Oh My Godheads - PC Review

A while ago I had the distinct pleasure of being able to write a preview for Oh My Godheads, and now I have the chance to write a full review. For those who haven’t read through the preview, or have forgotten, OMGodheads is a very interesting mash-up of capture the flag and dodgeball, sporting “the world’s first capture the head action…for 1-4 players”.

OMGodheads has two basic styles of play with two types each, and an extra “challenges” type section. The first gameplay type is the advertised gameplay, where you have a giant deity head that you need to pick up and just generally deal with. Capture the head is basically capture the flag, but with a deity head. You pick up the head, and have to get it into your colour coded zone in order to score a point, all while avoiding other players attacking you, or whatever special ability the head is throwing at you.

King of the head is similar, except it’s a “hold the head for the longest time” to win. Headhunters and last man standing are all about the “PvP style” combat, where you and your friends beat each other up for points, or fight AI controlled enemies for superiority. The last mode available is Trials, which are one off challenges that will get you used to some of the aspects of the game, as well as giving you a sort of improvised tutorial. The challenges can be really easy or really hard, but they’re all a lot of fun.

The game can be easily played with up to four humans, and can be assigned as either controllers or two different sets on the keyboard. I am happy to say that both control schemes work great. There are a bunch of different heads to spice up gameplay, such as one that freezes people in an area around it, or one that sends out homing crows to attack players nearby. There are a bunch of different items you can throw at opponents as well, including exploding pies, as well as items that mimic some of the godheads’ abilities.

With a sizable selection of both heads and playable stages to choose from, there’s definitely a lot of fun to be had. The AI is adjustable, and for the most part is extremely competent in doing whatever difficulty they happen to be set to, and very rarely will do something exceptionally stupid. There’s a lot of adjustability, and the ease of simply jumping in to a game, with some great couch co-op, is definitely an added plus. With all sorts of deflectable exploding pies and various deities, there’s also a lot of variety, even if you play on the same stage or with the same head, the combinations can get quite entertaining.

There’s definitely a lot to like about Oh My Godheads, but little needs to be said. It’s an awesome party game that’ll suck you right in, it’s easy to get used to and easier to play. While simple to learn, there can be a lot of strategy involved, especially since different stages have different aspects to them, such as moving goals or platforms that sink into lava.

A few things I noticed changed from the preview that I was particularly happy to see was that some of the more arbitrarily difficult trials were balanced, and unlockable stages and godheads tell you the unlock conditions when selecting them on the field/head select screen. Each round can last as little as a minute or two, or upwards of ten, given the right (or wrong) combination of heads and fields. Oh My Godheads is a great party game, or a good game to just sit down to for a few minutes at a time. Like me, you’ll probably find yourself playing for a lot longer than you realize.

There isn’t really a whole lot to say about Oh My Godheads, it’s simple and easy to get into, but that’s one of the major draws. It’s fun, addicting, and has a solid soundtrack. If nothing else, one thing is for certain: this isn’t a game where you can just quit while you’re ahead.

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Titutitech
Publisher(s):
Square Enix
Genre(s):
Action
Versus
Mode(s):
Single Player
Local Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
Microsoft Xbox One

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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Oh My Godheads - XB1 Review

With Richard having enjoyed and previewed Oh My Godheads back in April I’ve been looking forward to getting my own hands on it. Now having had that chance, with Richard’s review of the PC version incoming, I took the Xbox version for a spin with my brother Marc and my friend Louis for some rather interesting versus matches.

Oh My Godheads takes the idea of player versus player and kicks it up a notch. With up to four players able to jump into various arenas with different modes there’s no shortage of bloodshed as you aim to claim victory for yourself or your team. And I do mean bloodshed as the cute graphics can get rather graphic as you cut an opponent to pieces!

So what makes OMG (heh I just got it…) different from the rest is that modes like Capture the Flag or Hold onto the “insert object here” modes? They are different in that instead of having inanimate objects you instead have a variety of angry deity heads of various powers. These various heads will freeze you solid, explode upon you or slow down time generally making your life a living hell as long as you’re trying to score a point.

While the modes themselves are familiar how they play out are what is interesting. The various stages available for competitive versus change up how even something like Capture the Head is played. On one icy rivered stage for example your goal for bringing the head lies behind the enemy spawn point, not your own. In another you have to not only get to the goal but also make sure that you’ve triggered the switch in order to make the goal your color. The catch to this? It has spiky statues which will impale you if you stay there even a second too long.

If the angry heads of the gods get to be a bit too much there’s always pure versus modes in order to see who comes out on top. These will really give you a great feel for how to control your character especially if you’re going to act as the defense while someone else carries the head to the goal. There are no particular roles but having a strategy with your partner is quite recommended as long as it’s not a CPU. When they are with you I found them to be lacking. When against you however? Why couldn’t I have that one as a partner!

The only downside to OMG that I think of is that you really needs others to play with you. It is definitely a party game that needs real people in order to show them who’s boss as playing against CPUs just isn’t the same. Outside of that the gameplay is solid and fun to play for good amounts of time regardless of the mode.

Oh My Godheads is a great addition to the living room and a great excuse to have a few friends over for couch multiplayer mayhem. If you’ve been looking for something in order to play and see who really is better than one another, this is a great place to do it!

Game Information

Platform:
Microsoft Xbox One
Developer(s):
Titutitech
Publisher(s):
Square Enix
Genre(s):
Action
Versus
Mode(s):
Single Player
Local Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Week in Review - April 24th to 28th

Welcome back to the weekend and this Week's in Review!

Monday Jed shared his time with The Silver Case and gave it a shiny score. Check out why!

"The Silver Case, more than any virtual art piece I've experienced this year, is a product of its time. It is a reflection and speculation on the technological potential and cultural paranoia that partially defines the digital revolution and, more specifically, global internet culture from the late 90's to the present day."

- Jedediah

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On Tuesday I shared my even more unforgiving experience with The Banner Saga 2 and I loved it more than the first. Now? Just have to wait for the third.

"One thing that I noticed off the bat is the graphical quality of the second entry is higher than the first. The same incredible art style is back but it looks more crisp and the accompanying text is both larger, an issue that I had with the first, and much more legible. Already things were looking up and it only got better from there."

- Pierre-Yves

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Wednesday Richard ventured back to the world of Busty Ninja's with Senran Kagura: Estival Versus. The quote below sums it up!

"Welcome to the world of Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, a tropical land of ninjas, boobs, butts, bad puns, and repressed emotional trauma!" *Editor Note: Pretty much sums up my time with the series to a varying degree of depth to the storylines.*

- Richard

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Only four months into the year and I've already found another of my Games of the Year. Cosmic Star Heroine is that good.

"Technological metropolises, backwards shady deserts, ghost infested ore mines and high class casinos where you meet a robot Freddy Mercury that joins your party. They have a robot Freddy Mercury!"

- Pierre-Yves

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Finally yesterday saw another entry into the Square Enix Collective with a Preview of the currently in Early Access Oh My Godheads. Not to be confused with Oh! My Goddess. I need to pick this one up.

"I'm really looking forward to seeing where this game ends up, and I'm sure I'll be bringing it out for party games really often."

- Richard

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Last and certainly not least, "last" Sunday we had out latest bite sized entry with a look at Sunday Bites - Gataela: An Early-Victorian/Steampunk RPG.

"From what can be seen from the Demo, Gataela is already shaping out to be a great experience. Gameplay, character interactions, battle and exploration are all smooth and the dialog is well written."

- Pierre-Yves

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Oh My Godheads - PC Preview

As advertised, Oh My Godheads is "the world's first capture the head action game for 1-4 players", and I can't think of any way to refute that statement. Oh My Godheads has you and up to three other AI or human controlled players battling it out in a sort of "capture the flag" style match, except instead of flags (mostly), you have to cart around giant deity heads, that are still alive and very angry.

There are five modes currently available: capture the head, king of the head, headhunters, last man standing, and trials. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory; capture the head has you grab the head and bring it back to your base, king of the head is "hold the head for X number of seconds", headhunters is more like pvp combat without the heads, last man standing is headhunters except you only have one chance, and trials are various challenges that range from easy to "godsdamnit, no".

Controls are basic and the game is easy to get into, which is good because there isn't really much of an explanation on anything. You literally just have to jump in and try stuff out. For anyone who's curious, you have a melee attack, a dash attack, "exploding pies" that you can throw, as well as a jump and a dodge. I'd suggest checking out the "controls" menu to figure out what buttons/keys do what.

Since most of the modes are similar to what you'd expect I'll use the featured mode of Capture the Head as the defining play style. Once you've found some friends, or decided on AI companions, you can select a location, a Godhead and then set off to attempt to bring the head back to your base. Once you get started watch out as not only your opponents but also the stages and the heads themselves can act against you! Generally the head starts in the middle of the stage and once you pick it up you usually move slower and you can't attack. You can throw the head if you need to however in which you might need to do when it either explodes or freezes your pants off.

Default game settings at the moment are three points to within one round for victory, although you can set it as high as nine points to win in a five round match. Current stages are incredibly diverse, and include: simple head-to-head, navigating terrain, moving bases, a volcano with sinking platforms, and even a stage where you only have one shared base, but need to hit a switch to flip it between team colors. Which was probably my least favourite, personally.

Current Godheads include: Skadi, Gaia, Zeus, Tezcatlipoca, Bastet, Namazu, Agyo, and an unlockable "flag" that doesn't have an effect. Each of these heads does something different, and may either help or hinder you. For example, Skadi freezes everything in a surprisingly large radius, including you, and Agyo has a short range explosion, that will not only kill you if you're carrying his head, but sends the head back to its starting point. Zeus, on the other hand, rains lightning down around you, but not on you.

So that's how Capture the Head works, so let's talk a bit about the "Trials". The Trials are basically one-off little challenges such as "kill all the enemies as fast as you can", or "only kill enemies with pies". Depending on your performance, you can get a gold, silver, or bronze medal, and as far as I can tell you can unlock stuff, such as the flag I mentioned earlier, depending on how many gold medals you've earned. Thankfully, most of the gold medals are either very realistic to earn or incredibly easy, especially if you start abusing the respawns delay before the enemy AI takes action but after they've spawned in. Except for, like, two.

A series of challenges has you make use of certain heads' special traits. The worst are for Gaia and Tezcatlipoca (hereafter referred to as Tezca). The Gaia challenge has you hold the head for 40 seconds for the gold medal, with a 60 second time limit. This wouldn't be too bad, except it's 2v2 and your partner is one of the dumbest AI roulettes I have ever seen, and that's saying something. The enemy AI is fairly decent, and generally both enemies go after you. Which means you either have to be extremely effective managing your time between attacking and holding the head, or have your AI pick up and hold the head.

Here's the issue: your AI has the dumbest tendency to not only walk TOWARDS the enemies, but will occasionally throw the head for no good reason and then ignore it. If there's another way to win this, I haven't found it yet. Extremely frustrating when you get 39 out of 40 seconds and your partner chucks the head, with not enough time for you to pick it up before the trial ends. If you had 70 to 80 seconds, it really wouldn't be so bad. The other one, Tezca, produces a black smoke which makes it impossible to see in an area surrounding the carrier. Your goal is to kill an enemy while they carry the head. Except the AI loves to chuck the head a split second before you hit them, meaning you don't get the point for the kill. I may have cried.

Apart from the trials examples, the AI in actual matches is actually really good. They function at the very least reasonably, and occasionally are really smart about their plays, but never to the point you feel like they're reading your button inputs. The controller support is really good, and there was no difficulty using the keyboard set-up either. Pro-tip, you can reflect pies if you smack them in the air, which I found out rather unfortunately when I threw one only to eat it myself shortly afterwards, not that there is anything stating you can do so before you either see it happen or try the trials.

I had a lot of funny with Oh My Godheads, I sat down with a buddy, and thought we had played for 20 minutes, turned out to be two hours. A couple of things I would like to see for the final release: a tutorial or practice mode that explains how to play, a few more stages to fight on, and a much wider assortment of heads to choose from. And maybe re-balancing the trials AI a little bit. It would be interesting to have a field with maybe water running through it that would slow you against the flow or speed you up with it, or a whirlpool in the center that will switch between "on" or "off", and will pull you in.

A couple more heads would be good to, because after trying them all out we kind of felt like "welp, that's that". Perhaps something like Loki, who would create illusions of players or the head, or perhaps Hel (or a similar God/Goddess) that would summon skeletons or skeletal arms to take back their head. A God/Goddess of light that occasionally releases blinding flashes of light, or perhaps Quetzacoatl, that summons winds to blow the players around.

Even though the game is early access, it really doesn't feel unfinished, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where this game ends up, and I'm sure I'll be bringing it out for party games really often.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Titutitech
Publisher(s):
Square Enix
Genre(s):
Action
Versus
Mode(s):
Single Player
Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
N/A

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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