God Mode releases April 19th, shoot waves of absurd hellbeasts with friends

God Mode is out on Steam on April 19th for $10/£7. It's a diabolical four-player co-op shooter which spits magnetized hellbeasts at you—the kind you describe by cursing what they do, like "those ******* flaming axe throwing bastards"—until you either kill them all to advance or die trying. The tried-and-true horde survival mode has been outfitted with handicaps, mutators, customizable characters, and gun upgrades—I played it briefly a couple weeks ago, and it impressed me.

Each stage is a "Test of Faith" which is modified by a random mutator. If you're lucky, the mutator helps you—in one level I was protected by a holy beacon which drained enemy health when they approached. If you're not lucky, the mutators give your enemies the advantage, and now and then they're just silly, shrinking enemies or sticking hats over their rotting skulls.

God Mode is hard, at least, alone it was. It's played rhythmically: run so enemies bunch up behind you, turn around and vaporize a blob of them, bolt to a distant, ranged attacker to neutralize it, circle around to gather another line of melee runners, turn around and shotty them again. If that's somehow not hard enough, you can handicap yourself to earn extra XP. Given that giant statues of Atlas were coming to life and heaving massive metal globes at me, I felt no need to handicap myself anymore than a loner in hell already is.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to earn god-like power—the God Mode of God Mode—but I think friends will be necessary. A four-pack on Steam will be $30/£21. I didn't play for more than 15 minutes, but I deeply hope for more The Haunted: Hells Reach and Killing Floor -style experiences.

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.