Let’s get the obvious out of the way before we begin this review: Fight of Gods is not a metaphor for fictional deities battling among themselves. This game takes the actual deities of some of the most popular religions of the world and pits them all in a playground where they beat the holy hell out of each other. It’s a farfetched concept that many people will find offensive, and it’s so out there that we had to review it.
For a long time, religious enthusiasts have argued over the superiority of the gods they choose to follow over others. Even the occasional anime like the classic Saint Seiya has led to such assumptions to clear the air on who would rule above the pantheon of gods known to man. For better or worse, we now have a way to scrap any shred of doubt about this question with one of the eeriest fighting games ever created by men.
Dumb Fun Made of Heresy
Digital Crafts is the one to bring this game to life, and the lineup of fighters is everything you could hope for from such a game, you can choose to fight as Jesus, Amaterasu, Moses, Zeus, Budah, Freyja, Santa Claus (for some reason) and many others. The game itself is poorly executed, the mechanics behind it make it feel like one of the thousand copycats released in the late ’90s that tried really hard to piggyback on the success of Street Fighter. If we had to offer a reference for old school players, it would be the cult classic Time Killers from developer Incredible Technologies.
With that said, this game can be genuinely entertaining for what it is rather than for what it lacks. It’s a dumb game with a unique concept that truly stands out from all the popular fighting games out there. The sound and voices of the character sound like something out of the 16-bit era. The designs of the characters are way out there. Most of them keep the basic traits that make them recognizable, such as Jesus who keeps nailed pieces of the cross stuck on his hands to use them as weapons, Moses beats the other deities with the tablets holding the Ten Commandments. It’s a heretic fest, and everyone is invited!
Gameplay, Features and More
Such a stellar gathering of characters probably should have an interesting motive to happen, but it really doesn’t. The basic premise of the game is something that resembles Marvel’s Contest of Champions: an unknown deity gets a hold of incredible power to gather the Gods of all cultures and make them fight to the last man standing. The one that remains can challenge him for the right to be the supreme deity. Nothing more, nothing else. It would be amazing is the last boss was Satan, but the final reveal is rather… disappointing.
As you expect from something so clunky, the controls of the game are not exactly spectacular. They feel like a rehash of one of the many Neo-Geo fighting clones, and there is no smoothness. They are rough and a bit complex. The good side of this is that once you have mastered one character, you probably will be able to handle all of them since all the Gods share the same basic move set with different animation cells. As expected from something that borrows so heavily from dated gameplay, you get a bar to keep track of your energy and one to accumulate power for a special attack.
Fight of Gods falls in the category of games that are so bad that they are good. You don’t need half a brain to understand it. Just plug it in and have fun!