Get Your 8-Bit Kaiju on in Smashy City

You know the old saying: If at first you do succeed, shamelessly exploit it until it stops making money.

I previously reviewed a video game called Smashy Road, a fun experience in 8-bit car racing chaos for smart phones and tablets. Now, just a few weeks later, I found another game that's extremely similar to the look and feel of Smashy Road: Smashy City by Ace Viral. Read on for my complete review.

In Smashy City, players select a giant monster to attack an endless cityscape, and the monster keeps going until enough tanks, missiles and attack choppers bring it down. The game begins with a giant ape that looks a lot like King Kong, and players unlock a variety of other monsters as they rack up points or make in-game purchases by using real money. If Smashy Road and the classic arcade coin-op Rampage had a child, it would be called Smashy City. Then again, Smashy Road recycles many of the ideas that were already present in Crossy Road, so all we need at this point is a game named Crossy City for this circle to be complete.

Smashy Road and Smashy City have many similarities:

• Both have use an isometric perspective and blocky 8-bit graphics.
• Both require players to keep going as long as they can--and in turn cause as much damage as possible in the process--until they are stopped by a growing armada of law enforcement and military vehicles.
• Both use things that look familiar but are named differently for copyright reasons: Smashy Road has vehicles that look suspiciously similar to vehicles seen in movies and TV shows such as Batman and Dumb and Dumber, while Smashy City has monsters that look suspiciously similar to monsters seen in movies such as Alien, Ghostbusters and Little Shop of Horrors.

The primary appeal of both games stems from the player's appetite for 8-bit destruction and in that regard, Smashy Road is the better game. Road's wreckage is much more kinetic in nature and thus much more spectacular to watch: Since both the player and the pursuing vehicles drive recklessly, the game provides countless explosions, crashes and multi-vehicle pileups. There's plenty of destruction in Smashy City, but nothing that matches the frenzied chutzpah of Road. Road also provides a greater selection of vehicles than City provides for monsters, and Road doesn't pester players nearly as much as City does with in-game advertising and purchases.

Want to know how much damage your monster caused? Read about it in 

the Daily Smash, the official newspaper of Smashy City.

In spite of its drawbacks, Smashy City still maintains its own charms, especially for giant monster fans. It keeps a running tally of the cost of damages the monster causes: The bigger buildings have a higher cost of damage and are thus worth more points. After the monster topples a certain amount of buildings, it can enter a "Rampage" mode that briefly grants to the monster invincibility and the power to destroy anything in its path with a single blow. Throughout the city are fuel tanks that monsters can stomp on to cause massive explosions. Not only are these tanks useful for causing plenty of damage in a matter of seconds, but they can also be used to eliminate any nearby military forces. Furthermore, Smashy City occasionally allows players to control monsters they haven't unlocked yet in order to keep them playing or tempt them to spend real money to unlock those monsters. It's a shameless feature, but it works.

If you love Smashy Road and/or love giant monster mayhem, then you'll probably love Smashy City.

Yes, Smashy City even lets you use a giant penguin to level buildings.