The anticipation surrounding Godfire: Rise of Prometheus, the new mobile game from Vivid Games, was palpable. The launch trailer had us at GameNGuide intrigued, anxious, salivating. "At last," we thought, "a worthy action game from the App store!" The combat looks exquisite, the storyline involves neo-futuristic gods and men waging battle, which is always a winning combination, the graphics push the limits of a phone or tablet. Godfire is, on the surface, exactly the type of game the mobile market has been waiting for: impressive, "hardcore", simple.
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Then you play it and the whole thing crumbles down around you like a clumsily built house of cards. I should have known not to trust anything with 'Rise' in its title.
The game centers around Prometheus, a ruggedly handsome, chiseled, shirtless Titan who has stolen the Godfire Spark from the halls of the Gods in order to give humanity a touch of the divine. The beginning of the game has Prometheus tussling with Zeus as they fall from the sky in a chariot. Zeus himself is something out of a weird historical David Lynch/Stanley Kubrick film, a metal mask hides his face and he looks like the progenitor race of all steampunk cosplay known to mankind. It is up to Prometheus to reclaim the spark and allow humanity the chance to telecommute from home in their pajamas, truly the mark of all divine beings.
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Godfire is a perfectly average game trapped in the body of something far more impressive.Visually, the game has no mobile equal, and I believe this game could be used to showcase the graphical capabilities of the iPhone and iPad. It overwhelms you with its technical prowess. Surely, this cannot be a game on your phone! You could easily find its equivalent on the PS3 or Xbox 360. The game will push your phone to the limit and that is not necessarily a good thing, as after a short period of time your phone will heat up and it will start to be very uncomfortable for you to hold. I have an iPhone 5S in a thin protective shell and my palms were sweating after a little over five minutes of playtime during multiple sessions. The heat was slightly diminished when I removed the shell, but still very much present, which diluted my enjoyment even further.
The sound FX are well rendered. The voice acting is appropriate for something that is 'the Greek pantheon by way of David Brin", but would it kill them to put in some subtitles? I don't know about you, but I do not always want to play with my headphones in and sometimes cannot play with the sound on because I'm in public. Look, I know this isn't Shakespeare, but can we respect the written word just a touch more?
At first glance, the combat system in Godfire appears quite complex. When combat begins, four buttons appear, a light attack, a heavy/wrath attack on the right and a block and an evade button on the left. You can string together combos of attacks to more effectively flow from one enemy to the other, which even I will admit, is appealing when done properly. Prometheus wields two swords, so the visual flair for carnage is pretty up there. As you level up, you'll unlock more and more weapon combos but by a certain point, you don't even realize it anymore. You're just mashing buttons because trying to actually string together a sequence of attacks is pointless. The game will unleash whatever combo it thinks you're attempting because let's face it, your thumbs are too fat. During my many gameplay sessions, I think I used the block button only about a dozen times, and that was just to make sure it worked. There are finisher combos in the game which add a nice, Mortal Kombat-esque gruesomeness to the fights which give out additional health or wrath, the special energy bar that allows Prometheus to unleash big hits that you are almost certain to never use.
But it is the evade feature that is most maddening. The game separates itself into two parts: exploration and combat. When in exploration mode, you can control Prometheus with your left thumb by way of a standard controller button, sliding your paw across the screen and moving Prometheus or even touching a point on the screen and having him head there.When in combat, however, the game switches you into evade mode, and I hope you like rolling, because that's all you are going to do. It is literally the only way to move around when fighting. The sensitivity on the evade button is questionable at best, and usually tosses you in a "general sense of whatever direction you actually want", which again is fine when there are enemies everywhere. Bosses, however, give you only a small window to attack them and it is frustrating to get in close enough when all you can do is tumble and roll in odd directions.
Eventually, you just start to feel bad for Prometheus' back. That has to hurt.
The enemy AI is simplistic and predictable. There is little variation in the packs of bad guys who stand in your way. The boss battles all follow a similar pattern: evade while the boss does something, wait, wait, block the wave attack, THE BOSS IS GETTING TIRED, attack, attack, attack. Repeat. Even the gods get tired in this game. Maybe they should stop wearing such heavy armor!
There are plenty of upgrades, such as weapons, armors or perks, to be found or bought. The game can be played through without purchasing any additional items, thankfully. The game isn't too long and can be completed in only a few hours, if that, and after a playthrough, you unlock the survival mode that pits you against waves and waves of enemies. You can also run through the game again on the Hard or Immortal difficulty settings. although I struggled to complete the first time through. Actioners like this are meant to evolve; hell, I couldn't put any of the God of War games down, yet here, I never desperately needed to know what happens next.
Godfire, like its protagonist, wants things to be different, it wants to be a part of a world where mobile games are just as good as the consoles. Unfortunately, it stumbles greatly and I fear that for its hubris, Godfire will be chained to the mountain and have its liver eaten out every day, for all eternity. Godfire: Rise of Prometheus just cannot rise above the technical limitations of its chosen platform.
But I cannot wait for the day it, or something like it, does.
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Godfire: Rise of Prometheus was reviewed from a code provided by the publisher. It is available now for $6.99 on the iOS App Store- an Android version is coming later this year.
