I've been playing an awful lot of Yakuza 0 recently, and no matter how many fights you get into, it's always fun to just destroy your opponents. You don't just knock them out, you squash their face into parked cars and smack them around the head with baseball bats. Every hit is felt and they all seem to hurt quite a bit.
Take out all the boring Yakuza plot and you'd have God Hand, a game all about destroying your opponents with equally satisfying and wince-inducing assaults from your fists and feet. The beat 'em up just got brutal...
Fun Times
Meet Gene and Olivia, two folks I had to look up because God Hand sure wasn't going to tell me. They find themselves in a drab western town for reasons unknown, and it's not full of friendly locals.
They aren't friendly at all, squaring up for a fight and hell-bent on making sure they win. That's unlikely to happen, though, for our right arm has been replaced with the God Hand, a hand with all the power of a God. Something else I had to read up about. God Hand doesn't tell you anything before dropping you into the action here.
So I learned the controls on the fly and found that most of the face buttons perform kicks and punches. Mostly kicks, which is a little weird for someone with the power of a God in their hand, but whatever. Lots of kicks, a few punches, all of which land with a thwack. Unless they're blocked, which does happen. These guys know how to fight.
If you manage to get into the right place at the right time, you can perform some special grapples that'll see you suplex folks, or smash your knee into their face over and over. Again, you feel it all, ridiculously over the top though it may be.
Sometimes you feel it all rather more personally, where the only escape is a quick waggle of the stick or a counter with the circle button. But you shouldn't have gotten yourself in such a poor situation in the first place, had you mastered the right stick.
It doesn't control the camera, which does feel like an issue when fights regularly involve more than one enemy, but it does control a flexible dodge system that allows you to backflip and sidestep your way around not only attacks but defences. Getting blocked? Step to the side and kick your target from behind.
The R2 button unleashes your God Hand, so long as its meter is full. I don't recall how it charges - fighting, I assume, though there appears to be a taunt button which might do something too. When your God Hand is triggered, your attacks, naturally, are a whole lot stronger than they used to be, up until the point your meter runs out. That'd be the point where I took a screenshot, with enemies still standing in front of me when I had but a sliver of health left.
Frustrations
And that's the problem a great many people will face with God Hand. The difficulty. Oh boy, do you need to master this combat system... I was playing on Normal for some reason. I guess I thought I could manage it. Wrong thought there. Each death restarts the level, so I suppose I could at least get some practice in.
The first guy you fight indoors inexplicably turns into a demon upon death, and this monstrosity doesn't mess around. If I died - and I did - it'd largely be because of this guy eating into my health before I finally beat him. As well as the God Hand, there is a roulette wheel of sorts full of special attacks that you can use in a pinch.
I could only use two of them before running out of spins, for want of the actual word to describe how many times I could use the roulette, and they were suitably exaggerated, though I'd need to make great use of them if I were to defeat this demon unscathed.
Which I didn't. I defeated him, again, but look at that health loss. How can I heal? I've no idea. I didn't even pause while playing to see if there was an inventory system or anything. I was just fighting these guys for the sheer joy of it, hoping for the best.
I'd gotten better at dodging and selecting which attacks to use and when, but nowhere near to a competent standard. I wouldn't say I was enjoying the combat system, because the lack of camera control was a little irksome, but it is a system that feels good to use. But it needs to be mastered. How much time and effort will that take? Do I want to invest in God Hand when it hasn't even set up who I am and why I'm here?
Oh, I died again. Got a liiiiitle further though...
But not far enough to warrant another attempt.
Final Word
I only played God Hand for 15 minutes in the end. I could have dropped the difficulty and tried again, but I know that at some point I'd hit my own limit and just not want to push through and come out of the other side. This is a hardcore, no-nonsense fighting game where you need to invest in your skills, both in-game and out.
Except it isn't. It's a humourous hardcore fighting game where you get attacked by all kinds of weird and wacky enemies, each of whom is dispatched by combos that can destroy buildings and special attacks that have the power of God behind them.
I've seen God Hand, long ago, and probably made a mental note of it being a game I had no hope of getting through on my own, so should just enjoy watching it. I'll probably rewatch it, though even after just a few minutes of playing, I think I can see why it's got some cult acclaim.
Like Yakuza, like Tekken even, the attacks feel chunky and devastating. If you're more familiar with other hard-hitting games, insert them here too. God Hand may look a bit cheap, but its hits are substantial, and it's the feeling they give you that is more important than how the game looks or what the plot is doing.
I've no idea what the plot is doing. Even reading a synopsis doesn't really fill me in. God Hand is not a game you play for the story, though. It's one shining feature is the combat system, and it's pretty good. A complete idiot like me can see that.
If you only survive for a quarter of an hour like me, play God Hand. Find out what it feels like first hand. It'll look much better in the hands of experts, but you won't quite understand it all if you don't get a grip on it yourselves.
Fun Facts
It absolutely doesn't look it, but God Hand and Resident Evil 4 share a development team.
God Hand, developed by Clover Studio, first released in 2006.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2006, via emulation.
Version watched: PlayStation 2, 2006 (Super Best Friends Play)