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.

The premise: you're in hell, so shoot everything until you're not in hell anymore. I wielded an area-of-effect plasma pistol and a shotgun as a mutant with a melted face. I could have chosen from other shooter tropes: a zombie, a soldier, an SMG, a railgun, and so on.

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.