Review #512: God Hand

Blistered hand.

The cover.... eugh.

 You've heard of God Hand, one of the toughest games out there. That's... a bit of a lie. I'm here to tell you about God Hand, one of the best beat'em ups out there and one that's challenging, but not impossibly hard.

 The story is absolutely ridiculous and makes little sense, but what you need to know is that the story follows Gene and Olivia, Gene is a bit indebted to Olivia since she gave him the God Hand, an arm with awesome power. Gene doesn't care much about other people, but Olivia does, so she kinda forces him to help out. As it turns out, there's an interested party in the God Hand, and they'll stop at nothing to get it. You don't play the game for its plot, but for how ridiculous everything is. It's got a very weird, ridiculous and Suda 51-esque sense of humor, so if you're into that, the game delivers in spades. The art direction is pretty badass too, taking more than a few pages from Hokuto no Ken's book, so not only does Gene look cool... the enemies look fantastic too. It's also set in a pseudo wasteland, so even the environments are varied and appealing.

Context-sensitive special moves are... weird, to say the least.

 The game is a very linear beat'em up game, so you go from stage to stage, spanking butts and taking names. The first thing that will throw you off is that the game has a third person-shooter camera, with tank controls and you've no control over the camera. It's almost like playing Resident Evil 4, only that you've only got a knife. It sounds clunky, it IS clunky and a bit stiff, but you can get used to it, and the claustrophobic camera angle helps make your blows seem harder and heavier, which is always cool in my book. That said, there's definitely a learning curve before you get comfy with it, but if you aid yourself with the enemy radar on the top on the screen you'll be able to keep tabs on what's around you... even if you can't look at it.

 Square is your basic combo string, triangle and X perform different attacks, plus, back plus any of the three attack buttons produce even more attacks. That sounds neat, but every single move in Gene's arsenal can be changed. Don't like your vanilla 4-punch button? Buy some kick moves and add some juggles. Think you can do without a guard break attack? You'd be nuts to, but you can do it if you want. But you shouldn't, seriously, breaking an enemy's guard makes your next attacks do more damage. Take a guard break move, trust me. The circle button is a context-sensitive button, it can be used to pick up weapons or boxes, stomp on enemies or perform powerful special moves when they are dizzy. R2 is used to unleash the God Hand, when the gauge is full, which makes you invulnerable and makes your moves unblockable for a short while. Lastly, R1 is used to perform stock-consuming super moves. Gene can't block attacks, but you can use the right analog stick to dodge in four different directions.... and you'll have to.

The game doesn't shy away from being ridiculous... and it's all the better for it.

 The combat is very satisfying, but it does have a few shortcomings. There're a couple of enemies that can take way too much punishment before they go down, so a few fights with normal enemies can drag for a bit longer than they should. One of the most important things you'll have to learn in the game is to divide and spread out your enemies so that you can comfortably take them down without getting suckerpunched, but it can be a bit of a pain when you've these damage sponges coming back for more over and over again. Another annoyance is how much mashing this game requires, your powerful context-sensitive circle special moves always requires you to punch that circle button like there's no tomorrow... and you'll have to do this a lot if you want to maximize your damage potential.

 The game's most notorious feature is its dynamic difficulty: the longer you go defeating enemies without taking damage, the harder the game will get, with enemies getting stronger and more attacks, but, if you get hurt the difficulty will go down. Why would you want to keep the difficulty high? More and better rewards. Money is very important in the game, to buy health and God Hand gauge upgrades and to buy new moves, since your attacks grow obsolete pretty fast, and the more enemies you defeat on higher difficulties the more money you'll earn at the end of the stage. The game has a new game plus feature, but sadly none of your purchases are kept, which is a huge bummer since more freedom to experiment with combo set-ups would've been very welcome. At least you get bonus costumes!

Weapons break fast, but they can be quite useful at times.

 The game is not all that much harder than, say, Devil May Cry. There're plenty of checkpoints, and restarting from one refills your entire health bar and lowers the difficulty, so even if you get surprised by Demons, super tough enemies that randomly spawn when you defeat enemies, you won't be set back too much. And even without that, the game gives you a ton of advantages to make your life easier, the God Hand makes you invulnerable for a short while so that you can thin out the enemy lines and the God Reel attacks are very powerful. And for how useful the God Hand is, the gauge refills surprisingly fast, so even if you get to a boss without the gauge full you'll be filling it in no time. No, God Hand is not an easy game... but it's nowhere near as hard as people will tell you it is, so don't be afraid to approach it.

 God Hand is a fantastic little game that remains a bit obscure due to erroneous claims about its difficulty. It's incredibly fun thanks to its mixture of satisfying combat and hilarious characters that keeps tedium from setting in. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've more butts to spank.
 9.0 out of 10