During the press event recently held by Midway in Chicago, the company unveiled a new game never seen before to the public that put many people into a joyous rage. Rampage: Total Destruction is a follow-up to the arcade classic from many years ago, allowing up to three players to take control of large, angry monsters as they trashed buildings, ate all sorts of objects from bathtubs to electric devices (and humans), and fought each other for scoring superiority. The game was followed up by many sequels, some successful (Rampage: World Tour) and some not (Rampage: Universal Tour), and is now headed towards a revamping with this latest endeavor.

The good news is, it looks like the rebuild is on the right track. Midway called upon Pipeworks Software, the same developers of the chaotic Atari Godzilla combat games, to authenticate their monster mashing series.into something special, rather than leading it down the spiral of failure that their previous revamp, Narc, took. The result is a game that follows a similar pattern to the original. The setting is always in a 2-D plain, but with the ability to climb on the front or sides of them, causing damage with punches and kicks. You can also climb to the top and stomp on a building, which adds a leveling factor all its own in terms of knocking out unnecessary floors.

In the game, there's plenty of opposition. Foot soldiers, gunners, cop cars, tanks, and choppers are all around, spewing gunfire that chew away at your precious energy while you try and continue your destructive happiness. With that, the other monsters can also get into a melee with you for point superiority, which can spell disaster if you're on the verge of losing all your energy. The competitive nature of Rampage remains fully intact in Total Destruction, and that's going to be one of its strong selling points. The game just screams fun in mutliplayer.

There's plenty of creatures to choose from. George the Ape, Lizzie the Lizard, and Ralph the Wolf are all back in fine form, and there's some new faces being added. They weren't shown in the preview build on hand, but Midway is promising that a fresh mix will be involved, and each creature will have their own individual strengths that will come in handy in bringing the city in question to its knees. The gameplay seems to balance each one out just right, even if some of the physics are questionable in this state of play. For instance, I went to stomp a few times on a building, and, as a floor crumbled, I couldn't help but notice that the creature was twirling around inconsistently, then collapsing to the ground in a completely different direction. I'm sure Midway will fix this in the final version.

Looks and sounds also feel truthful to the original game. The textures in the game aren't overdone, but seem to have a glossy touch all their own that emulates Pipeworks' previous works in the Godzilla mode. It looks real, yet still has tongue firmly in cheek. Also, the sounds are sure to please classic Rampage fans, complete with radio banter, screaming humans, and lots of roars from the collective armageddon bringers.

Rampage: Total Destruction looks like a winner, and priced at $20, it should bring in quite a few people who just want to trash things and let out the wild thing in them. Hey, what else are they going to do, walk in a library and kick the books? I think not. Look for Total Destruction to leave plenty in its wake early next year.