Uh oh, Godfall sucks

 Allegedly...

The PS5 is finally among us, which means that the age of the launch titles has now officially begun, and these are always interesting times as we see the deluge of games that touch upon what gimmicks the next console can do and see if it's interesting enough for future developers to capitalize upon. (Basically the difference between PS' Six-axis and Xbox Kinect's voice commands.) And right away I can say that from what I've seen, Bluepoint's Demon Souls' remake looks absolutely gorgeous. That seems slightly weird to say about a game set in an intentionally dreary and depressing world, but the developers have done such a great job sprucing things up to the point where Demon Souls looks positively delectable. Those moments in the firey world pop so well it gives me shivers. Of course, this is coming from someone who just recently started a playthrough of the entire DS franchise (I'm reaching the DLC portion of 2) so I'm definitely a little biased. As for the other big launch title (Excluding Spiderman, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty... and Bugsnax, I guess.) Godfall appears to be everything I thought it would be.

Now to be clear with you all, I have not played Godfall. Nor, judging from what I'm seeing and hearing, will I ever, because it appears to be the sort of game built specifically to piss me off. (I'm sorry that I still haven't finished 'Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel', Gearbox, but I hardly find this as an appropriate recourse) As I recap, from the very first trailer I saw of Godfall I remarked on how unremarkable it looked. I don't know why, but literally everything about this game looked out-of-focus and without purpose to me. The shiny textures looked far too clean, thus losing that sense of realism, the visually impressive armours looked overdesigned, to the point where a visual that could have been cool just looks cluttered and impractical, and the dialogue from the trailer was just a single step better than faux gamer talk. (That doesn't make it good, just better than the absolute worst thing imaginable. Not a high bar.)

But that was the past me, the present me can look at the game as it stands and see... I was mostly right. The textures aren't as bad as I remembered, but everything else pretty much stands. Visually, it must be said, the game looks super pretty in that 'it's the next gen so lets bump everything up' sort of way, but graphical fidelity is only half the battle with me, I'm afraid, I need some solid artistic intent too, and I just don't feel it's there. It's strange to say, because all the essential ingredients are there, from the colourful shrubbery to the large glittering courtyards to the epic sprawling dungeons, but all of it just feels so heartless and barren, and worst of all lacking in identity. If you were to take a screenshot of this game and take out the enemies and the player character it would be impossible to tell what game it was, (aside from through the cool next gen resolution) and even the genre would be a little murky. It would look sort of sci-fi fantasy maybe? (Actually, I guess that does sort of describe the game, doesn't it?)

In fact, this game sort of reminds me off titles like 'Killzone: Shadow Fall' or 'Ryse: Son of Rome'; they're these big polished up extravaganzas of visuals and effects which eclipse what the last generation was capable of in a way which makes the audience "ooh" and "ahh", but the substance isn't there to make the game itself stand out. Not to say that either of those games are terrible (they certainly aren't good) but I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that they stood out as particularly memorable games. Killzone had some gameplay issues and story failing whilst Ryse suffered from- well, mostly the same except the gameplay issues were arguably slightly worse and the story was at least enjoyably corny. So does Godfall improve upon either of those game's track records? Apparently not, if the reviewing public is to be believed.

Now before I go any further it's important that I clear up one thing, this game is a live service. (I honestly don't know why I never made a 'live service' tag given the frequency at which I mention them. It feels a bit 'too little, too late' now.) Now if you're a regular game consumer or just spend your time paying way too much attention to every game which comes out because you have literally nothing better to do, then you'll know two things about this game immediately from that fact alone. Firstly you'll know that there's an inherent lack of content at launch which the developers are already promising to start supplementing as time goes on, and secondly that the gameplay has a good chance of being really rudimentary to the point where it's starting to feel like people forgot that Destiny did so well because it's gunplay was literally impeccable. (Why does it feel like these Live Service games are getting worse with practice?) Oh, and both those points you assumed are true by the way, good job, 5 points to Ravenclaw.

This title is built around a hack-n-slash model which has a distinct and troubling lack of ranged combat. (Don't get me wrong, I usually prefer to be up close and personal in games like these but even I understand the importance of combat variety) As for the hacking and slashing, it's perfectly serviceable for a mid-range title from about 5 years back, but when this is a game advertised alongside Demon Souls, you can't stop me from laughing my butt off. Once again the ingredients are all undeniably there, there's a heavy attack, a light attack and some combo potential, but it all just doesn't come together in any manner you'd be able to get behind. I've been looking around and most all the criticism is the same, combat feels repetitive, enemy variety is lacking and... I'm sorry why do all these Live Service games end up all with the same issues as each other? How is that even possible? Maybe life is just a sick play written by George Lucas and his obsession with 'rhyming'. (I hear it's like poetry)

As for the heart of the game, maybe it's the Dark Souls in me speaking but I like to think we see that best reflected in story. I think that the right story has the potential to unite all the fragments of lore into a sweeping great chain through context given the right conditions, maybe not working as a solve all for every problem, but at least providing the glue that holds it all together. And yes, I know that not every story can be this intricately crafted thematic suite which covers the breadth and morality of the tale whilst simultaneously also touching on the gameplay; those are standards a little too high. But even admitting that, gosh does this goes storyline bore me, I mean seriously. I can barely read a synopsis without falling asleep, let alone watching it myself. It's just about a man who wants to 'become a god' with you (their sibling, I think) working to stop them, it's so barren it really feels as though literally no-one cared enough to devote their creative soul to the project. Apart from the concept artists, I think they really tried, they were just a little lacking in direction.

So is it fair to say Godfall sucks? Well somehow it's turned into one of those games that folk out there have really latched onto, so I suppose not. I've even seen reviews that have gifted it in the mid-range tier whilst admitting that the only thing which makes it so is the graphical fidelity, which doesn't quite compute to this guy over here. We are talking about a game here, right? Shouldn't the gameplay, be a priority? (Oh wait, is this secret game reviewer speak! Like how '7/10' means "This game sucks but we're too scared of being denied our access rights to rate this any lower"? Big if true.) I dunno, but if there's one thing I'm taking from this it's that my gut is better at reading things then I initially thought, so I'm just gonna go ahead and do some back patting, don't mind me.