God Hand is a game about punching, and only punching. It’s what the hand of god does, apparently: give people a good, hard slug in the breadbasket. It is a game about punching that has some very, very adamant fans who like to proclaim, loudly, the inadequacy of anyone who does not share their ardor for the game. Me, I don’t personally take any enjoyment from brawlers or Devil May Cry-esque games, so there’s nothing in God Hand for me besides a distant appreciation of its satirical flavor. Fortunately, I didn’t write this article, so it does a much better job of selling the game’s merits than I ever could. Hooray for delegation!
God Hand was the Demon’s Souls of it’s time. The cult that thrived around it influenced others to check it out but a good deal only played enough to declare it ‘too difficult’ or ‘overrated’. But it also shared with Demon’s Souls the fact that once you get the hang of it, it’s not really as difficult as we thought.
Loopy game…I loved it.
This game’s style is impetuous.
It makes me sad how under-appreciated God Hand is. At least Demon’s Souls got a fair amount of attention, but God Hand was hardly noticed by anyone.
Still, Maximum Anarchy looks like it may be a multiplayer God Hand, so perhaps there is still hope.
Great article. Clover Studios short history showed that that team was able to create such widely different games. Vieutiful Joe showed that they were able to infuse great new mechanics on an old retroey genre of 2D platformer brawler, but the series seemed to run out of steam very quickly. Okami and God Hand seems like polar opposites, Okami’s high concept artistic visuals and the more intellectual puzzley brush mechanics is almost a polar opposite to the God Hand more reflex intensive low brow humor game.
And now with Plat. Games, so far it seems that only the God Hand part of clover has survived and while I love Bayonetta and Vanquish and am looking forward to Anarchy Reigns, I would love to see the Okami spark shine again sometime in the future.
God Hand is my favorite game ever made in the history of the planet earth and all of the universe. @Hayley W: I do love Demon’s Souls very much as well… in fact my 60gb PS3 is exclusively a God Hand/Demon’s Souls game playing device with the occasional Blu-ray movie. :)