Gods Will Be Watching Reviews
In Gods Will Be Watching, however, its rare successes are overshadowed by an abundance of design decisions that are not only frustrating to play, but actively undermine any cohesion the story attempts to salvage.
Gods Will Be Watching is an interesting experiment -- a game that puts a fresh new spin on PnC conventions and delivers are pretty unique experience. But its lack of narrative impact, its ultimately empty moral decisions, dependence on trial and error, and tendencies towards deliberate frustration rather than challenging fun make it something of a flawed curiosity piece rather than anything else.
Gods Will Be Watching strives to be meaningful. The story ruminates on how hard it is to find purpose in a world where things are often outside of our control. Many may never get a chance to appreciate that message, since the game ruins its own potential. At no point does Gods Will Be Watching make the struggle worth the effort.
Gods Will Be Watching is a divisive game. The bleak story and equally dark scenarios are interesting, even if they seem to go one for far too long. The sense of adventure is overwhelmed by the blatantly apparent resource mechanics and lack of character development for everyone, except for Jack and Burden. The random nature of the game mixed in with the lack of checkpoints and high probability of failure due to forces outside of your control would be more frustrating if it weren't for the game's (newly added) multiple difficulty levels. The lack of control over events can lead many to give up on the title far too quickly. The premise is solid, but the game relies too much on chance and trial and error, so it's hard to recommend this title to anyone but masochists and those who are hell-bent on experiencing the story — no matter what.
Gods Will Be Watching shows a lot of thematic and gameplay dynamical promise, but the whole package let down by its lack of polish and consequence.
We really wanted to like Gods Will Be Watching. The concept is brilliant, the scenarios are tense and the story is thought-provoking. But the combination of the random trial-and-error gameplay and the horrible bugs made us want to slit our wrists long before the conclusion.
It definitely has a bold sense of tension and impressive style, but there's a lack of consistency to it that makes things more frustrating than difficult.
If Deconstructeam made success and failure feel less arbitrary they would have had a classic game on their hands, instead the game starts to wear on you at the halfway point. I'd still recommend playing this game because it does have a lot of interesting little quirks and innovations to the genre, but you'll have to slog through some poor design choices to get to them.
Gods Will Be Watching is an interesting and novel little game, but one that's quite horribly flawed in a number of ways.
Gods Will Be Watching takes some tired features like pixel art and adventure-style dialogue options, and makes them feel fresh. Choices have consequence, but the mortality of those around you can't be dwelled upon as your mission is far more important. You'll question how inhumane you have to be and then, without batting an eyelid, become the efficient lunatic you never thought you would be. While the decisions feel weighty, the story is essentially disjointed and becomes confusing. Where Gods Will Be Watching is really testing, though, is in its almost impenetrable difficulty. There's a fine line between challenge and frustration, and sadly, with all of its positives, Gods Will Be Watching will leave you questioning whether its really worth it.
Gods Will Be Watching is certainly a unique experience, but that doesn't make it an interesting one. It relies too much on random chance and does nothing to compensate for the frustration that will cause. Unless you enjoy punishment you might want to avoid.
Thought it shares some similarities with Telltale's The Walking Dead, Deconstructeam's Gods Will Be Watching isn't the same kind of game. Instead of a heavy narrative, the game is more of a resource management sim, with the resource being the other characters. When taken like that, it's a solid puzzle game with some rough, repetitive edges.
Emotional storytelling and challenging gameplay can't wholly save Gods Will Be Watching from some of its bad design choices.
Gods Will Be Watching is a very good example of a brilliant idea ruined by faulty implementation. It starts off with a fascinating idea that get slowly but steadily ruined by the tedious micromanagement it requires.
Gods Will Be Watching is one of those rare games that deserves a wholehearted recommendation even though it is definitely not for everyone. It's punishing, occasionally unfair, and relentlessly philosophical, but it's also supremely rewarding and absolutely gripping from start to finish, all for the same reasons. If nothing else, it's a fantastic exercise in how to translate traditionally unplayable scenes into systems of gameplay - and not just token button prompts, but complex, engaging gameplay.
Nearly the whole of Gods Will Be Watching relies on your ability to act within situations, but when these situations feel so limited it's annoying to not be able to express yourself freely. This makes the game immediately frustrating as its premise, intention and art set the experience up for something incredible. But the badly designed and unnecessarily hard game design stop your actions from really 'meaning' something. Gods Will Be Watching is not necessarily frustrating in its difficult, it's that it really didn't need to be.
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Gods Will Be Watching is a sci-fi thriller that's all about making the right decisions. The thing is, there are no right decisions... and that's the good news.
Gods Will Be Watching isn't fun. It's draining, sometimes harrowing and nearly always frustrating. Yet it's worth it. It's the emotional catharsis that makes this game moreish, the cultural counterpoint to the mindless mayhem of GTA that makes it important.
In Gods Will Be Watching, I feel bad not because of what I've done in the game, but because I feel like I'm the one at somebody else's mercy, and I have no idea what that person wants. This may well be deliberate, and if so this failure to communicate its intentions either makes Gods Will Be Watching a work of unusually cruel genius, or a work of astonishing clumsiness. Maybe even both at the same time. Either way, it's impossible to recommend to anyone but the most masochistic players.