God Penalty Review

By , on September 8, 2010

God Penalty
Download on the AppStore
2 out of 5

PROS

  • Original theme.
  • Lots of potential upgrades.

CONS

  • A true grind to get anywhere in the game.
  • Difficulty scaling completely unbalanced.

VERDICT

God Penalty features some seriously beautiful artwork, but once you've played the first level you've essentially finished the game as the rest is merely a time sink.


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Perhaps its my ignorance of Chinese culture, but the idea of a god hovering on a cloud and zapping people who have an angry disposition doesn't sit well with me. But then again when it's you controlling the god it at least makes for an interesting idea, one that is the basis for God Penalty by Juns' Studio.

In each level you'll have to 'purify' more and more pesky humans who have a negative outlook on life by giving them a bit of a zap. After a while you'll cleanse these negative thoughts from them, but should you accidentally hit an innocent they'll start having a negative outlook. As you progress the number of 'good' and 'bad' people gets pretty high, making it almost impossible to target people without overlapping innocents. This is in part thanks to the control system which consists of a single button to activate your ability, causing it to swipe back and forth until you let go and let off a burst of 'cleansing' energy.

Sadly there's just no depth to the gameplay at all despite attempts to crowbar in skill points that can be spent on upgrading your powers. Each level is the same boring dilemma of zapping people over and over while avoiding innocents. Even the addition of characters that 'convert' people back to being bad merely extends the time it takes to finish a level instead of creating a real challenge.

It's possible that through repetition you might enter a pure zen-like state of calm benevolence as you purify your people, but it'd be easier to run a hot bath or have a cup of tea instead.

Screenshots

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