Gods of Egypt: Secrets of the Lost Kingdom Review

Released alongside it’s cinematic counterpart, the Gods of Egypt mobile game developed by Lionsgate subverts the notion that a film must be superior to a game released as a promotional gimmick. That’s right folks, put me on the record: The Gods of Egypt android game is better than the movie that inspired it.

Kicking off with a cool animation which sets up the events leading to the games commencement, you’re engaged right away by the story. You’re thrown directly into a tutorial level where you learn the controls: character movement is  performed on the left side of the screen on an animated button which operates similarly to an analog stick. Circular motions allow for effective control of what direction your character will face and the degree of movement in each action. On the right side of the screen you have 3 buttons: defense, attack and another one which appears after a bit of battle and allows a “godly attack”. The gameplay is fairly simple in this way and the tutorial ends quickly, connecting to the actual first level without needing to go to the menu. The controls function well enough for dynamic gameplay that makes it fun to be a giant god obliterating smaller human enemies.

Gods of Egypt is visually impressive as well. The areas in which you can do battle are generally small but that didn’t stop the devs from illustrating immersive backgrounds for each level. The character models are reminiscent of Egyptian mythology: specifically, the godly form of your playable character, Horus. The form is triggered when you engage the “godly attack” where Horus flies up into the air and morphs into an enormous figure, golden scaled and almost robotic in design but with the familiar animal imagery of the culture’s mythology. This unique take on what the ancient Egyptian gods would look like is one of the driving appeals for both the game and film.

Despite many positive factors, Gods of Egypt is not without its flaws. An exhilarating score composed of war horns and intense drumming offers another level of excitement to the gameplay and setting, initially. After 5-10 minutes you realize that the same tune is played over and over again, repeating itself throughout the games entirety. This brings me to a gripe that is often thought of as inherent to mobile gaming as a whole: there is a repetitive factor to Gods of Egypt that does effect the game negatively. The developers fail to add or enhance any aspects to the game as it progresses in order to keep the player invested throughout. The attacks or animations of the character never change, there are no new character models until the very end of the game and, as mentioned before, the score feels like a track you can’t take off repeat in your music library.

Intertwined with these issues is the overall duration of the game. There are only 3 levels and they are good for approximately 30 minutes of gameplay. I found this quite disappointing, as I was enjoying the game and hoping for some kind of exciting new aspect to add something unique before it concluded as simply another generic promotional mobile game. It’s important to remember though that it is free and the intent of the developers is to create a precedent to encourage consumers to purchase tickets to their movie. Perhaps if the intent were to build an elaborate, Egyptian mythology based experience a more harsh reaction would be merited but given the circumstances, I believe Gods of Egypt can be a fun excursion through an abstract imagining of ancient Egypt between the time it takes you to get from home to work.