A simple game about very little other than kicking, pummeling and stomping your way through endless hordes of demons, robots and rejected extras from Mad Max 2.  It has a story in it somewhere about a demon king, banished long ago by a man with the arms of god. Gene, a young traveler, who wanders from place to place, gets into trouble and tries to keep his God Hand safe. An elite group of demons lead by the Devil Hand, hell bent on reclaiming the right arm to resurrect their king.  Does it sound cheesy? It sounds a bit like Kung-Fu but good, and with demons, though you better believe if Gene ever decided to choke himself, while, ahem, choking himself, he wouldn’t be found days later strung up in the closet. R.I.P. David Carradine. Lucky for us, Scott Glenn fills the void you left behind impeccably. Written and directed by none other than Shinji “You were nearly a Jill sandwich” Mikami, this is exactly the kind of plot you would come to expect by now. It was released in 2006/2007 and was Clover Studio’s swan song. It was not well received and did not sell very well.

This, in my humble opinion, was due to the fact that God Hand is hard as nails, and I’m not talking the “Oh, I’ll just hide behind my shield and walk really slowly” kind of difficulty but more that old school Contra level of difficulty. God Hand is a game that demands the player’s unfaltering attention and near perfect execution.

The game mocks you with its difficulty, lowering it the worse you preform, lulling you in a false sense of security, only to raise itself the second you start doing all right and battering you back into submission. At its core it is a classic ‘Beat ‘em up’ like Streets of Rage or Battle Toads, reimagined in 3D. It has stiff, precise tank controls and a tight over the shoulder camera that takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it there is no game more rewarding to play.

The combat is deceptively simple at first. You hammer the square button for your standard combo, triangle is set to a roundhouse kick and X to a high sidekick. Tilting the left stick either forward or back gives you a variety of different moves. The right stick is used for dodging, a lot like God of War, only with much more elegance and grace.  The combat doesn’t really shine though until you learn how to use your dodge to cancel the animation frames of your attacks, making you an unstoppable, brawling nightmare.

Let me give you an example. Some menacing, leather bound, baseball bat wielding, Benet type of guy. You know, from Commando? That buff guy that looked a little like Freddy Mercury in a chainmail tank top?  I know I hated that movie too.

Anyway, this Benet type rushes you, swings his baseball bat madly at your head. You duck his first strike and his second; retaliate with an uppercut that sends him flying. Now you side step to left so that you are directly opposite a wall, and gently roll your thumb from the right stick to the X button.  If preformed correctly, this will pin him against the wall with a never-ending flurry of perfectly timed kicks. This trick doesn’t work on the many female enemies in the game oddly and most bosses will flip out of the stream of kicks and punish the shit out of you for even trying.  You can also find and purchase new moves and can freely reassign them to any button and can even customize the combo set to the square button, so there is actually quite a lot of depth to the combat.

To me, the game has but one flaw, its way too long. A first play through can take you anywhere upwards of 20 hours to complete, which is just way too long for this type of game. Other than that it’s perfect. There is nothing quite like the feeling of immense satisfaction you get from utilizing the combat to the fullest, leaving nothing but a mound of broken bones and Mohawks behind you. There is never a moment that I couldn’t play a few minutes of God hand.

It’s my desert island game, though to be fair, I would probably build a life size statue of Francis York Morgan out of clay and sand, and silently sob at his feet as the night begins to fall.

Looks great. Sounds great. Plays great. What more do you want?

8/10