In trying to write some sort of review for this game, I’ve had an incredibly hard time. God Hand is one of those games where you have a thousand stories to tell, each one detailing some awesome feature of your experience. You have so many things to say that each time you try to make a start, you just end up waving your hands about saying "It’s this awesome!" Playing God Hand can best be described as being like the very first time you were left home alone by your parents. You promised that you would be on your best behavior and, of course, the moment they were gone you just went nuts. Mere minutes after dear old mom and dad had left, you’d already turned the stereo up to full blast and were in the middle of an amazing air-guitar performance. That’s exactly what playing God Hand feels like. It’s all about rocking out in the most ridiculous and innocent way possible, as only a child can do. Then, as the song winds down, you turn around to discover your parents watching you; on their faces is a mixture of bewilderment and amusement. Wordlessly, they gather up some forgotten item and leave the house again, a small smirk written across their faces. That awkward moment is what it’s like trying to explain God Hand to another person.

I think that the main reason that it’s so hard to explain the appeal of this game to another person is that it ignores most of the framework that we’ve come to expect from a game. There is a story, but it’s a clichéd "save-the-world-from-an-ancient-evil" sort of thing. The level design is nearly non-existent; there are buildings and other structures, but you hardly ever notice them nor do you ever really need to. It doesn’t help that the graphics are nothing special either. Everything just looks bland; in some respects, this looks like a game from the early days of the PS2. So, you’ve got a game which looks quite bad, level design which basically means that every stage is just a set of almost-empty rooms and no story to motivate you. This sounds like a bad start, but as you start playing the game you realize just how clever it is. God Hand is a brawler, a fighting game and it focuses on the important things: a deep fighting system, solid mechanics and an amazing presentation.

In-game enemies run from everyday punks and thugs to guys who take the mohawk-styled hair off their head and throw it at you. The fatter enemies in the game jog towards you at a sedentary pace, pausing every now and then to catch their breath. You’ll fight bosses ranging from a pair of gay twins dressed in drag (or a giant mechanical crane, or a gorilla in a wrestling costume) to a midget sized Power Ranger squad. All of this is accompanied by a bizarre surf rock soundtrack that fits in perfectly with the game. God Hand knows that it’s a game and it revels in it. It’s fun and flashy, never serious. It doesn’t burden itself with overly done CGI movies explaining the plot or motivations of the characters. All of the cut scenes are filled with purposely hammy acting and sexual innuendo. None of it is necessary but it makes it clear that the game is having some fun with its own cheesiness.

You start the game with about 15 moves out of which you can build your own 4-move combo. As you progress through the game, you can unlock almost 100 individual moves out of which to craft your own combinations. Gene also comes with limited special techniques called ‘Roulette Moves’. These over the top moves do everything from launching an enemy far off into the distance (they literally disappear into thin air with an anime-like wink) to having Gene kick one enemy in the nuts, for no reason other than the fun of it. Finally, Gene can also unleash his God Hand ability which makes him temporarily faster and stronger. The fighting mechanics and combo system is deep and well thought out. This is good because the game is hard.

Forget all the nut-kicking and mohawk-throwing; this is one of the hardest games out there. Even the weakest enemies in the game, such as the first two thugs that you meet in the very first level can kill you if you’re not careful. Gene can deal a lot of damage, especially if you take a minute or two to set up your own combo, but his opponents can equally vicious. You also have no way of blocking enemy attacks in the game; this has been replaced by an all-purpose dodging move. Tap the right-thumbstick and you’ll be able to dodge out of the way of incoming attacks. Dodging makes you invulnerable for the duration of the move and is something you’ll be doing a lot of. Then there is the dynamic difficulty system. Every time you successfully land attacks on enemies while avoiding damage yourself, you’ll fill in a level gauge. Fill it up all the way and you’ll hear a crowd cheering and the level will increase. Suddenly, enemies are smarter and hit harder and every stage becomes a battle to avoid taking too much damage but just enough to keep the difficulty level manageable. The dynamic difficulty levels aren’t there just to annoy you though; higher levels give you more cash to spend on techniques or gamble at the in game casinos.

As you start to play God Hand, you realize that it doesn’t matter that the game doesn’t have a great story or pretty level design. The levels are basically just arenas for you to play around with the fighting mechanics and fine tune your combos. As for the story, well, did Street Fighter need a great story to be fun? Did Soul Caliber? God Hand gets everything right where it needs to, in the mechanics, presentation and style. It can’t be bothered with anything else and neither should you.

If there is a part of the game that truly frustrates, it is the camera. Shinji Mikami, the man behind Resident Evil 4, came up with the idea for God Hand and it shows in the camera. It’s an awkward over-the-shoulder deal and it’s not well suited to the game. Most of the time that you take damage, it will be because it came from off screen. Other than that though, God Hand is a rare sort of game. It’s deep and fun, a combination that is so hard to find with most other games out there. If you can bear with the way that it throws you to the wolves in the beginning, you’ll find a great game waiting for you.

-Nikhil