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I’ll summon up the power of the God Hand!

November 15th, 2006 by Anuj

God Hand rocks. It’s definitely one of my favorite PS2 games, it’s hilarious, it’s random, it’s hard, it’s skill based, it’s fun. It’s probably gonna be one of the most underrated games ever…ok, maybe not underrated exactly, but underplayed definitely. About everyone that plays it, the few that there are, love it, but like I said, there are few. Anyways, here is the amazing and hilarious God Hand credits song.

[my complete thoughts on God Hand]

I remember when I first heard about the game. I was talking to a friend of mine that I hadn’t talked to in a long time. We got on the topic of video games, and he linked me to a video of this game long before I heard of it. I get links from my friends about games all the time, and many of them are certainly not “with me” when it comes to games. He is one of those people that I would think would generally link me to some piece of shit game and be like, “check out this badass game.” So I’m watching the video under this impression (god only knows what came over me to actually bother clicking on the link in the first place, as opposed to just pretending I saw it by saying, “whoa, that’s sweet.” But I’m glad I did) I’m watching the video thinking, “I bet this is a real stinker,” but about halfway through the video, I’m thinking, wow this actually looks pretty cool, and then at the end it said “CAPCOM,” so I was sold. I was excited for it ever since.

When I saw the marketing, and saw that it would be only $30 bucks, I got skeptical again though. It was like, $30 bucks? What? What happened, what’s the catch? Why did they only make it $30? Is there something devastatingly wrong with the game. I realize now, that the game was severely lacking with options they obviously intended to put in the game, but no doubt didn’t have time for, and needed to try to appeal to people that otherwise wouldn’t give it a second look without the words “GTA” or some shit on it. Both reasons stemming from the fact that they were no doubt aware and facing their soon-coming demise.

Anyways, regardless though, I didn’t purchase the game on day one. I decided to wait. A few of my friends didn’t skip out on it though. They all bought it, which made me happy (though outside of them, of course, no one bought it). I watched one of them play it, and it looked awesome. Watching my friend fumble-fuck his way through the first few enemies and levels made me see just how much better I would be at it, and made me want to play it more. So then when I finally got to play it, I was thrilled. Watching my friend play it was only, like, half the fun that it actually ended up being. The level of complication to the combat system was impressive, but it’s simplicity was incredibly impressive as well.

It was like the melee version of Resident Evil 4, in every sense of the word. Simple, but suprisingly complex, incredibly fun.

The move style and move ability list was very diversified and interesting, and the amount of moves is staggering (though not as staggering as they probably intended). The move lists are entirely configurable, which makes for infinite interesting possibilities. Unfortunately, appropriate combinations and such don’t make as much a difference as you would like. I think they intended to have move sets with added effects and such, but probably didn’t have time to add it all. For now though, the most amount of complication the moves can have is the timing and speed and amount of hits to add guard breaks and such, which is still a pretty deep system regardless.

The game is funny as hell, weird as shit, and totally random, and it’s great. A lot of games/movies/tv shows/anime try to do this sort of thing, but they mostly fail. God Hand does not. One of my few complaints about this style is that closer to the end of the game, the randomness kind of stops, and it gets pretty serious, but that’s ok. It is a lot like Viewtiful Joe with the mood the game creates, as well as the move animations and such.

The music is fantastic. The ending music video is worth buying and playing through the game enough. I’d say anyone that starts playing it will be pretty hooked for at least 2 or 3 days, which is about all it really takes to beat the game. It’s about 20 hours-ish, but the replay value is great. Sadly though, this is really where the game starts to falter.

A game made by Capcom, the company that made RE4, that had one of the best new game pluses to date, also makes God Hand, that has a terrible new game plus system, that is to say, almost no new game plus to speak of. You can unlock new soundtracks to listen to at the jukebox, which is cool but incredibly hard, and you can unlock videos, which is also cool, but incredibly hard. And there are new costumes. Things you would expect to keep, such as upgrades, moves, customized controls, goal completion, etc., are all taken away. It’s horrible. But, the game is still great.

So the big complaints I have pretty much boil down to complaints about how much more there was supposed to be in the game, and how horrible the new game plus system is…neither of which are really legitimate complaints about the game. Some complaints that I have heard that try to pretend to be legitimate are things such as a lack of enemy variety, and boss variety, which is just wrong. Sure most of the enemies fall under about 4 or 5 appearances, but their move sets, speed, timing and power have all been tweaked so much, that you have to often play with them very differently. The similarity between the enemies falls mostly to an aesthetical visual sense, and not a gameplay sense at all, and even then, each level has a style, and the enemies tend to adhere to the level style.

Some other complaints I have heard also regard the visuals. The level variety is good, but the graphics are really bad. The character models look great, but the levels do look like total shit, but it’s not something that’s worth focusing on as a problem. Seriously, aside from the poor production values of the game, I think the game is a blast to play.

Seriously, the now dead Clover Studios is one of the most amazing game studios and also one of my favorite. Another victim of under-appreciation.

Entry Filed under: Gaming