God Mode is a third-person, run and gun game that takes you right to the afterlife to fight hordes and hordes of enemies. Whether you use guns or your fists, there are plenty of things to kill.
God Mode is one of the newest run and gun games, gracing PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on the 19th of April. Although it takes traits from others in the genre, it twists them and adds new mechanics to try and freshen up the mix. An example of one of the new mechanics is the RPG unlock system that allows players to upgrade both their guns and appearance of their character.
Before I get into any key details about the game, I need to mention optimisation. For the purposes of this overview, the game was played on a high end PC and the specs were more than capable at running the game at maximum settings. For reference, I will add full specs to the bottom of the article so that you can compare and see for yourself.
Optimisation and Graphical Quality
God Mode comes with three different graphical preset options. There’s High, Medium and Low. However, if you want to go into more depth with your customisation, you can use the custom setting. Unfortunately, PC fanatics might be disappointed with the lack of options available within this section. The standard AA, AO, Foliage quality and Shadow quality options are included, but standard options such as V-Sync are excluded. This means that if you experience screen tearing within the game, you will need to use a built in function within your graphics card control panel to enable the option. Although this is a little issue, it’s frustrating and easily avoided.
As mentioned earlier, I played the game on maximum settings. However, the frame-rate was far from what would be expected. The average FPS during play was 40-50, which isn’t bad in itself. However, when my computer can usually play games that look better than this with 60fps constant, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
True, this isn’t a AAA release, but even though there are some low res textures, even on the highest possible settings, the game did look good. The battle environments are all superb in terms of design and equally extremely varied. The only flaws distinctly shown are the occasional low resolution textures and jagged character edges that remain present, even when AA is enabled.
Overall the game does look and run well, considering the game is far from a AAA title. On the whole, i’m quite happy with the options the developers have included.
Gameplay
As you might expect, God Mode doesn’t do anything huge with the run and gun formula. It takes what already works and builds on it with new features. The main focus of the game is to move from arena to arena within a map until you reach the final area. Although this sounds simplistic, Hades is going to do all he can to stop you from beating the five battlegrounds and ascending to god status.
Amazingly there is a storyline accompanying the mindless shooting, but it’s so poorly portrayed that, in all honestly, it’s rather irrelevant. Sparsely placed dialogue from Hades at both the beginning and end of the maps tells the main story and… that’s about it.
There is an option to learn some lore from the bestiary located on the main menu. The bestiary provides small snippets of information for each of the enemies in the game, but nothing more than that.
You play as one of three descendants banished from Mount Olympus by Hades. As descendant, you’ll have to blast your way through five arenas filled with nasties to prove your worth and be placed among the gods, hence the title God Mode. The five maps are good to play through around three times, but beyond that they become boring and familiar. The game tries to combat this by adding something called Tests of Faith modifiers into the game. Each of the five maps is split up into small arenas containing a shrine that activates a random modification. This remains active until the area is finished.
The modifications do add significant depth to the game, but in turn can also be very stupid and pointless. Some of the more notable modifications include random moments of invincibility, random weapon drops and bonus effects when up close to a shrine. While these are useful, other modifiers such as “Enemies wear Hats” are also in the mix, and become annoying after an initial chuckle. Receiving it over and over again becomes increasingly frustrating, especially when you’re after one of the more desirable modifiers.
In each of the areas a wide range of enemies are placed on screen at any one time. You will be fighting Harpies, Minotaurs and Mages as you try to reach the final golden room. At times, the enemies will overrun and you will struggle to survive, but play the game in co-op and the arenas can be blasted through in no time, even with the weakest guns.
There are additional modes, such as Golden Tier but even these don’t prove to be particularly difficult, even for the average gamer.
Yes, the arenas are fun but due to issues with the modifier system and easy difficulty, the gameplay soon becomes quite repetitive.
Unlock system
While playing, you will earn both gold and experience. The gold can be spent by players in the Cadaver Gear portion of the main menu.
The options range from basic Appearance modifications, such as hats and clothes, but where the game really comes into play is the weapon upgrade system. Each weapon in the game can be upgraded to boost factors such as accuracy and damage. This is quite a nice addition but it should have been expanded even further. The lack of guns makes the system wholly worthless, but on the other hand, it does add something to aim for. It’s an area that could be bolstered with additional DLC and content updates.
Overall Impression
God Mode is a competent shooter that can be damn good fun to play with a couple of friends. Considering the price, there’s a lot of value for money here with five maps, varied styles of play and customisation options. However, God Mode soon wears out its welcome.
If you just want to switch off and throw yourself headfirst at the forces of Hades without a care then God Mode does the job. Just don’t expect a deep, enriching experience that will reward you in the long-term.
PC Specs:
GPU: GTX 560TI 1GB
CPU: Intel I5 3570k OC@3.9Ghz
RAM: 12GB Kingston Hyper-X Genesis @1.6Ghz
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