If I told you that the team responsible for Resident Evil 4, including Mr. Resident Evil himself, Shinji Mikami worked on God Hand, I’m sure you’d be shocked.
Despite it’s impressive pedigree, God Hand has gotten a poor rap in the critical community. It’s sub-par reviews have vastly been cited due to it’s “extreme difficulty”, which I think is a very unfair criticism considering it was created with a specific gamer in mind. To clue you in on how much of a niche game God Hand really is, Producer Atsushi Inaba frankly stated that “God Hand is aimed at hardcore gamers”.
Does it have problems? Of course it does, it just doesn’t detract so much from the game that it ceases to be fun; in fact, God Hand is a blast.
If you’re looking for a cohesive story, don’t bother. God Hand makes about as much sense as most hardcore niche anime shows. You play Gene, a man who has just had his hand severed and coincidentally (or at least it seems like a coincidence) had it replaced with the strongest weapon in the world: the God Hand. Enter an evil organization that wants to steal it from you, and you have a plot (or lack of plot, however you want to look at it). Shinji Mikami’s aim here isn’t to “wow” you with a spectacular story, however, it’s to make you laugh, and shock you into disbelief. While you may feel that you have no motivation in your quest for glory, the oddball characters, dialogue, and rivalries will keep you wanting more.
At it’s core, God Hand is a brawler, make no mistake. The fighting system is extremely intricate, boasting over 100 moves and abilities from drunken fist to Eddie Gordo’s “break-dance fighting” capoeira style. You have your basic moves based off realistic fighting styles, and you have your “extreme moves”, where most of the game’s uniqueness lies. When you use an extreme move, a roluette wheel will pop up and allow you to choose your move in a short period of time.
The thrilling aspect of the roulette mechanic is that it slows down time to a crawl to allow you to use your move, but enemies can still knock you out of it! Regular grabs and attacks can also be “out there”. To name a few examples, enemies can be punched into the sky (disappearing with a glint) and female enemies can be spanked across the room. On occasion there will be various QTE sequences, but they fit perfectly into the game, and aren’t bothersome in any way. All of them are woven into normal moves, and never during cutscenes; for instance the stomp attack is utilized when repeatedly pressing circle when an enemy is on the ground.
Knee to the face!
One of the most unique features in God Hand is the “scaled difficulty bar”. Right there in front of you on your HUD, this bar taunts you repeatedly. The more punches you land, and the less damage you take, the higher this bar goes up, thus up-scaling the difficulty in the process. Once it maxes out, “DIE” appears on the bar and you essentially are screwed unless you’re really good at evading. The best part about this scaling difficulty is that you get rewarded with more points depending on how high the bar was during each level.
The first few stages you’ll get used to it, but in a matter of time you’ll keep it hovering just below “DIE”, and reap the benefits. God Hand also has a devil trigger-like mechanic, where you accrue energy in your “god bar” in order to rip the protective bracelet off of your god hand and unleash it’s power. You become invincible for a short amount of time, and do more damage; knowing when to use this power is key in terms of your survival.
Despite it’s very fun gameplay, God Hand will still have many “controller throwing moments”. Sometimes you’ll have little to no health, no powerups or pickups in sight, and you’ll barely kill the last enemy in an area. Well guess what? That enemy happened to have a demon living inside of him that’s over twice as powerful as the enemy you defeated! This happens a handful of times throughout the game, and tests your patience. Get used to the dodge technique really early on if you want to have enough health for one of these surprises. There are also a few boss fights where the enemy will inflict a rather large amount of damage. It feels a bit cheap, but if you master the dodge system, it’s possible to not take any damage.
Gene, meet Elvis
The soundtrack is just as odballish as the game. Comprised of various 70s, 80s, and orchestral tunes (with some amazing “wipeout” sounding surfer songs thrown in), you’ll never know what to expect. In-game, the voice acting is superb; Gene hilariously comments while fighting, and everything from a normal punch to a grand slam swing fits the game. When it comes to cut-scene voice acting you’re getting a mixed bag. Sometimes the dialogue will be appropriately cheesy, but sometimes it will just feel outright strange. Don’t be alarmed though, that’s what God Hand sets out to do: shock you! If you are offended by homosexual African-American circus twins, you need not apply. I warned you!
In God Hand, the locales you visit will range from sci-fi to western to fantasy. You start off in an “Old West” ghost town, and eventually make it to a giant zaibatsu-esque Demon Tower. God Hand encourages a small amount of exploration, but this part ends up being a bit shallow. You can find many powerups like health, or item cards, but you may find exploring to be a bit tiresome due to the drab look of a few of the areas.
Visually, God Hand is a bit average for a PS2 game, which is surprising since it came near the end of it’s life-cycle. To make up for it, the vast majority of the character models are extremely interesting, and you’re bound to find at least 10 enemies or characters that you really like. In-between levels, you can also choose to visit the local Casino, where you can pass the time playing poker, blackjack, chihuahua racing, slots, and cage fighting. With the money you earn you can buy new moves, so while it benefits you to do these activities, they’re not required.
Reviewers often forget what the main purpose of playing games is: for fun. If reviews were based on fun factor alone, God Hand would be in the top 5 of all time list. Unfortunately, it has it’s problems, which could have been fixed with a bit more development time, but if you’re a hardcore gamer, as Mikami intended, you will love this game; no questions asked.
8.0/10
I’ll tell you what… one of the reasons that I’m really liking it here is because of the fact that reviews aren’t just being limited to the current console generation. Seeing games like God Hand and Kingdom Hearts getting current reviews is a definite plus, in my book.
Now then, as for God Hand, this is a great game that unashamedly kicked your ass and was stylish doing it. The game never got the credit it deserved (thanks, IGN), and is certainly worth hunting down preowned or possibly in bargain bins. I was never great at the game, but certainly respected it for what it was.
This game looks really under appreciated. I’ll have to give it a look.
I think I saw this for a fiver at gamestop, I may pick it up.
It’s Clover Studios’ last game (Viewtiful Joe, Okami). If you’re a game collector, it’s worth picking up even if you don’t play it for that price.
great article!
This was one of my fav game on the PS2.. its one of those games that will be in your memory of great gaming moments for a long time.
Not that great of a game, IMO. The frustrating difficulty did not equate to enjoyment to me. I like games that are difficult and take time getting accustomed to, but I also like to have a slight learning curve, and in this game that could have been provided by a “beginner” mode, with drastically reduced health for enemies. Yet it could still maintain its extreme difficulty on par with DMC3. An failure by a developer whose narrow sightedness ruined in the end.
@Nah
DMC3 on Very Hard is around what this game is on normal. Of course, as I stated in the opening paragraph, this game is for hardcore gamers, and doesn’t act like it’s not. Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition had it’s difficulty re-worked with more casual gamers in mind, and was a smart business decision, but I liked the original difficulty just fine.
Fucking wapanese running to cover the failures of your Asian masters. God Hand was horrible. Is horrible. End of story.
This game has been on my Gamefly’s Queue list for months. I heard it was difficult, and I love a game with a challenge.
God Hand is a GREAT game. I rented it when it came out. I’m and anime fan. It’s definitely a good play. There where a few quirks but if you ask me to name them I couldn’t. I could tell you that it was a fun game that once you get into it you actually look forward to meeting your rival villains and pounding there face in with your variety of kicks and punches.
The midget power rangers and the two guys who look like there from Project A-Ko where tuff, but it’s definitely worth it when you beat it.
I do recommend it for a good beat em up.
So what you’re saying is because IGN gave this game a bad score, that automatically killed off most of the sales. Because I’m sure tens of thousand of people base their purchases SOLELY on IGN’s opinion.
You seem extremely desperate to receive hits with a title like that. Why can’t the title have been “Why God Hand was actually an excellent game”? What is the point in bringing up IGN? Do you really think that that many people care what their opinion on a game is?
With your logic, I can make any number of statements.
“Games Game Informer ruined: Mario Party 4 Edition”
“Games Gamespot ruined: Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn Edition”
“Games X-Play ruined: Star Wars The Force Unleashed Edition”
Really disappointed in this article.
God Hand is an amazing game. Second favorite PS2 game, behind Resident Evil4. Definitely worth the price of admission. Sad to say that it will probably never get a sequel : (
@Cheeseknight28 Slow down there, Tex. IGN’s outlier score for God Hand has been consistently discussed and touched upon when talking about the game. I don’t see the title change as a plea for hits as it is a tongue-in-cheek jab at IGN’s score versus what the reviewer thought of the game. Not once in the body of the review did the author make the charge that IGN cost God Hand sales; the low sales could more be attributed to the poor marketing campaign and low amount of hype that preceded the game’s launch.
@Captain America Really? REALLY? What a baseless and rather insulting comment. What’s worse is that you don’t appear to have any evidence to back up your claim. The reviewer listed his reasons for liking the game… so what are yours for disliking it? Do you have even have one?
@Nah Point well-taken. I looked at Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) the same way. The game was unforgivably hard almost from the get-go and I do remember seeing no less than 10 used copies of the game on GameStop shelves within 10 days of its release. It’s fine for games to be difficult, but good game design (IMO) should have a game build up to tougher difficulty. Let the player progress and learn the controls and nuances of the game, and even earn a couple of boss battle victories before turning up the heat. It builds a player’s confidence.
I really need to give this game a try
GAME IS NOT HARD!!!
@JC “Hard” is a subjective term. Some players may have better skills than others or a knack for playing games like God Hand, while others may adapt more slowly to the control and difficulty and become frustrated quite rapidly.
I like the idea of a scaling difficulty, dynamic to how you are playing, I think Left 4 Dead does that too. I would prefer to have some degree of control over it though, like in World Ends With You, despite the bad music and overly emo-ness, the way you could scale everything down if it was too hard at the expense of experience/drops/money and find a level right for you.
But I suppose Godhand’s method is more of a method of “we will kick your ass. Oh, you’re playing well are you? You think will stop it?”
@CheeseKnight
Funnily enough, I didn’t submit the article. This is a review; the title was a joke.
I believe CheeseKnight came from n4g with that very…bold statement used to pull readers in…which it did. If you look for a comment like that in the article you see that it doesn’t say anything like that.
Anyways good review indeed. Will probably try to look into the game again. And when I feel like I need to throw my controller I’ll just quit the game and play something else for a while and get back to it later lol like I do with Ninja Gaiden Sigma, or currently Uncharted on Crushing mode.
Hey this is a very interesting article! Thanks!
th gam was sooo hard
nikhil
GOD HAND remains one of my most favorite beat-em-up game ever. That’s coming from someone who’s played A LOT of beat em up games for the past 20 years (from popular to obscure beat em ups, both on system and on arcades). Despite it’s graphics, I’ve loved this more than even the recent beat em ups that came out in the current systems.
Even though the game is very hard, the manner in which difficulty is handled here is actually quite ingenious and fair, given that it only makes the game harder for those who are doing well (and thus, gives higher rewards), rather than forcing average-skilled gamers to go through the max difficulty everytime. It’s still hard, but it’s fair enough that it’s entirely possible to beat the game without taking any damage, if you’re skilled enough and you’ve mastered how to dodge every attack in the game.
The IGN(orant) review score was one of the most lopsided swill of a review I’ve ever read, and IGN, probably to make up for it, included GOD HAND in their recent top 100 games list. The reviewer who gave that score is also probably fired from IGN for quite some time ago (quite likely from the overflow of complaints they received against him) as his IGN profile (which seems to be demoted to a regular user) and blog is no longer found anywhere on IGN.com.
How I wish there’s going to be GOD HAND 2! Too bad this was Clover’s last game…