God Hand
How can a game that looks so bad feel so good?
Published: October 12, 2006
The classic 2D beat-'em-up is dead, and someday I'll actually come to grips with that. For now, though, I'll glom onto games like Final Fight: Streetwise in the hopes that it can prolong the slow death of the genre. And for a while, I didn't think it was possible to translate the simple, focused approach to a brawler that 2D offered in three dimensions; no game to date really nailed the whole concept, and the comes God Hand to completely rewrite that line of thinking.
This is a 2D brawler in 3D, and pulled off with a minimalist approach to everything but the gameplay, which is an absolute old-school-style blast. Sadly, it's also about as competent in the graphics and storyline department as those older 2D games, but with so much attention paid to the animation and the combo system, and noting the talent behind the games (both Resident Evil 4 mastermind Shinji Mikami and Okami producer Atsushi Inaba worked on God Hand), it's hard for me to think the presentation is naught but a continuation of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the game as a whole.
God Hand is incredibly simple in concept; braggadocio Gene steps in to help out a girl in distress and instead has his entire right arm lopped off. When he comes to, the missing arm is back, now infused with the power of the God Hand, a mystical trinket that gives the wearer the power of... well, I'm sure you can figure out the rest. Though the gauntlet is meant for humans, it eventually gives them the power to choose to be come a god or a devil.
This of course brings us to boobs. No? Not making that leap with me? Fine, I'll fill in the blank: when Gene comes to, he finds he's in the company of the very girl that he was trying to save, a girl with plenty of knowledge of the God Hand. She's cute, sasses Gene at ever opportunity, and she's got really nice boobs. See? Totally connected. The two of them have a fun little give and take that plays out through a handful of short little clips. It's basically there to provide filler, and like the rest of the game's tertiary parts, it's done with the barest minimum of attention.
Well, that's not entirely fair, really. The major cutscenes are all motion captured, sport basic (if effective) direction and are voice acted with the same sort of over-the-top aspect of the rest of the game. In short, they're awesome -- so long as you go along with the whole tone of the game, which God Hand requires more or less from the start. Kicking a dude through the supports of a building and watching the roof come crashing down on him, only to be given the opportunity to stomp on his face a few dozen times in the very first fight in the game sort of sets the tone, and it demonstrates two very important things: the game in no way is meant to be taken seriously, and it's surprisingly deep for something so apparently shallow.
The depth in the game comes almost entirely from Gene's arsenal of moves, where are almost constantly being given ammunition in the form of new techniques that can be mixed and matched to chain things together. Over 100 of them in total are available, and as the game progresses more of them can be strung together, but it ultimately comes down to how quick you want the strikes to be and how much oomph you want them to have. For most of the game I was kept experimenting with different combinations of speed and power, since how you build the combo determines what kind of outs you have when waiting for animations to finish comes into play.
See, you've got the usual flurry of kicks and punches, but there are also directional modifiers. Tapping Square continuously unleashes your custom combo, but you can pull back or push forward to execute other moves too. Roundhouses, juggles, stuns, guard breaks -- all of these things are in place, and it's entirely up to you how you lay them out on the controller for the most part. It's quite possible that at any given point in the game, any two people playing it won't ever have the same combo or play style.
As you dodge attacks, lay out a bevy of your own or taunt enemies with the L2 button, you'll build up tension, and once the gauge hits a certain point, you can unleash the God Hand, which makes you invincible, makes all your attacks instant guard breakers and cranks up the speed of your moves to ridiculous. So long as you've got the tokens for it, you can also unleash a special Roulette attack that consumes up to three of your tokens in a single go.
Roulette attacks are powerful, yes, but they can also cause special effects like juggling or breaking a block, which in turn opens up the door for another chain of combo attacks. The gamble here, though, is whether or not you want to expend the tokens to make the move, since you can only refill them with items hidden in barrels, crates (incidentally, this is how you refill health too) and chests.
This is a 2D brawler in 3D, and pulled off with a minimalist approach to everything but the gameplay, which is an absolute old-school-style blast. Sadly, it's also about as competent in the graphics and storyline department as those older 2D games, but with so much attention paid to the animation and the combo system, and noting the talent behind the games (both Resident Evil 4 mastermind Shinji Mikami and Okami producer Atsushi Inaba worked on God Hand), it's hard for me to think the presentation is naught but a continuation of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the game as a whole.
God Hand is incredibly simple in concept; braggadocio Gene steps in to help out a girl in distress and instead has his entire right arm lopped off. When he comes to, the missing arm is back, now infused with the power of the God Hand, a mystical trinket that gives the wearer the power of... well, I'm sure you can figure out the rest. Though the gauntlet is meant for humans, it eventually gives them the power to choose to be come a god or a devil.
This of course brings us to boobs. No? Not making that leap with me? Fine, I'll fill in the blank: when Gene comes to, he finds he's in the company of the very girl that he was trying to save, a girl with plenty of knowledge of the God Hand. She's cute, sasses Gene at ever opportunity, and she's got really nice boobs. See? Totally connected. The two of them have a fun little give and take that plays out through a handful of short little clips. It's basically there to provide filler, and like the rest of the game's tertiary parts, it's done with the barest minimum of attention.
Well, that's not entirely fair, really. The major cutscenes are all motion captured, sport basic (if effective) direction and are voice acted with the same sort of over-the-top aspect of the rest of the game. In short, they're awesome -- so long as you go along with the whole tone of the game, which God Hand requires more or less from the start. Kicking a dude through the supports of a building and watching the roof come crashing down on him, only to be given the opportunity to stomp on his face a few dozen times in the very first fight in the game sort of sets the tone, and it demonstrates two very important things: the game in no way is meant to be taken seriously, and it's surprisingly deep for something so apparently shallow.
The depth in the game comes almost entirely from Gene's arsenal of moves, where are almost constantly being given ammunition in the form of new techniques that can be mixed and matched to chain things together. Over 100 of them in total are available, and as the game progresses more of them can be strung together, but it ultimately comes down to how quick you want the strikes to be and how much oomph you want them to have. For most of the game I was kept experimenting with different combinations of speed and power, since how you build the combo determines what kind of outs you have when waiting for animations to finish comes into play.
See, you've got the usual flurry of kicks and punches, but there are also directional modifiers. Tapping Square continuously unleashes your custom combo, but you can pull back or push forward to execute other moves too. Roundhouses, juggles, stuns, guard breaks -- all of these things are in place, and it's entirely up to you how you lay them out on the controller for the most part. It's quite possible that at any given point in the game, any two people playing it won't ever have the same combo or play style.
As you dodge attacks, lay out a bevy of your own or taunt enemies with the L2 button, you'll build up tension, and once the gauge hits a certain point, you can unleash the God Hand, which makes you invincible, makes all your attacks instant guard breakers and cranks up the speed of your moves to ridiculous. So long as you've got the tokens for it, you can also unleash a special Roulette attack that consumes up to three of your tokens in a single go.
Roulette attacks are powerful, yes, but they can also cause special effects like juggling or breaking a block, which in turn opens up the door for another chain of combo attacks. The gamble here, though, is whether or not you want to expend the tokens to make the move, since you can only refill them with items hidden in barrels, crates (incidentally, this is how you refill health too) and chests.
