This is one of those stories you need to see to believe. There was recently a really terrible and obvious God of War rip-off doing the rounds on the Xbox store called War Gods Zeus of Child – yes, that really is its name. The game was available to play until recently, but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.
This God of War rip-off was available in the store for $4.39 and allowed you to take control of Kratos, well, what they are claiming to be Kratos at his stuttering worse. When we say it’s terrible, we’re not exaggerating either because going off the videos online (which you can watch below) calling it terrible is a compliment.
The gameplay will have you controlling this Kratos imposter, as he slashes aimlessly at an endless horde of enemies in an arena environment until either you or Kratos dies, or if you just give up – the latter is the most likely.
The game is also full of more bugs than the Amazon; the game’s geometry (which is developed in Unity) can be easily broken by just walking out of bounds, it lacks any in-game music or sound effects, and Kratos does not have a backward walking animation either, so he just glides to safety instead.
The Xbox Creators Collection area on the Xbox store is where this game called its home. This area is designed to sell games without Microsoft’s usual certification and approval, and without support for achievements. You could say that the Creators Collection is like a Wild West for game development, useable by anyone from small studios to students. There are no rules it seems, and no morals either – this really is the lawless West in gaming form.
The game’s store listing (one that has since been taken offline) offered no reference to the Creators Collection, and it displayed a PEGI 18 rating for “Extreme Violence” but didn’t appear on PEGI’s website. This game just feels like an anomaly, as mysterious as anything we’ve ever seen, but take our advice, even if you are curious, don’t play this game – it really is that bad.
