God Mode (X360) Review

God Mode is a $10 downloadable title developed by Old School Games, published by Atlus, and it is a game in which you are given guns and the unlikely task of shooting things in the face with them. That about sums it up.

About the Game
Genre: Third Person Shooter
Players: 2-4 Players (Online), 1 (Offline)
Rating: M
Developer: Old School Games
Publisher: Atlus
Platforms + Release Dates:
– Xbox 360 (XBLA): April 19, 2013
– PlayStation 3 (PSN): April 23, 2013
– PC (Steam): April 19, 2013

Okay, so there is a bit more. God Mode is a third-person, 4-player co-op shooter where players band together and fight wave after wave of mindless skeletons, zombies, and a handful of other monster types lifted from the layman’s knowledge of Greek mythology, akin to Left 4 Dead – each of the game’s five maps are more about linear progression than survival, making ties with Killing Floor or Gears of War’s Horde Mode a bit more tenuous.

The linear progression is where it distinguishes itself from the crowd. Each map has around five or so altars placed in your path that will each trigger a “Test of Faith” that spawns enemies and forces the players to fight under a random condition. These range from the occasional positive effects like randomly doled out God Mode, to the more common negative ones such as randomized weapons, automatically draining ammo, regenerating HP with a lowered maximum, and even mutual one-hit kills. Given that there are only five maps which each take maybe 10-15 minutes to beat, it keeps the game from going stale sooner than it otherwise would have.

Also spurring on the replay value is a level-up system, where you can unlock new weapons, weapon upgrades, and special skills for purchase as you gain experience. The progression is extremely linear, though – the guns and upgrades you’ll have access to at each level are set in stone, and your only real choice is if you want to pay the progressively steeper prices or not. Want that sweet looking gun? Better get to grinding.

Did I stutter? Start grinding.

Speaking of the levels, did I mention that there are only five of them? And that they’re all pretty short? While most of the altars on each map are surrounded by fairly unique topography, it rarely does much to change your normal strategy of backpedal+shoot outside of one altar that features trebuchets used to open a gate and move on. Even the Test of Faith conditions do little to change the gameplay. Skeletons are stronger? Backpedal and shoot. I build special meter slower? Backpedal and shoot. One hit kills? Backpedal more than usual, but still shoot. Even a few of the bosses are just giant bullet sponges that sit at one end of the level and throw a telegraphed attack out every now and then.

So, how’s the shooting itself? Well, the game controls like your standard Gears-style third person shooter – move with the left stick, aim with the right stick, shoot with right trigger, run/dodge roll with A, etc. Since it’s a console game, you carry two weapons at a time, but this time with no opportunities to pick up different ones mid-mission. You also have a “rage” meter that builds up as you murder things, which lets you activate your special ability when full – mostly healing powers or special attacks, and part of your pre-mission loadout.

The feel of the combat in practice leaves a bit to be desired, though. Due to the third person perspective, my attacks didn’t seem to line up perfectly with the crosshairs, and because of that (and totally not my inability to aim on a pad), my shots missed rather often, especially when enemies were at point blank range. Even when I eventually worked around it and started hitting things consistently, the game only awarded experience points to the player who landed the last hit on the enemy, so I felt disheartened to waste a mountain of ammo on a fittingly mountainous enemy only to get no experience because someone else landed the finishing shot. It would have been nice if assists were rewarded a bit.

The environments actually look pretty nice if you stop and appreciate them. You know, in between the hordes of zombies.

The game’s matchmaking mechanics are slim, but serviceable. You can go into standard matchmaking to get paired up with randoms, or create a match with the people in your Xbox Live party. If you want to play with your actual friends in one room, you’re out of luck, since God Mode commits the cardinal sin of current gen multiplayer games by not actually offering split-screen multiplayer. You’re free to set up a system link to play locally, but setting up four Xboxes and four TVs is asking a lot for a $10 downloadable game.

Overall, there’s not much to say about God Mode. It’s a game where you shoot things, and it doesn’t try to be anything else. It does little to distinguish itself, and maybe it’s fine that way. As is, it’s an itch-scratcher game – if you have an itch to shoot at hordes of mindless enemies from a third person perspective with three other teammates, God Mode will likely scratch that itch about as well as any other game of its genre. If you could go without yet another shooter, you can go without God Mode.

Final score: 6.5 (Kinda Below Average). It’s entertaining.

Quick note on glitches, though: I’ve seen more than a few corpses get down.