Wave after wave of identical enemy rushes me, sealing their fate as I mash the same, two virtual attack buttons with minimal attention. A quick-time event marks the start of a boss fight. You’d think it would add some variety, …
Wave after wave of identical enemy rushes me, sealing their fate as I mash the same, two virtual attack buttons with minimal attention. A quick-time event marks the start of a boss fight. You’d think it would add some variety, but besides hitting hard enough that I actually need to use the dodge mechanic, it’s just more tap-slapping tapioca – messy, tasteless mush.
This is Godfire: Rise of Prometheus! This! Is! Boredom!
It starts vaguely promising. The voice acting, bandaged over a reasonably impressive opening cutscene, is pretty good. It shotguns some pseudo-Greek mythos exposition, while you see this is indeed another heavily Infinity Blade-inspired Unreal Engine game on iOS. That is, as far as the plot, aesthetic, and story are concerned.
It definitely uses some of the same visual tricks as Infinity Blade. Every speaking character sans our WWE lookalike protagonist, C.M. Punkules, is a mecha-god, conveniently masked to negate facial animation.
Helios, who kicks things off as the main antagonist, at least brings that aforementioned interesting voice work. “Interesting” unfortunately can’t be used to describe Punkules’ occasional goddess companion. By companion, I mean “adolescent Heavy Metal magazine male fantasy pinup.” Looking for another female video game character wearing a thong, comical breast physics, and basically-nothing-else? Godfire: Rise of Prometheus is the 9,567th game you’ve been waiting for!
On the topic of bottom-rung design, let’s talk about the gameplay. I mentioned Infinity Blade before, but truthfully that only extends to the aped visuals. Combat sequences do lock in, just like Chair’s games, and you will find block and dodge buttons. That’s where the similarities end, and not to Godfire‘s benefit.
There is no swipe-to-attack/parry as in Infinity Blade (and some of its better clones). Instead, everyone’s least-favorite mobile game conceit is back – virtual buttons!
![94d97790ec5dec24b43fd1d54a8fbf788e2f71dc[1]](https://www.gamezebo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/94d97790ec5dec24b43fd1d54a8fbf788e2f71dc1-1.jpg "94d97790ec5dec24b43fd1d54a8fbf788e2f71dc[1]")
Godfire features a wealth of tactical options in this regard: two of them. There’s the mashable, overpowered heavy attack, and the mashable, totally useless light attack. You can of course dodge or block enemies, but I found the wholly uninteresting option of repeatedly initiating Punkules’ wild swings more effective, and far less time-consuming.
That gave me more time to “explore” the world of Godfire: Rise of Prometheus. When not combating the same two or three enemy types, you can walk around with the use of an unwieldy analog stick that doesn’t seem to actually match the direction your protagonist moves. Sometimes it’s thanks to the invisible walls littering every level. Sometimes it’s for no obvious reason at all. Whatever the cause, more than once I had to “pull” my thumbstick sideways to move forward, and vice versa.
Even if Godfire transitioned to a controller, as it obviously craves to, you’d still be left hammering on a single button over, and over again. That’s not a game; it’s a delivery method for occasional microtransactions to resurrect against bosses that chop off half your health bar in a single swing. That is, when said level boss doesn’t bug out and freeze in place. That happens sometimes.
![91bfad52e0265d989e6350f31700456244004d94[1]](https://www.gamezebo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/91bfad52e0265d989e6350f31700456244004d941-1.jpg "91bfad52e0265d989e6350f31700456244004d94[1]")
Better control wouldn’t alleviate the tedium of walking, either. Levels are tiny, and crushingly linear. Having full control of your character between fights seems like something you’d want, but when the only way to go is forward to the next fight, you see the developers only added a tedious middleman where before there was none. At best, you can duck to the side to open a chest or two, and even those are usually telegraphed by an early pickup that simply tells you where they are.
One stage is literally a single room – an elevator that rises, drops in a handful of opponents, and repeats. Excluding another typical dodge-dodge-attack boss fight, this is the entire chapter.
Seven hundred words is an awful lot to spend describing what I already did in three. Godfire is boring. It’s not notably bad (except when it is), and doesn’t even fail creatively.
It’s the lowest common denominator – a game that pulls from everywhere (Infinity Blade, God of War, objectionable design of women, etc.), and waters them down without adding anything of note. I’m going to say don’t buy it.
