Gods Remastered (Nintendo Switch)

Bitmap Brothers where one of my favourite developers growing up in the European home computer gaming golden era of the late 80’s and 90’s. Games like Speedball 2 and Xenon 2 are still some of my favourite games of all time! …and then there was Gods!

I only have vague memories of the game to be honest, but I remember not being overly impressed by it, so I was quite disappointed of all the Bitmap games to get the remaster treatment we got Gods. But I’m a sucker for any taste of nostalgia so I picked it up to see how it holds up 30 years later.

Instantly I was remind what put me off as a kid. The game has a very slow deliberate pace. Your character is overly animated similar to Prince of Persia controls where you can’t interrupt an inputs during the animation so if you hit jump, there is no controlling your character mid air until the floaty jump is complete. You can’t attack whilst crouching, you can’t even change the direction you’re facing whilst crouching without standing up first. All of these design choices are very jarring if you’re used to playing fast and fluid action platforms like Contra for example.

But with my new found adult patience I decided to give the game a fair shake, and after a few tries I slowly started to appreciate the slower methodical combat, memorising enemy placements and solving the puzzles kept me playing with the ‘just one more attempt’ hook which prevented me from bouncing off the game as hard and fast as I did when it was originally released. 

Don’t get me wrong this is still not one of my favourite Bitmap Brothers games, but I have a new found appreciation for it and respect why the game does have such a passionate fanbase.

The work done to this remaster is very impressive. The game is now presented in wide screen, and the graphics and sound have been completely overhauled with a modern aesthetic and soundtrack. But if you want the blast of nostalgia a simple click of the right thumb stick switches the graphics and sound back to the original 16 bit home computer versions in real time. I’ve seen this in a few remakes and remaster now and I have to say this is honestly one of my favourite features!

Other than a level save replacing the password system not much more work has been done to add any new feature. There are no save states or additional options to play around with which is a little disappointing. I think a lot of people pick up these games for a quick blast of nostalgia rather than the intent of mastering the game all over again, so I don’t know why they don’t just put a cheat menu in for level select, max weapon upgrades, infinite lives, god mode… if you’ll excuse the pun… just so you can see everything the game has to offer without putting the work in to ‘get good’ if thats not what you’re here for. 

These where all feature we would have had in the back in the day anyway with cheat codes, if not in the original games, certainly in the cracked versions of the games admittedly a lot of us will have played back then.

I don’t think I could recommend this game to someone who has no nostalgia for the original unless this style of game is specifically something you enjoy, but equally if you’re a fan of the original game, this remaster is a must have! If like me you have some nostalgia for it, wait for a sale. I picked it up for about £2.50 recently and absolute felt I got that value out of the game and also eased the guilt of knowing I pirated it back in the day!