God Hand

GOD HAND 

Original Release: Capcom, PlayStation 2, 2006

Other Releases: PlayStation 3 (2012)

Part of a small movement in the 128-bit era that looked to revive the beat-em-up in 3D polygonal format, God Hand was perhaps the most noteworthy of these efforts given its developer, use of the Resident Evil 4 engine and general zaniness

God Hand (PS2, Capcom, 2006)

Where to Buy: Amazon

How to Emulate: PS2 Emulation Guide

Review by: C. M0use

I've been putting off playing God Hand for nearly a decade now because it's one of those "HOW DARE YOU NOT LOVE IT THE WAY I DO REEEEEEEE" sorts of games. I don't mean to attack anyone in particular for liking it, but it's got that cult hyper-vocal fanbase going that tends to take DEEP PERSONAL OFFENSE if you don't say everything they want to hear about it. 

So, let's get right to the good news: I liked quite a bit of the game. I think I get what it was going for, and it pulled off a lot of it in spite of what was obviously a garbage budget and total neglect from Capcom. Now the bad news: you people giving this game a 9/10 or 10/10 are legitimately out of your damn minds. 

Developer Shinji Mikami, the former Capcom cash cow who gave the world the Resident Evil series, appears to have been trying to revive the old-school arcade beat-em-up by bringing it into 3D. That's something that no one had really done well as of God Hand's release in 2006. 

I can picture the conversation between Mikami and the Capcom executives just prior to starting development:

Capcom Execs: "Shinji, our guy! I know Clover has had a bit of a rough run here, but we REALLY appreciate all that money Resident Evil made for us. So ... what do you have in mind for your next project?"

Mikami: "Well, I want to do a 3D beat em up."

Capcom Execs: "Oh?"

Mikami: "It will take place in a shitty future that is also the Old West, and a man with a magical arm will give spankings to punks."

Capcom Execs: "Ah hah."

Mikami: "The first bosses will be extremely homosexual."

Capcom Execs: " ... "

Mikami: "EXTREMELY homosexual."

Capcom Execs: "OK buddy. Well, here's what we can do for you. Why don't you take that Resident Evil 4 engine you have and hammer it into a beat-em-up somehow, and we'll give you a budget of this bag of potatoes. Can't wait to see what you come up with, champ."

The end result has received mixed reviews over the years, but most infamously a 3/10 from IGN which gave Mikami a Big Sad and which some goomers are still whining about a whole-ass 15 years later. 

I've looked at the review, and honestly I don't think it's all that bad. The reviewer could have put a little more effort into understanding how to make the game entertaining and manageable for themselves, and it seems like they gave up a little too quickly. But it also points out perfectly valid things that there's just no getting around: the limited button-mashy combat, the ass-backwards "dynamic difficulty" system, the inability to control the camera and the endless cheap shots that result. 3/10 is pretty harsh, but I completely understand someone getting frustrated with this game's relentless jank and not feeling that its weird charm and humor are enough to balance that out.

So God Hand clearly uses a repurposed Resident Evil 4 engine, but it has more of the feel of a Devil May Cry without guns. The setting is basically Hokuto no Ken characters in the Neo Old West, and it has the same sort of "13 year old boy conception of badassedness" that Mikami's Devil May Cry had. We're introduced to Gene, a corny wisecracker who has found himself in possession of the God Hand needed to save the world from demons. He's accompanied by a busty traveling companion and tries to pretend that she's totally not hot (*psssh whatever gurls are stupid*). At this point you have no idea what the hell else is going on, but as you beat your way through various punks you'll have more details gradually revealed to you. 

We lay into the punks with a combo of moves that is assigned to the Square button; individual moves can also be assigned to the Triangle and X buttons. In rough circumstances, you can bust out a limited amount of one-time "roulette" (special) moves with R1. The R2 button uncorks the power of the God Hand (once a meter is filled) for a very limited amount of time, making you invulnerable and causing your moves to do much bigger damage to the foes. 

Your approach will be heavy on the offense, as you don't have a block button. To avoid attacks, you have to flick the right analog stick to dodge in a direction (or weave in place by pressing Up, which tends to be the optimal thing to do). Meanwhile, there are a couple of unused shoulder buttons that could have been used for blocking. Dodging incoming attacks is made more problematic by the fact that you're usually fighting groups, and you can't move the camera around to see where everyone is or when they're attacking. 

And it really doesn't take much to kill you. The game is divided into small segments that you can save between, so the challenge often comes from those segments being very difficult. To be fair, though it's hard to come to grips with God Hand's quirks it is far from impossible; it turns out that the game's levels are something like a Metal Gear Solid boss battle or particularly tough sneaking segment, where you're expected to mess around with them at least a couple of times to suss out the best way to approach them. 

Why bother with this? It can be fun in a real gonzo way, like a particularly lighthearted Suda 51 game. It recaptures some of the more gloriously over-the-top feeling of Resident Evil 4 in that regard, but it's even more anarchic and wacky here. Both in terms of the ongoing story, and the in-game move collection that gradually expands to allow you to do things like spank foes to death and kick them to the moon. Being able to acquire new moves and create your own custom combo chains is also a big part of the appeal, and there's a casino you can go goof in (which has broken exploitable video poker) that gradually adds more games as the story wears on. 

A few levels in, though, the charm is pretty much worn out. As the enemies get tougher (and cheaper), the levels are more painful and require crazy amounts of re-tries (I guess when Mikami decided to revive an arcade experience he meant the real old-school pre-quarter-feeding days). As with Devil May Cry, there's no real sense of tension-release; it's just xxxxtreeeeme tension all the time. There's an insistence on you being perfect all the damn time as the enemies get tougher and gain all sorts of new abilities that the camera and jank controls don't allow you to adequately keep up with, and it just feels too difficult and cheap even on the "Easy" setting (which you'll want to go with on your first go-round of the game anyway). And with limited opportunity to restore your health between levels, you can end up saving yourself into a no-win situation.

I think this all goes back to the stock Mikami "13 year old boy" approach - being expected to play the same short levels and boss fights over and over and over and over and over and over is something you're much more willing to do at that age, when you don't have anything else going on. Once you're grown and have a million things going on all the time, it isn't worth the headache. 

Mikami has expressed a desire to revisit this game someday, and I think it's a great candidate for a PC remaster that irons out some gameplay problems and makes it look a little better. Of course, it's still in the hands of Capcom while Mikami long ago moved on from them (right after God Hand as a matter of fact). It would also be tough to get by the Oof Yikes Do Better crowd these days, what with the humor centering around big titties and LGBT stereotypes (again, firmly in 13 Year Old Boy World). I do hope God Hand gets a second and more polished chance somehow, but come into this original game expecting fair odds of not wanting to finish it. 

 

Links

FAQs

Unused game assets

God Hand Doom mod (abandoned early in development but partially functional)

Moveset switcher mod

Original soundtrack

Videos

Gameplay Video (& dissenting opinion)

Japanese TV ad