It's a pretty basic gameplay design.
God Hand stars a seemingly regular guy named Gene, who is revealed to have mysteriously come into possession of the 'God Hand', a magic arm with massive bad guy bashing abilities. The game begins with very little of the story known, and throws you into the action with only a 15 second cut-scene, which is very refreshing in these days of hour long intros. However, as the game progresses we see how Gene got where he is via a number of flashback sequences. We only saw the first hour or so of the story, but it was already filled with over the top twists, so don't expect Tolstoy – think Evil Dead. When you grab power ups, Gene chants 'I love it!' in a way that would make Bruce Campbell proud, and the enemy grunts of 'I'll get you' fit in with the cheesiness too. But it's a decent set up and scenario for what the gameplay consists of – beating up thugs and demons. The game begins in a western setting, with appropriate jangly country rock in the background. After beating up a few cowboy thugs, the first signs of the ridiculous plot raise their heads when ghostly demons start to appear.
At it's simplest level, God Hand unsurprisingly plays like a melee only version of Resident Evil 4, (and for those that have played it – it's actually even closer to a melee version of P.N.0.3). You control Gene from over the shoulder, with the camera locked ¾ behind with no manual camera control possible. The left stick controls turning left, right, forward and backwards, the right stick has dodge moves mapped to it, and L1 is a quick 180 turn. Most combat involves mashing face buttons to beat on bad guys while dodging their attacks, which would quickly get repetitive on it's own, but this is where the 'God Hand' comes in. After getting a few hits in, you can hit R1 to pause the action and bring up a combat 'Roulette Wheel', and this is where much of the game's crazy humour comes into play. Roulette-wheel moves range from a simple kick in the nads to some of the most over the top attacks ever seen in a video game. While it's fun to use some of the crazier moves, much like in a high end 2D fighter the best options are to select moves which allow long combos, meaning you'll get the most damage out of a single opening in an enemy's attack pattern. This is especially true for bosses, who are really just super versions of regular enemies with more health. Extra moves are purchasable via in-game stores, and apparently there are over 100 moves available throughout the game. It's a new spin on the classic 'make your own variety' style gameplay of old 2D beat em ups. None of these powers take away from another old school feature though – even on Easy, God Hand is a tough game.
God hand moves never get old
Graphically, God Hand is definitely a mixed bag. The backgrounds go from bland to blander, with low polygon counts, some nasty clipping, not many effects and not even a lot of texture variety - in a lot of ways it reminds us of an early 3rd party Dreamcast game. We only saw a few levels in our time with the game, but none were inspiring, and the vast majority of the atmosphere was provided by the delightfully cheesy soundtrack and sound effects. Enemy characters are well designed (and often funny – many circus freaks await) and their models are acceptable and often quite detailed, but enemies repeat just as quickly as they did in the 16-bit brawlers of 15 years ago. Even worse, the animation of the enemies is often stiff. While their offensive moves have enough animation, the weak AI and therefore jarring transition between animation sequences looks last gen (PS1/N64) in it's execution. A bright spot is that Gene looks detailed and is decently animated, and his moves have a good visual variety and it at least feels substantial when you whack an enemy. Yet despite the obvious graphical shortcomings, somehow the game looks...fun. It's an outdated graphical engine, and the animations do not assist suspension of disbelief for one minute, but this somehow adds to the game's charm, in that it actually looks as old school as the basic gameplay is aiming for. In this regard, it's somewhat like GTA: San Andreas – an onlooker's first impression of the graphics would be to think that they're awful, but as soon as you do something cool – like punch an enemy into space – then they won't care and will just want a go.
There's definitely...variety in enemy design.
Overall, we feel that God Hand will be a treat for beat em up fans, but will likely turn off some others. With this in mind, keep an eye out for PALGN's full review soon!
Trust me, you won't regret it.
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