God Eater Updated Hands-On Impressions

Inside an ornately adorned show floor gazebo at the Tokyo Game Show sat Namco Bandai’s God Eater. Many will quickly draw parallels between it and its biggest competition, Capcom’s phenomenally successful animal harassment series, Monster Hunter. God Eater was released in Japan in the early months of 2010, but it is taking its sweet time with localization, aiming for a release stateside in February of next year when it skips the pond. At this year’s Tokyo Game Show, we picked up the PSP and tried our hand at slaying aragami, the game’s version of the deities of the underworld.

It’s worth noting that despite our brief play being entirely focused on combat, we’ve been told that God Eater will include an extensive character, weapon, and crafting customization system. Our demo began in a launch area away from the fight. After bumbling our way through the Japanese menus, we got to the action and landed in an abandoned urban environment. Because this game takes place in a postapocalyptic setting, there was little surprise to see a heavy focus on burning fires, a red-heavy color palette, and extensive use of gray and brown walls. As a result of being in a serious state of disarray, the city seemed less like a bunch of rooms to explore and funneled us out into open areas via a cement gauntlet.

Before we had a chance to look around very much, we were set upon by a large beast, one of the game’s mutants running the show after the downfall of Earth. Peace comes not with kind words and compassion but with a blade and bullet. As a result, it’s not long before we’re hacking, slashing, and shooting at the creature alongside our AI-controlled team in the name of humanity. Weapons come in the form of archetypal ranged and melee options, with swords good for up-close-and-personal fighting. Rifles, however, give you a chance to back up a bit and blast away while avoiding getting too close to the claws and teeth. Holding and pressing the melee attack button charges up a more powerful attack; when it makes contact, it restores some of your origin physics bar, which is the stamina meter that drains as you perform melee strikes. The power-up takes a few seconds to complete, requiring you to stand as it builds, but once successful, your blade morphs into a giant tooth-covered mouth, biting into the flesh of your enemy and looking a lot like a Spider-Man's nemesis Venom's venom fang attack from the Marvel vs. Capcom series.

Our fur-covered friend wasn’t a fan of our welcoming party, and after a brief clash, it hightailed it and forced us to chase it to the next showdown location. This need to move helped to introduce us to the game’s minimap, a guide available onscreen at all times, while a larger overlay map could be toggled by tapping the start button. Because our target was marked with a big red dot, it was simple to locate it for another round of hide the sword.

With the exception of our group and the fleeing creature, the city was completely empty. Whether this was designed to speed up the demo process or place the focus on hunting and killing big prey, it meant that we could follow its trail without encountering smaller skirmishes, such as having to clear waves of small, annoying trash monsters.

Ad hoc multiplayer support will be available on the PlayStation Portable, but we played offline and were flanked by AI. The team did a good job attracting the hate, dealing damage, as well as healing and reviving fallen comrades who got a little too close to the action.

Controls were fairly standard for a third-person action game, using the analog stick to navigate the environment. But, while the auto-target function mapped to the left shoulder button appeared to do a reasonable job locking on to and framing where bullets should be going when the target was within sight, sharing the camera view with a combat function meant we found our character looking in odd places when more exciting things were going on elsewhere.

A final push had us backing the creature into a room with nowhere to retreat. We used the opportunity to put the beast to sleep by force and were rewarded with the spoils of victory, no doubt to upgrade and modify our current gear loadout. Unfortunately, before we could bask in the glory of our slain foe, our screen faded to black and we were thanked for playing.

Whether God Eater has the brand awareness and combat mix to succeed in such a crowded marketplace remains to be seen. But from our hands-on time with the game, it ticks some of the boxes for success, and we’ll be keeping our eye out for more time to play as it makes its journey to the West next year.