This is an Early Access Review and as such opinions are based solely on the state of the game at the time of review and subject to change as development progresses leading up to final release.
Just when you thought music games were gone forever the genre has seen a sudden and unexpected rebirth in VR. Last month is was Ragnarock, a Viking drum simulator, and now we have God of Riffs; nothing to do with Vikings but just as rooted in its heavy metal and medieval nostalgia. Available on Steam Early Access, the game in its current state is nothing more than a demo with only four songs and four worlds. Three of those worlds I have only seen in screenshots as the only background available to me was a forest world with a giant “Groot” in the background with a city on his shoulders.
So I played these four songs multiple times on both the Rift S and the Vive and found the experiences nearly identical. The Touch controllers felt a bit more secure when doing the sweeping overhanded swinging motions required to play but the Vive wands felt like I was gripping actual axe handles – just wear those wrist straps. In God of Riffs you are wielding twin guitars that look like battleaxes; the kind of guitars you’d find lying around backstage after an Iron Maiden or KISS concert back in the 80’s. One is red and one is blue, as are the streams of monsters coming at you in various patterns that you must hit to the rhythm of the music while matching colors between axe and monster.
At this time there are only two monsters; skeleton warriors and flying winged skulls basically offering you low and high targets to aim for; other monsters to be added later. The overall visuals are fairly bland with boring backgrounds and crude creature designs that are more comical than heavy metal. The four songs were okay; all sound very similar and nothing really rocked my world. God of Riffs will definitely need a track editor that allows you to import your own tracks if it ever hopes to succeed. Due to the erratic beat structure in heavy metal, and especially these four songs, it is really hard to find your groove with the game leaving you disconnected. I was more focused on visually hitting enemies rather than trying to sync my actions with the beats of the track. The music was merely background ambience rather than key to the gameplay – not good for a music game.
My biggest issue with God of Riffs is the actual gameplay and the lack of any visual cues on when you are supposed to hit the monsters. Most of these games let you hit early, late, and perfect and indicate that visually. Here, you just have creatures running/flying toward you, and you just swing and hit about the time they step/fly over your progress meter. There is a smacking sound you get when you hit a creature, but it’s not always consistent, leading you to believe you missed even when the skeleton crumbles at your feet. In fact, the only way to know you really missed is when your combo counter resets. You can also hit golden enemies that will power-up your axes allowing you to raise your arm, squeeze the trigger, and send out a shockwave of energy that doesn’t seem to do anything. No monsters fall as expected, just a cool visual effect.
Early Access games have blurred the lines of demo and pre-release games, and God of Riffs clearly falls into a demo category. Admittedly it’s a demo that will secure you a copy of the final game sometime in the future, but in its current state the game is pretty rough and even at $5 seems a bit overpriced, especially when there are so many other VR music games already available. We’ll continue to follow God of Riffs throughout development and update our coverage if and when things improve. Stay tuned and keep rocking…
