Review: God Hand

God Hand was the last game by Clover Studios of Viewtiful Joe and Okami fame (obscurity?). It's essentially an over the shoulder brawler, but unusually difficult, complicated, and silly.

Gameplay
There's a lot to talk about with the gameplay, so let's start with the basics. The camera is mostly over your characters shoulder unless a special move takes over. The normal camera position can sometimes cause trouble as an enemy can attack you while standing behind your character.

God Hand has complicated controls, one might go so far as to call them arcane. The left stick drives you around like a survival horror character. L1 does a 180. This is pretty clunky for a beat 'em up, where freedom of movement is often the key to controlling a fight, especially with multiple attackers (who actually attack at the same time instead of just waiting their turn, but we'll discuss that later).

The face buttons perform your normal attacks and are almost completely customizable (the exception being the circle button which is reserved for context sensitive moves). The square button is your combo, while the triangle and x buttons may be assigned one move each. Also each of the custom buttons can have an additional move assigned for when you pull back on the left stick and press the button. Confused yet? You should be. Historically, brawlers are mindless fun. Having to manually purchase and configure your combos practically makes this game an RPG.

Seriously, unless you're a fantastic player, you're going to want to purchase better moves from the store. That means you're going to need to earn some money from the casino. There are also special moves that can only be learned by winning on the high roller slot machine on the top floor of said casino. So if you want to be well armed, you have to play some cards and slots (which unfortunately means doing a fair bit of save / load dancing as the odds are not in your favor). I'd usually do this just before going to bed, as it's boring as hell to watch a slot machine turn over. But I wanted that Mach Speed Punch, dammit!

The right stick is used for dodging. You press forward to duck under attacks. Press back to do a back flip. Press to either side to dash. Flipping or dashing makes you nigh invulnerable (except to a few special attacks) for an instant.

Finally the remaining shoulder buttons are used to bring out the big guns (well except for L2 which just taunts enemies). R1 controls your God Reels. These are special powers which do major damage to opponents. R2 triggers the God Hand. As you beat up bad guys, your God Hand meter fills. When it turns orange, you can trigger it rendering you invincible and very fast for a short period.

All moves have a number of attributes. Speed and power are the most basic. Then you have block breakers, juggles (which throw the enemy up), and launches (which hurl them away). Juggles and launches don't work against heavier opponents unless you're using God Hand and neither work against the games larger bosses (except to inflict their normal damage).

You might be wondering at this point if I'm writing a review or a FAQ. Probably a little of both. The problem is, God Hand is complicated. I've seen no reviews that give a real feel for the game.

So now you've got your moves. You've assigned them to buttons. It's time to go meet the enemies and get your ass whooped. Seriously, there's not much learning curve to the game. It's more of a cliff. Sure, the earlier opponents are easier than the later ones, but you'll still die a lot. It's expected. If you finish a stage (five to nine levels and a boss fight) using only ten continues, you get a reward. That's how tough the game is.

And it gets tougher. If you're doing well, a difficulty meter goes up. Killing enemies at a higher difficulty means more money, but it also means enemies attack more aggressively, even from completely off-screen. There are radar and sound cues, but I was always too intent on the fight in front of me.

So how does all this add up to fun? Well, when you start to master it, you know you accomplished something. God Hand is to brawlers like Skate is to Tony Hawk. It beats the crap out of you until you get it.

Oh. I get it. I need to dodge that one guy's sword attacks because they travel too far for the backflip to escape them.

Oh. I get it. I need to use dodge to cancel out of my attack when the enemy blocks.

Oh. I get it. I need to use quick combos on the weak guys to keep them airborne long enough to do real damage.

Oh. I get it. I can't use quick combos against the gorillas because they start blocking too soon. I need to get in one or two heavy hits and then go for the ground attack.

Oh. I get it. I need to use more area effect launch moves to keep some of these opponents off me.

Oh. I get it.

That's how God Hand is rewarding. In browsing the videos on You Tube, I learned some cool techniques I'd never tried, and I saw some people using exactly the wrong strategy for the enemy they were fighting. The game is deep... and inscrutable enough that you can really feel you built your technique up all by yourself. You bought the moves. You learned where they do and don't work. And unlike the wusses (Chris Roper) who just do two punches then backflip, you've actually learned to mix it up, dodge like crazy, pull off the counters, bounce the bodies into crazy air combos, break enemy combos, and generally own the fight.

God Hand's gameplay is not for the faint of heart. But if you like a challenge, the line starts here.

Theatrics
God Hand is a joke, literally. The enemies spout ridiculous Mike Tyson quotes and run the gamut of generic leather clad toughs, clowns, gorillas in luchador costumes, fat guys with energy cannons on their backs, and many more. Bosses include the gay circus acrobats, a pole dancing vampire bimbo, five midget power rangers, a killer robot with interchangeable limbs, and many more.

The moves are often silly with you spanking female opponents and kicking guys in the crotch. Some of the special moves actually blast the enemy into orbit with only a winking star to mark their passing.

For crap's sake, one of the ways you can earn money is by betting on chihuahua races where the dogs have names like "Boom Headshot" and "Massive Damage".

The voice acting is in keeping with the campy atmosphere always angry about something or changing mood for no reason. You almost wish the characters mouths moved more to make it look like a badly dubbed kung fu movie.

Aesthetics
God Hand's look and visual quality is good for a PS2 game. This is somewhat helped by the close in camera that gives you a good view of the characters. The environments can be pretty plain, but I was usually too busying fighting to notice. The same goes for the music.

Final Score
I give God Hand a three out of five.

I wanted to score it higher. I had enough fun learning and experimenting with techniques near the end to make me seriously consider a second playthrough. But that's me trying to ignore the facts. When I first played the game I hated it because I had to waste all that time in the casino to get moves. At it's best, God Hand is a very rewarding four. But the casino busywork, clumsy interface, and cheap offscreen attacks you have to tolerate to get to that goodness are impossible to overlook.