God Hand

THE BAD:
Bland environments; graphics aren't that great; encourages button mashing; old designs of enemies overused in a bad way; lacks surprise

SUMMARY:
Detailed Summary:
God Hand is a game where a man named Gene had lost his right arm and to replace it, a man who thought Gene could defeat Satan had given Gene the mystical power hand only known as the God Hand. The God Hand had a lot of power, and had made Gene very tough (not that his other arm and both his legs are tough too). Gene must fight against demons to save the damsel in distress known as Olivia. The demons only want two things: Olivia and the God Hand, and Gene is not going to let that happen.

Capcom has once again made one of their games not involving Megaman very hard. You'll be lucky if you can pass the first couple of levels without dying. You'll be pitted up against many enemies as you get to your woman and protect your God Hand. This game has some of the best martial arts style gameplay I have ever encountered, but I can say the extreme opposite for its graphics. Everything else is average to be honest. If you want to give your PS2 one last treat before God of War 2 and the PS3 comes out, try for this game.

Graphics: 2.5/5
This game's graphics are extremely bland, and not very nice to look at. Gene isn't exactly at Kratos's (God of War) style of graphical appeal, but Gene has it better than the X-Men in the Rise of Apocalypse.

I had just watched the beginning scene and thought "what the hell did Capcom and Clover Studios smoke on graphics presentation day", because that looked horrible. I had adjusted my TV so badly just to check if I have been getting fuzzy reception, but that's not it. Instead, it's just that the graphics aren't too awesome. It's like the graphics seen in a late PSX game. In the beginning scene, you are presented with a God Hand or something, and I found that the backgrounds started getting all fuzzy, and the character models got a bit jumpy in some parts. Could've been better.

And yes, it could've been a lot better. I tried executing all these moves, but it's either that my eyes are messing with me, or the TV is getting fuzzy again, or that the bad graphics are trying to get me on their side. I think I was about to get very dizzy trying to execute moves using the God Hand. Oh man, the yellow, shiny power dust coming from the God Hand, it makes me all dizzy, and I almost fell off my seat. Almost, however, the moves didn't last long enough to make me fall off from dizziness. Holy...did Gene pound the enemy right into the building and the building didn't appear to suffer much? Seems like it. When I smacked some dude into the building in the game, the building didn't suffer. It actually kinda just stood there like it didn't feel anything.

But it's not all bad. At least the character models aren't all blocky like the characters are in Final Fantasy VII. Actually, if it wasn't for how bland the colors are within them, the character models would actually be at Devil May Cry standards (not God of War, their graphics = pwnage). The models could use a bit of a job where they don't appear to lag a fair bit, and then they'll be good.

That's about it for graphics

Sound: 3/5
Hooray for rock music and kung-fu sounds. My only big nag here is the repetitiveness of the punch sounds. That's about it really. The catchy music is actually pretty nice to hear while you're out there, risking Gene's life to kill bad guys. I can't go into too much detail here, sorry guys.

Control: 4/5
The one thing I seriously hate about these controls is how often you will be smashing them throughout the game. Since the levels involve you having to kill mean spirited beings, you will need to be prepared to start mashing X and O, as well as Square and Triangle. If you feel that you have to run and prepare for a big attack, you can just press L1 to turn 180 degrees and get away. But if you're surrounded by enemies, you better just combo them to death if you don't die. And if enemies are about to smack you down, you can use the right analogue stick to get out of the way. It's the only way to not get hurt unless you run straight into another enemy, in which case, they will hurt you instead. Of course, the controls are pretty responsive, and are thought out pretty well. It's how often you're going to use them that doesn't really satisfy me. If you don't like mashing buttons, don't bother with this game. I nearly disabled my main 4 buttons before this game got finished.

So I'll say it again: The control scheme has been thought out well and is easy to pick up. It's the fact that you'll nearly disable them towards the end of the game if you play it often that can either make or break this game. Attempt this game if you have a second controller to spare, or if you aren't going to play often.

Gameplay: 5/5
It's very rare to get perfect marks for gameplay with me, simply because I don't get satisfied with general gameplay easy, but this is just the best gameplay ever. In fact, repetitiveness can be good if your array of enemies differs, and the same with your strategy. You will need to get different strategies as you progress through God Hand, as you will be pitted against many enemies, and will need to have different strategies since enemies will come to you in different numbers. Let me tell you this:

You are liscenced to be a combo-whore!

Seriously, though, it would be the best thing to do. If you don't use combos a lot, you will be dying so often and so badly. At the beginning, you will find that single jabs and kicks are going to hurt one enemy. You will need to combo enemies around you. Do this, and you can succeed. Careful, as enemies can sometimes learn your combos, defend, and hurt you. But you can simply dodge them, right? Maybe...if you just got blocked and finished a combo or slow attack, you are vulnerable. If you answered no to the statement, you can dodge.

This is the area that God Hand does extremely well with, but that's it. If you love gameplay as much as I do, God Hand is your game.

Replay Value: 3.5/5
Finishing God Hand gets you nothing...except maybe one mark for finsihing hard games since this game is hard. If you liked a challenge, you can just try this again but on a higher difficulty setting to what you just did. If you did this on the highest difficulty, I suppose you could do it again. If you didn't want this challenge, you could just leave this game for a while. There isn't much to do, other than to buy all of the attacks and maybe kill some time killing enemies. And if you cannot do that, then you may not want to replay this again.

Overall: 18/25
This game did extremely well in the gameplay section, however, graphics aren't exactly too great. If Clover Studios were to have redone this game with Capcom, they could've made an attempt to make their graphics a lot better. The repetitive sounds couldn't be helped, and the controls are genius but button mashing is standard for this genre (though I do not like destroying my buttons). Overall, nice game, but could've been a fair bit better.

Jak's Rating system: 18/25
Neoseeker's Rating system: 3.6