Hit me with your best note.

The combining of genres is nothing new. With that in mind I am not sure I have ever played a game that combined fighting and rhythm games. Modus Games is looking to remedy that with their latest release God of Rock. The idea is a unique one and I was excited to dive in and see if the mashup could actually work. What we end up with is some truly cool ideas and some excellent music hampered by some confusing button layouts and questionable design. Still I can’t say I have ever played anything quite like God of Rock.

The concept is exactly what you would expect. The God of Rock has summoned the universe’s greatest musicians to a tournament. The prize is basically anything their heart desires, so Twisted Metal rules. The soundtrack contains over 40 original tracks that mostly focus on rock music, but there is a little bit of everything in here. I was actually impressed by most of the music as it is not only good, it fits the mood of the game well. There are not any tunes here I will be humming in the future, but it gets the job done.

MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $24.99

The gameplay is more fighting game than I was expecting. There is a note highway below each character with buttons that correspond to each of the face buttons on the controller. These move horizontally left-to-right and as the battle grows more intense there are combos of buttons as well as holds. This threw me off multiple times. Having to contort my hands to hit two buttons not next to each other made my brain hurt. This is a game that I recommend an alternate controller, or possibly holding the controller a different way.

The issue is that the game actually has directional inputs as well. So to perform special moves players can input a command to unleash a more powerful attack. This is cool and the move onscreen is fun to watch, but I found myself fumbling the controls more often than not. The learning curve here is very high, even on easier difficulties I was having trouble getting through the core modes. The skill ceiling is very high considering the game actually scales as the battle progresses. Granted I was never able to hit that ceiling, but that is a neat feature for those that want to invest the time to get really good.

Sadly focusing on the highway leads to me not really getting to enjoy watching the action take place at the top. This is made even more disappointing as the characters and design are actually really good. I love the characters and I kind of want this just as a normal fighting game now. The fact that I never get to see these flashy moves and combos makes their design even more disappointing as I rarely get to see it.

There are only a couple modes in the game sadly. The arcade mode is your standard fare of running through a ladder finished up with a final boss. There is also multiplayer locally and online. It is nice that this game has crossplay so no worries about community for a while as it spans multiple platforms. The online worked well enough and I rarely had issues with lag. The nice thing about the game is that it understands the button presses can be tough so it is very forgiving at least with the timing, especially with the commands.

There is also a training mode and a track editor which allows players to create customized versions of songs with the included tracklist. It would have been great to add your own music, but sadly I understand why that is not here. They do play to add new tracks down the line, which would increase the replayability quite a bit. I expect they will be as high quality as the ones already included.

God of Rock is an interesting experiment that works sometimes. I do wish I could focus more on the action at the top. I also hate that I have to retrain my brain with the button combos and get frustrated when I miss notes as it usually leads to me failing and having a hard time getting back into rhythm. Still the idea is sound, the characters are excellent, and I really had fun with this one. A little more polish and this could easily become a whole new genre.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.