Videogames are a trend based industry and many of them compete to accomplish the same concepts and ideas first. In more recent years, one of the more popular trends that games embrace, are “moral choices.” Decisions that the player makes that will effect, not only the situation, but also the character and the conclusion of the story. While this did seem pretty cool at first, after all the RPG’s using pretty much the same choice system, it was pretty apparent that the “moral choices” were hilariously binary. That’s when we started to get games like Alpha Protocol, Splinter Cell: Double Agent and most effectively, Spec Ops: The Line.
These games contained choices but they weren’t really a result of the choosing the good option or the evil option. The results you got were because in a time of crisis, that is what you chose and there is no turning back… well, unless you reload the last save file. Gods Will Be Watching is a game with choices that is structured around the ideas of the latter, not the former. Your actions have an effect on situations, whether it’s having hostage get killed trying to escape from your control or watching your friend die while trapped in a torture chamber.
Gods Will Be Watching may have an old-school pixelated art style but it’s not used for fluffy subject matter. The game’s setting is a very bleak one with corporate espionage, terrorism, disease and the previously mentioned torture. Thankfully, the game’s writing is good enough that unless you can’t stand watching this kind of violence in anyway, you should still be interested enough to want to know what happens next.
Now, when I got this beta build of the game for this preview, one of the notes from the game makers was “This game is hard and is meant to be hard – swallow your pride before you start. :)” And they weren’t kidding. Normal mode will surely kick the ass of any player and even the easy mode is bone crushingly difficult. Now, this is where I am a little concerned for the game. The difficulty in this point and click adventure game is certainly unique but it does make me a little worried, mostly because for the most part, the difficulty felt more punishing than challenging.
What’s the difference? Well, punishing difficulty is when it doesn’t feel fair and unfortunately, because many of the game’s elements rely partially on chance, there will always be that time you screw up just by sheer bad luck.
The second chapter where you and a friend get tortured is probably the greatest example. At a point, the character torturing you starts a game of Russian roulette and I was told I had a one and seven chance of getting shot. This was right towards the end of the stage, after I had already been playing the stage for 10-20 minutes. That’s the moment when despite the odds being in my favour, I got shot in the head and failed the level. Now this of course would only be an issue if the game didn’t have a checkpoint system that would be really unfortunate.
Oh, did I mention that this game doesn’t have a checkpoint system? Well, at least, not at the moment. From the amount I’ve played, every stage forces you to start all the way back at the beginning when you die. This isn’t so much of a problem in the first stage since it isn’t very long, but the second and third chapters are. The third one is a particular case where after playing for 20-30 minutes, I had to take care of something, to which I found out that despite having a “save and quit” option, the save file just puts you back at the start of the stage.
Point and click fans are going to move to this game in droves, it’s got pretty much everything you’d want in a point and click game. An intriguing story, unique visuals and world that you only want to see more of. However, due to its punishing difficulty and lack of checkpoints, I’m not sure if it’s a game that could be recommended to people who don’t normally play point and click adventures. Even experienced players of this genre are going to get a run for their money if they play on the normal setting. Either way, Gods Will Be Watching is looking to be another game that will fit nicely within Devolver Digital’s roster of published games, and certain does have lots of potential. If what you’ve seen here interests you, more information on the game is available on the developers website and Steam store page, where it’s set to be released on July 24th this year.
