God's TRigger Review

Opposites Attract
By Lee Marcussen
Reviewed on Xbox One
Released on April 18th, 2019 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC
Developer: One More Level
Publisher: Techland Publishing 

You often hear opposites attract one and other but who would have thought an angel and a demon would link up to fight their way back to heaven. On the way to heaven, their quest is to kill the four horsemen of the apocalypse. In God’s Trigger, which is a sort of top down shoot-em-up, you will experience a variety of unique gameplay styles and settings.

God’s Trigger gameplay is unique in that you have two characters that are interchangeable at any point in the levels. The two characters are an angel named Harry and a demon named Judy, each who have unique abilities and attacks. Harry has a close range sword attack along with special abilities that include a short invincibility period and a quick rush that allows him to break through cracked walls. The other side of the coin is Judy, who has a ranged chained dagger attack. Her specials include a slight teleportation through walls and the ability to turn enemies against their own. The special abilities are earned by stringing together combo attacks fast and filling special attack energy bar. Their abilities can be upgraded and customized as you complete levels and upgrade stats. The gameplay has a forgiving approach to the missions where you die and restart at the last checkpoint. The gameplay reminds me a lot of Hotline Miami-esque. Enemies in the game vary from the chapters which range from bike gang members, cowboys, and demons themselves. The enemies also vary in attack style and carry several different weapons that you can equip and shoot or throw. Weapons range from guns, swords, to explosives. The story line is solid with changing levels and the characters voice overs really explaining what is going on and why they are trying to get back to heaven. Levels have great room to room combat and puzzles that involve several parts or using each character’s abilities to get by.

Control wise God’s Trigger is smooth and easy to play. The dual stick shooter style is nice and the layout of an aimer line that allows you to guide the ranged attacks precisely and switching between characters is flawless. Picking up and switching to weapons dropped by enemies is seamless, too. Little aspects of the gameplay that are nice and that are unique to this style of game is the ability to look ahead at the next part of the level. What I mean by this is you can move the camera view to the next area and figure out where the enemies are and sort of come up with an idea on how you want to attack where many other games that are similar have you just enter in the room blindly. There were times where I just ran though areas quickly and silently attacked enemies, and others where I just ran though blasting them. This can be very rewarding and feels kind of cool being able to run through an area and easily eliminate enemies. On the other hand, some areas are very easy and fun to run through while there are parts that are quite difficult and you’ll find yourself dying over and over again, but the respawn system is nice and allows you to jump back in and try another plan of attack. Towards the end of every chapter you fight a boss enemy which can be very challenging. One of the really cool aspects of the first chapter’s final boss was when he hit you your joy sticks went the opposite way for a period of time which was something I have never encountered before where an enemy attack literally took away health and made it hard for you to evade and attack.

There is a really cool arcade mode where you run through various levels that have a set amount on enemies where you run though trying to finish in a fast time trial and string together several combos. This mode is very similar to the overall campaign level design. All in all God’s Trigger was a great pick up and has a good solid replay value with its arcade mode and its co-op campaign.

*Note: A copy of the game was provided for the purposes of the review.

Final Score: 8/10

+Great concept
+Good campaign
+Level up adds skills
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