God Of Rock Review

On this occasion we had early access to a new music-based gameplay proposal that is ambitious when it comes to exploiting new niches within the genre.

Music games are nothing new. From educational content for children, to the cultural explosion that Guitar Hero and Rock Band were in the past.

There have always been proposals for gameplay based on music, rhythm and harmonies since the conception of video games.

They have all been, in one way or another, an alternate evolution of the fluttering time that caused Dance Revolution in the 90’s. That game that was in literally every arcade.

God Of Rock Takes Its Turn At Trying To Reinvent Music Gameplay

In recent years, we have seen different music and rhythm video game formats that completely diverge when it comes to input methods.

Dance Revolution was a dance game with foot buttons…

Guitar Hero had its controller in the shape of an electric guitar and another in the shape of a battery…

Then we saw how “Osu!” became popular among shooting game enthusiasts. Optimized for mouse and keyboard.

Beat Saber; that brings the juiciest fantasies of Star Wars fans to a reactive music format game.

And to put the cherry on the cake… Metal Hellsinger!

God Of Rock takes another angle on the matter which, on paper, sounds like an innovative, fresh and wonderful idea.

However, execution is another topic to talk about…

Musical game + Fighting game

God Of Rock is basically a simple story without many twists that we could easily see in a “Tenacious D” movie.

There is a God of Rock as a final boss figure, with whom we must “jam” or “fight” as a great goal.

A game with its difficulties very well established but, nevertheless, we anticipate that it will magnetize with a more casual audience. At least until the “online” mode of Player vs. Player proves otherwise.

In God Of Rock we go to the rhythm and harmony of original compositions and our musical instrument is a conventional console control; either Xbox or Play Station.

Which is somewhat counterintuitive to me when it comes to following 4 input lines with a thumb; since our left thumb must be prepared to execute special movements in the style of Mortal Kombat.

As we keep pace with what’s happening musically, we have two characters in the background fighting each other like classic fighting games; albeit in a somewhat clumsy and monotonous way.

The first flaw is in the fact that the player must be focused on the musical portion to a degree that prevents him from enjoying what is happening in the background; that which is projected as half the appeal of the game.

A wonderful idea with an extremely rocky execution

On paper, the mix of a fighting game that works around the rhythm of original compositions sounds extremely appealing.

However, God Of Rock does make a couple of fatal mistakes that can be remedied through updates, or perhaps rethinking the game modes in the future.

Already mentioned the issue of the factors that take over the concentration of the player; there is a serious issue with the tempo of the sound effects coming from the fight in the background.

Much of the animation and latency of sounds outside of the music per se falls completely out of time and this creates two problems.

One is to compromise the fluidity of the gameplay of a mind that little by little will start to operate in a rhythmic way.

The other is the fact that the musical experience suffers badly because of it.

Musicalization and conceptual design

On the other hand, the original music of the game is extremely good.

Music that obviously starts from the harmonic and rhythmic foundations of rock and heavy metal. Which, personally, is always welcome.

Upon opening the game, we are greeted by a centric electric guitar instrumental with what we presume to be a prominent “Joe Satriani” influence.

100% of the time we spend playing, will be time in which our head will be moving to the cadences of extremely exciting, well produced, and well written songs.

Besides; we found the cartoonish conceptual desEsports Extrasthat takes influences from various types of characters pleasant and fresh…

From characters that we would see in an anime, to characters that we would see in shows of the late “Cartoon Network” or in recent futuristic video games.

In the same way, the photographic direction of the game is excellent and achieves an on-point display of the visual aspects of the game.

Finishing…

I understand that God Of Rock wants to be the next sub evolution of rhythmic gameplay in a successful way that lends itself to player enjoyment.

However, the theme of the gameplay has a lot of room for improvements, and we would dare to say that even being reworked.

We can’t figure out what prevented the obvious and kept God Of Rock from being a rhythm and cadence focused fighting game; in the same way that “Metal Hellsinger” focused a shooting game on its music.

Without wishing to be more comparitive or pejorative than fair, the way in which God Of Rock seeks to focus players’ attention in two relatively distant quadrants makes for a rocky overall execution.

That said… We have a very well conceptualized game with potential on our hands; full of audiovisual content with substance and quality.

This review was made thanks to the copy provided by Modus Games.