The Wolf Among Us And Godzilla Are Both Getting The Remasters They Deserve

Welcome back to Remastered! This week, the newsletter finally lives up to its namesake by covering two remasters as the featured story. Thanks for supporting Remastered through this busier, Summer Game Fest-fueled period. If you’ve enjoyed everything I’ve written, then please consider subscribing for free or supporting me on Ko-fi!

I Finally Wrote About Actual Remasters!

At an event like Summer Game Fest, I’m usually most excited to play the brand-new games. I want to experience something I've never had before and learn more about what exciting ideas talented developers are iterating on. That said, Summer Game Fest Play Days 2025 was packed with games that harkened back to the yesteryear of gaming. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Resident Evil: Veronica go all the way as remakes, positioning themselves as full-on reimaginings of classics. Other games didn’t do that.

In fact, some of my favorite gaming experiences at Summer Game Fest this year were with two remasters I have fond memories of. Weeks later, I’m still thinking about my time with PM Studios’ The Wolf Among Us Remastered and Atari’s Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered. Let’s break down why both games are so important to me, and what their respective remasters are doing to bring the titles into the modern era. 

The Wolf Among Us Remastered 

For the first several Remastered newsletters, I had a section highlighting some of my favorite games of all time. While I covered the likes of Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Pokémon Sapphire, and Batman: Arkham City, I never got around to discussing another one of my favorite games: The Wolf Among Us.

Originally released in episodic installments across 2013 and 2014 by Telltale Games, The Wolf Among Us is a neo-noir detective mystery game based on the Fables comic series. It follows Bigby Wolf, a version of the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, as he investigates a series of Fable beheadings in a gritty New York City that turn out to be just the tip of a bigger conspiracy. 

I had not consumed much noir media before I played The Wolf Among Us in 2014, so I quickly fell in love with its aesthetics and overall vibe. I think it’s the best-written Telltale game, even if no moment is quite as emotional as Lee’s death at the end of Telltale’s The Walking Dead’s first season. The Wolf Among Us also features one of my favorite twists in any video game, which, of course, left me yearning for a sequel.

Sadly, Telltale shut down before it could produce said sequel, and a new version of The Wolf Among Us 2 has floundered in development since 2019. Lucky for me, The Wolf Among Us Remastered was announced at Summer Game Fest this year as a primer before The Wolf Among Us 2 finally comes out in 2027. Its announcement excited me so much that I made time to see it, even after canceling an appointment I didn't know it would be at. 

Replaying three bits of this game in remastered form reminded me of why I enjoyed it so much. I played through the opening of the game, as well as a segment where Bigby and Snow White gather more information about a victim and a fight with Grendel at a bar. This remaster didn't appear to alter the story at all, which I don’t mind, as it’s the original game’s core strength. The story and writing never came across as dated.

The Wolf Among Us Remastered is really just an Unreal Engine 5 makeover of the original. As the Telltale Tool game engine could sometimes feel like it was bursting at the seams with certain scene transitions and some of the more interactive segments of gameplay, the remaster carried a general feeling of smoothness that I’d expect out of such a remaster. The UI also blends better with the game's art style now.

Generally, it does have the remaster problem of being a little bit brighter than the original, which isn’t the best fit for The Wolf Among Us’ noir aesthetics. Thankfully, The Wolf Among Us has visuals that are heavily stylized enough that this was never truly a problem in what I play. I just hope some of the game’s darker scenes don’t look too bright. I also can’t wait to see what extra bonus interviews and content the remaster includes. 

This small taste of The Wolf Among Us Remastered got me incredibly excited to revisit one of my favorite games when it launches later this year. It wasn’t mindblowingly fluid and fun like Onimusha: Way of the Sword or a vivid reimagining of a classic like Turok: Origins. It’s just a well-preserved and updated version of a game that means a lot to me, and that was enough for it to be a Play Days standout. I’m glad I took the time to check it out.

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered 

I had a blast from the past when I checked out Atari’s game lineup and played Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered. A Godzilla fighting game released by Pipworks and Infogrames in 2002, I thought I had no memories of this game until I started playing it. Then a flood of memories came back, and I remembered playing this game with my brother and one of his friends as a kid. 

It’s a dumb, silly, and janky little licensed fighting game. Still, it’s incredibly charming to basically perform wrestling moves as Godzilla or Ghidorah and absolutely decimate the city around you in an all-out brawl. It was enjoyable to me when I was a kid, and the same was the case as a 27-year-old adult. In an era full of serious games or overly complex ones, sometimes kaiju fighting is all you need.

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is being published by Atari, which has a fantastic recent track record of remasters and re-releases of older games for modern platforms. The Unreal Engine 5 makeover of this game was still a little rough around the edges and clearly in mid-development. Still, the core fun of the original was there, and it did enough to bring a flood of childhood memories rushing back to me.

I may have forgotten that this game was important to me, but the developers at Pipeworks didn’t. Representatives for Atari explained during my meeting that Pipeworks had struggled to get a remaster off the ground for years because there were too many “partners” and proprietary game code involved with the original release. Atari waded through all those messy licensing waters and eventually got the remaster greenlit.

Rather than handing the remaster off to one of its internal studios, like Nightdive or Implicit Conversions, Atari is working with Pipeworks to develop this new version of the game. Being an Unreal Engine 5 title, it can have more detailed character models, lighting, and weather systems, and make the arenas slightly larger. Other than that, it’s pretty much exactly the same as the original Destroy All Monsters Melee outside of an updated, more accurate version of Mecha Godzilla and online multiplayer support. 

It’s always a feel-good story when a team of developers can remaster or remake one of their own games; that’s exactly what the case is with Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered. As one of the few games willing to take on Grand Theft Auto VI this November — with a physical version that actually includes a disc of the game to boot — I’ll definitely be playing this one again to uncover more childhood memories soon. 

What's Old Is News

Grand Theft Auto VI, Sonic Frontiers, Tekken, and more

• Xbox is finally testing a feature that’ll show Xbox 360 achievements on Game Hubs, fixing an obvious UI oversight related to the platform’s backward compatibility. 
• Grand Theft Auto VI costs $80 and will be the first Rockstar Games title to not have a disc in its physical release. It was also confirmed that only the single-player part of the game will come out on November 19, and I wrote about why that’s bad news for other game developers on GameSpot.
• The original Tekken is coming to Xbox and Nintendo consoles for the first time, courtesy of the Arcade Archives 2 initiative from Hamster Corporation. 
• Sonic Frontiers received a Nintendo Switch 2 Definitive Edition this week. 
• A fan working on an Unreal Engine remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for a decade has stopped developing the project after Nintendo announced an official remake, per IGN.
• Richard Garriott is going to try to reclaim the Ultima series through a copyright trick, Inside Games reports.
• The Steam Machine pre-orders open up later today. The system is probably going to make a great platform for emulation.

Here’s what I’ve been playing this week:  

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales: After being very impressed with this game’s demo last year, I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by the first few hours of this one. While I enjoy its take on the HD-2D aesthetic and Zelda-like combat, it’s too linear and story-focused so far. It doesn’t help that the writing is repetitive and very on-the-nose, so I don’t really care about what’s going on. Hopefully, the game opens up and improves as I play more. I expect to be writing about this game again in a future newsletter.

Rhythm Heaven Groove: I checked out the free demo for Rhythm Heaven Groove ahead of its release next week, and quickly reminded myself that I am absolutely terrible at rhythm games. While I only achieved a rating better than “good” on one stage, I definitely have the urge to play this demo again to master those levels. 

That’s it for Remastered this week. Subscribe for free so you don’t miss next week’s newsletter, and consider supporting me on Ko-fi to help bolster independent games media!