsaw in his chest. IS THAT NOT COOL ENOUGH!? Pipeworks seemed more concerned with making sure (almost) every monster could conform to their broken, just plain not fun beam-battle system that ensuring movie accuracy.
2 - Ship a buggy game. I really don't mean to keep ragging on Pipeworks...I truly don't....but G:U had to be the most bug-ridden game I played from the last console generation. Granted, I don't buy a ton of games...but the amount of glitches I encountered just made the game reek of rushed shovelware.
3 - Make a convoluted control scheme. STE and God:DAMM were fine. G:U was a mass of flailing confusion.
4 - Totally ignore the film history. Kind of recycling points here, but this is important. Monsters and music need to look and sound how the fans expect. I understand the need to market to non-fans as well, but, I don't see Ifukube themes being a turn-off to the general consumer, and they will certainly excite the G-fans.
5 - Remember how I've praised CAPCOM a couple times in this post? Now here's a shot at them....do NOT make us pay for locked content already on the disc/"day one DLC"!
That's really all I've got, if you achieve most of the "DO's", it takes care of the "DONT's". Now, because everyone loves these, here's my roster list. I'll stick with the Pipeworks "faction" theme, just for balancing/numbers. That doesn't mean that's how it'd go down in the story, IE, maybe Mecha-King Ghidorah is listed as EDF, but he'd be Alien controlled in the storyline of the game, and the names of the groups wouldn't necessarily stay the same.
"Earth Defenders" - Heroic monsters that fight for the earth first and humanity second.
1 -
Showa Godzilla. (Skins: 68 [default], 75, 62, 64) Alternatively, you can select
Godzilla 2000 or
Heisei Godzilla, which would have different movesets, but there will only be one playable Godzilla in story mode at a time.
2 -
Anguirus (
1968 [default],
2004)
3 -
Rodan (1965 [default],
2004)
4 -
Mothra (Larva and adult. 1992 [default], 1960's, 2001)
5 -
Minya (Showa)
6 -
King Seesar (Showa)
7 -
Sanda (Alt skin:
Frankenstein)
8 -
Gorosaurus
9 -
Baragon (GMK [default],
Showa)
10 -
King Kong (1962....I can dream....)
11 -
Godzilla 2014
"Mutants" - Power crazed monsters that only seek to destroy
1 -
Destoroyah
2 -
Zilla
3 -
Biollante
4 -
Kumonga (Showa and GFW skins)
5 -
Gaira
6 -
Hedorah
7 -
Gabara
8 -
Battra (Larva and Adult)
9 -
Gojira 1954 (Alt skin:
Skeleton/Ghost Godzilla) - Maybe he's even the boss of the game...the story changes depending on whether you are a good or evil monster...for good monsters, Gojira returns to punish the world and humanity one more time, for evil monsters, he is your last challenge standing between you and world domination.
10 -
MUTO (Hybrid of Male/Female, so it's big AND can fly!)
"Earth Defense Force" - Man made monsters used for the defense of humanity! Allied w/ Earth Defenders by default, this may change as the story progresses.
1 -
Kiryu (GxMG and SOS skins)
2 -
Jet Jaguar
3 -
MOGERA (1994 &
Mysterians skins)
4 -
Mecha-King Ghidorah
5 -
Super MechaGodzilla
6 -
MechaniKong - I am kind of iffy on him. I wonder if he'd automatically be available if they bought the rights to King Kong, or if he'd cost more. I am on the fence on whether or not he's worth it...but the EDF roster is pretty small!
"Aliens" - Look to eradicate or enslave humanity and their guardians and seize control of the planet!
1 -
King Ghidorah (1965 [default] and 1991)
2 -
Gigan (1970's [default] and 2004)
3 -
Orga
4 -
MechaGodzilla Showa
5 -
Space Godzilla
6 -
Megalon
That gives us a pretty decent mix on good vs evil as far as numbers go, with 16 give or take on each side. I left some out such as Varan, Titanosaurus, Fire Rodan, and some Godzilla versions that could be DLC....along with Gamera