REVIEW - Curse of the Dead Gods Is A Resounding Success
Set phasers to exceptional.
By Jonathan Garrett
23/02/21
Reviewed on Xbox Series X (via backwards compatibility).
Review copy provided by Focus Home Interactive.
Curse of the Dead Gods has emerged from Early Access in a wonderful state, with razor sharp responsive controls, a moody visual aesthetic, and layers of complimentary mechanics. This is without question one of the best indie titles we’ve played in recent months, and fantastic value for money.
Trying to quantify something as subjective as “feel” can be extremely challenging, but trust us when we say that developer Passtech Games have nailed that oftentimes elusive secret sauce. After your first couple of runs, the rhythm of combat clicks into place; the parry system in particular is excellent, and rewards patience and exploration of its timing requirements.
Combining one and two handed attacks, dodge rolls, and manipulating the environment to your advantage lends the moment to moment skirmishes a sense of barely controlled chaos. Crucially, the visuals retain their clarity, and even when things start to escalate, you’ll never lose track of the action. Coupled with fluid, exceptionally polished animation, and a wide variety of enemy designs, there’s never a dull moment.
Then there’s the corruption mechanic, which adds randomised, undesirable debuffs as you progress through each temple, the abundance of gear to equip and modify, and the various progression mechanics that persist upon death. You are constantly making choices that can tangibly affect the outcome of a run; sacrificing corruption for a health boost, taking a risk and swapping out to a different weapon type, or choosing an alternative path that might lead to sweet rewards, or an untimely demise.
There are £40+ titles that lack the depth of customisation and polish offered here, and I have so many personal highlights. The first time I managed to combine rapid fire axe throwing, a shield bash, and a flaming bow to clear a room, whilst taking zero damage. Utilising flaming traps which caused cascade explosions to progress without me lifting a finger.
And perhaps most profoundly of all, dying near the end of a run and not being frustrated one bit. If anything, it spurred me on to try again, because I wasn’t fighting against wonky controls or unbalanced gameplay. Curse of the Dead Gods is a well rounded, confident romp that deserves your attention.
This gets all the thumbs up.
WORTH IT?
At the bottom of every game review, we ask the question: Worth it? And the answer is either “Yeah!” or “Nah”, followed by a comment that sums up how we feel. In order to provide more information, we also have “And” or “But”, which follows up our rating with further clarification, additional context for a game we love, or perhaps a redeeming quality for a game we didn’t like.
YEAH!
Curse of the Dead Gods features sublime combat and meaningful choices.
AND
Even though the difficulty is intense, it’s not irritating. You’ll keep coming back for more.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
