God of Rock Review

God of Rock is a competitive rhythm fighting game developed and published by Modus Games, where the God of Rock has gathered the universe’s greatest musicians into a tournament, and the grand prize is whatever they desire most. Now, I’ve only seen a few games attempt to combine fighting and rhythm games (including a shovelware Wii game Battle of the Bands), and with the success of Hi-Fi Rush, I was looking forward to playing this.

First off, let’s talk about the music. It is all amazing, featuring over 40 songs over several genres and artists. There is a focus on rock, but you’ll find something you enjoy. Personal favourites include “The Borderline” by Whitetail (you might recognise them from Them’s Fightin’ Herds), “B.S.C.” and “Undertow” by Fotts, and “Final Flames” by Marina Ryan. Go listen to the soundtrack yourself if you want, it’s on YouTube.

The graphics are nice, which is good, but when you’re mostly focusing on the bottom half of the screen, you barely notice it. It’s a little unfortunate, but there was no avoiding such a thing with a concept like this. Still, I like the character intros before matches because it actually has dialogue for every match up. It's a nice touch that I didn't expect.

Anyways, onto a typical match of God of Rock. Both players will be playing through a song sort of like Guitar Hero that gets progressively harder as it goes on, until it hits overtime and starts looping the same sections. No one wins until someone’s HP hits zero. The controls are responsive, as I didn’t feel like I was dropping notes, and whenever I screwed up, it was my fault. My only issue is the orientation of the note highway. It’s horizontal instead of vertical, and it messed me up more than a few times. Still, it’s playable but not the best way to display notes.

Make no mistake, though, it is a fighting game with all the technical insanity that entails. Hitting notes will build up your special meter, allowing you to perform special attacks. These attacks do have a cooldown so you can’t spam them. All 12 characters have their own special moves, abilities, and quirks. For example, Hilde's moves give her Heal Stacks that she can cash in to refill her HP. Meanwhile, Edith is all about messing with your opponent by nullifying their Perfects and Flawless hits or inverting their controls. Additionally, stages all have a different selection of songs to play, with some leaning towards Easy to Very Hard. What character you choose and what stage you play on is very important.

Executing special attacks only requires moving around your stick before hitting the trigger. It’s easy once you get your movements down, although it never gets too easy, as the track gets harder, and you need to keep an eye on your opponent's moves as well. It is lenient with your inputs (rotating the stick is considered a valid move by the devs), but it takes a lot of practice to uses the moves you want instead of relying on luck. There are tutorials and a Practice Mode that will allow you to help you nail songs and perform moves, so it's a good investment of time to go there before doing anything. I highly recommend starting with King since his inputs are very easy to do while playing. Quarter and half circles are much easier to do while playing than inputting the Konami Code.

Speaking of modes, the main modes are the standard Arcade mode (where you beat every character then fight a final boss) and Multiplayer, which can be played locally or online with quickplay and ranked. God of Rock also has crossplay, so don't worry if your friends have their copy on a different console. There is also a mode where you can create your own tracks using the available music in the game. It’s a cool feature, but I would’ve liked it if I could use my own music, create my own, or be able to download someone else’s. It feels like a missed opportunity more than a fun little thing to play around with.

Now, onto technical performance… there aren’t any major problems. I did notice one bout of texture pop-in and King’s audio sounds worse than other characters, but other than that there were no glitches, no gameplay affecting bugs, nothing to really write about. Unfortunately, since I was playing before release, I couldn’t test out multiplayer so I don’t know how good the servers are so approach with caution until more info is available.

Overall, God of Rock is a great combination of rhythm game talent and fighting game skill. The music is amazing, the gameplay is responsive and fast-paced, and it will take some time to really master this game.

God of Rock is out now and is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.