God Hand

Remember how Streets of Rage was totally awesome? Golden Axe? Double Dragon? Guardian Heroes? The Simpsons? That X-Men game that, like, totally rocked? Of course you do. So you know you have a wide range of choice when it comes to top-quality beat 'em ups. There are hours of gameplay contained within even just one of those classics, and they're just the start of a rich beat 'em up back catalogue.

So why play God Hand? Is it better than any of these classics? No. No it isn't.

In fact, it's like most other 3D beat 'em ups, in that it's not actually worth playing, it looks terrible, the cutscenes are terrible, the fighting system is terrible, the AI is terrible, the scripting is terrible, and so on.

You play the game by hammering Square. Ocassionally you might need to dodge an attack by flicking the right stick. You can 'unleash the God Hand' with R2, which makes you invincible and means you should hammer Square faster so you can do the same moves, only quicker than usual. And you can select moves from a spinning roulette wheel should you fancy. Wow, picking a move from a menu. Fantastic. Well-camouflaged.

There are about a million different attacks for you to unlock, but most of them aren't really worth using. Once you have paused the game, gone through a couple of menus, and assigned some quick moves to your Square button (Hammering Square cycles through the moves you assign to the button, forming a so-called 'combo' that would make Yu Suzuki turn in his grave, if he were dead), you really don't need to do much else. You could assign single moves to X and Triangle, as well as Down plus any of these three buttons, but besides a sweep and a launcher, you're pretty much done.

And that's the game in its entirety. Press Square, lots. Do well, and the game gets harder. Do poorly, die, and you restart from the beginning of the sub-stage (It's quite generous in terms of checkpointing).

There are some pointless diversions for people who don't like playing 'hammer Square'-style games, like a shop, where you can buy new moves, extra health, and extra slots for your Square 'COMBO BUTTAN.' But don't get that last one, it drops your DPS and is irreversible once you've filled the slot. There's also a casino full of sh*tty GAMBLAN GAEMZ, as well as a training area (Where you hammer Square some more), but really, they're pointless, and totally unenjoyable.

If you want a decent beat 'em up, play one of the classics.

If you want a rich fighting system... Why are you playing beat 'em ups? Go and play an adversarial fighter.

1 star(s) out of 5

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