Genre: Action, Indie
Developer: Digital Crafter
Publisher: PQube Limited
Release: Mar 28, 2019
Price: $14.99
How a video game like this came to be is beyond me. Fight of Gods is, well, technically a fighting game with a bunch of gods from history punching each other in the face. The idea is a fun one to be sure, but Fight of Gods never quite gets past that interesting idea.
There are a ton of gods out there, so picking a roster shouldn’t be all that hard. That said, the roster here is pretty light, with most of the gods being Asian in influence. This makes sense as the game seems to be a Taiwanese production, but it still feels weak on fighters.
Thankfully the game does offer up a biography page so that you can get a little backstory on each god. Yes, you might actually learn something, like that Jesus is a close range fighter and his D.P.S. is Resurrection. You know, just like in the Bibble.
Look, Fight of Gods is clearly a joke fighting game, only not really? The big press buzz that Fight of Gods got came from including J.C. into the mix. But outside of El Chirsto the game takes itself as seriously as any other fighting game on the market. Like I said earlier, there are lots of gods to choose from that wouldn’t get you any slack, so picking Jebus Crackers was only done for easy promotion.
Gods like Odin, Athena, Mazu and Anubis won’t get anyone’s jimmies rustled, but adding in Jesus certainly would –and did. And I can’t even imagine what madness would have ensued if they added Muhammad into the game. Fingers crossed that he isn’t DLC later down the road. But even then there just aren’t some obvious choices in play here. You have Odin but not include Thor?
But no matter what controversy you garner, at the end of the day you are a fighting game. Fight of Gods is a fighting game, sure, but just don’t expect this one to show up on the EVO stage (or one of the smaller side stages they like to ignore) anytime soon. This isn’t because the game has Jesus punching Santa, but because it’s just not that great of a fighting game.
I love fighting games, but I’m I’ll be the first to say I’m not great at them. I simply don’t have the time to invest in becoming a top tier player and my competitive skills ended at about the time Street Fighter Alpha 3 hit arcades. So, going into fighting games I now look for fun factor over mechanics, at least on the surface as I can’t spend hours a day on it. Fun factor is what keeps me coming back. Mortal Kombat is a great example of this.
You can easily pick up that game and have a lot of fun playing through the story to experience that madness, take on friends for fun during party nights because of the brutality, take on fun challenges that mix up the game, or get super serious and learn the mechanics of each fighter and take the battle online against people. There is something there for everyone and I’ve enjoyed each.
Fight of Gods is simply fighting for the sake of fighting. There is a “story” if you can really call it that. The boss known as Boss (yes, the main baddie here is simply called Boss) pulls various gods from throughout time to battle each other. His goal is to beat the winner and become a god? See what I mean. You have this incredible idea and just pen a story written by a five-year-old who had too much sugar before bed.
Gameplay is as weak as the story. Fight of Gods is the sort of game that you can simply mash buttons and beat the game. Sure, it helps if you are used to Street Fighter with quarter-circles and such, but anyone can do well here regardless of what fighting series is their bread and butter. You have three core buttons at your disposal. One light, medium and heavy attack and a dedicated button for your throw command.
You also have another dedicated button to access your Divine Power that can essentially kill the game. This isn’t a super move as you have access to those too, but rather it’s some special ability that is related to each god. Anubis will earn poison claws, another a speed and maybe a strength buff. But Jesus is the special one as his Divine Power is almost game breaking. His Resurrection allows him to gain back a huge chunk of health making even fighting Boss (that name is so fucking stupid) not a big problem.
Where everything falls apart is in the controls. Each character has a few special moves, but everything is done in the same way. Each character plays essentially the same only with a different move-set. Each character is essentially just Ken and Ryu when playing, if that makes sense. Anubis plays like Jesus, Santa like Moses and so on. This is great on the surface to allow new players to enjoy each character, but it means that the combat isn’t very deep and everyone feels soulless.
When every character plays the same you don’t have a lot of options in terms of strategy and less of a way to connect with any. But since everyone’s moves are all the same you’d think that maybe the team focused on the graphics or pace of the game. Divekick is a stupid simple fighting game, using only one button, but it keeps the action fast, frenetic and fun. Fight of Gods doesn’t do this.
Hit-boxes are a mess and you never really know when you are connecting. The game is also jank. It’s hard to describe, but things just don’t feel right when in action. Characters can glitch and sometimes phase deep into each other before registering an attack or tag you when you aren’t close. It also feels a bit too floaty for my liking, as if you were fighting with balloons and not gods. I played using a Xbox One controller and while fine, I did feel like the input lag was a bit too long from time to time. Fight of Gods isn’t a terrible game, just an unpolished one that lacks content.
I haven’t talked about the graphics yet because, well, it looks like a mobile game. That would make sense as I’m almost positive this was initially built as a mobile fighter. It’s not the worst looking game ever, but I’d say it looks like a good PS2 game if you rub a little Vaseline over the screen at the best of times. Backgrounds are pretty active, which is nice, but it all just looks done on the cheap.
Fight of Gods knows what it is. They banked on the controversy and not on building an actual competitive, or good, fighting game. It’s a game to play for the memes you can get out of it and not much else as the novelty wears off pretty fast. And I just can’t get over the lack of deities at your disposal. The modes are super basic, but at least there is an online component here that wasn’t included in the Nintendo Switch version of the game.
If you can snag Fight of Gods while it’s on sale then you might get some fun out of it, but don’t expect to be investing time and building a meta as this one is pretty much dead on arrival.
Pros:
It’s dumb
Jesus punching Santa
No Muhammad?
Cons:
It’s dumb
Not enough gods
Broken gameplay
Generic combat/controls
Not very deep
“Fight of Gods is a novelty game when at its best and a bad joke at its worst.”
Final Score:
2/5
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