There are always going to be games more fondly remembered for concept than execution, and one of the kings of this category is Rampage.  The idea sounds like pure gameplay gold, in that you get to be a giant monster tearing apart cities while trying to avoid and stomp flat the military forces defending them, but it just ended up feeling like a slog once the humor wore off.  Even though Rampage wasn't a good game it was still a great idea, so other developers have taken a crack at the idea in the decades since.  The latest tribute is Terror of Hemasuarus, which is having an open beta this week through May 13, and after playing the available levels I can say it's everything its inspiration couldn't quite manage to be.

The basic premise is that, when it came to listening to science or money, people took the obvious route and global warming thawed out the monsters trapped in the arctic ice.  That would have been bad enough but then a cult got ahold of them, pointing the rampaging kaiju at humanity's population centers to thin the herd back to a sustainable level.  First, though, there's a quick tutorial to go over all the options an angry giant monster has at its disposal in order to flatten civilization while remaining healthy and well fed.

If you've played Rampage you know the goal: raze the buildings, eat the people.  Terror of Hemasaurus doesn't stray far from this, with the level goals in the beta being to destroy a percentage of the buildings, kill a number of people or a combination of the two.  A couple of bonus levels specify how you want to take out the pesky humans, such as tossing them into helicopter blades or eating them, but for the most part the focus is on the joy of pure destruction.

While there will be several monsters to choose from in the final release, the beta comes with two and they play identically other than the special attack.  Each comes with a standard punch, a secondary attack that can act as a kick or grab depending on how it's used, a ground-pound that gets stronger the higher up it starts, plus a chomp that's handy for snacking on the scurrying bald apes that seem to be everywhere.  A few of the weird little simians are even capable of doing a tiny bit of damage, which is easily healed by chowing down on them.  Combine all the attacks together plus the building's physics and soon the cities are a smoking ruin.

What makes the destruction so continually satisfying is the way it all chains together.  Much like Rampage the buildings are best thought of as a collection of square windows to beat on, sometimes with people sticking out of them but usually closed.  The lower sections are strong while the upper ones weak, but it's easily worth the extra effort to focus on ground level.  The buildings have basic physics implemented, so if you take out the lower windows the entire structure will start to topple over, and this can easily lead to a multiple-skyscraper chain reaction of explosions filling the screen.  There are several tools to help get this process started, too, such as cars that drive by you can kick to use as projectiles, choosing either a high arc or low one.  The high arc is especially useful for taking out police helicopters, which start buzzing around in earnest as the levels progress.  If you haven't razed everything too far down, though, you can also climb up and jump on to the helicopter, snacking on the gunner while punching it into the nearest structure.  Once the levels kick off there can be a lot going on at once, and while the beta for Terror of Hemasaurus might be easy to clear if you're paying attention to the health bar, it's easy to get lost in the pyrotechnic carnage and lose a life through sheer carelessness.

Terror of Hemasaurus is in free beta right now through the end of the week and is easily worth putting in the request for access on its Steam page.  There are a ton of great little bits in its gameplay that aren't central to the destruction but fun to do, like grabbing a human and tossing it into the air only to jump up and eat it as it falls, or play car hacky-sack by kicking it several times in a row without letting it touch the ground, and the writing is especially sharp in the between-level cutscenes.  Even just focusing on the goals, though, Terror of Hemosaurus is filled with destructive entertainment, with collapsing buildings, bullets everywhere, and healthy delicious snacks running about your monstrous feet.  Humanity obviously can't manage to save the world itself so maybe, with a bit of help from a collection of giant rampaging monsters, the planet can be saved by razing it flat.