So, you're the developer Clover and you just released Okami, a brilliant piece of software that went toe-to-toe with Gears of War for game of the year in 2006. It featured an intricately woven tale of gods and men battling against an ancient evil in a beautifully drawn medieval Nippon that looked like it had leapt right out of a Japanese oil painting, easily beating the most recent Zelda at its own game. Having just created what by all accounts is a gorgeous modern classic, what's your next step? Why, making a spastic post-apocalyptic beat-em-up where a smart mouthed martial artist defends helpless villagers by spanking sexy female demons and punching gorillas in the balls. Sounds about right to me.

   Having played Okami and God Hand in quick succession, I am utterly baffled they both came from the same development house. It's sort of like how sometimes when you've got two brothers from the same family one of them will graduate from law school summa cum laude, join the Republican Party, and pull down a six figure income while the other one will drop out of college, become heavily involved in both the wearing and smoking of hemp, and spend his days sleeping with a steady stream of hairy women named after flowers. I mean, it happens, but it still seems strange. My current theory is that after finishing Okami, a grueling labor of love into which the developers poured their very hearts and souls, a whole bunch of them simply went crazy and just decided to throw whatever the hell popped into their heads into their next game. I'm sure the fact that Capcom dropped the hammer on Clover shortly thereafter didn't help matters either. I'm picturing the brainstorming meeting with a bunch of portly, middle aged Japanese guys staggering about carrying bottles of malt liquor and screaming out random thoughts at the top of their lungs. "Purple poison Chihuahuas!" "Crazy midgets!" "Slutty demon bitches!" "A big fat Mexican guy named Elvis who dresses like a Buddhist monk. And when you fight him, it plays remixed Elvis music!" Pure genius.

You shall have no other gods besides the one that lives in my arm.

   There isn't much setup to God Hand. When the game begins it shows a very brief cut scene of the hero, a sass-mouthed martial artist named Gene, entering a rundown desert village with his lady companion, Olivia, and immediately being accosted by thugs. Then the violence begins. Basically God Hand is a 3-D action game. You close with your foes and pound on the square button to initiate a string of fast combo strikes. Wail on them enough and they'll get dizzy, usually allowing you, by pressing circle, to execute some sort of enemy specific move such as a suplex, a cobra twist, or in the case of the ladies, a brutal spanking. Of course your foes, not wanting to have their faces punched to custard, will often block your attacks and/or respond with their own. Thankfully your enemies' defenses can be shattered like grandma's antique china with a quick block breaker, and moving the right joystick in various directions allows you to easily dodge most of their attacks. Gene can't block, which seems kind of unfair at first, but in the long run the dodge is much more versatile. Overall Gene's fighting style is deep and flexible, as you can swap attacks around when you find or purchase more.

   Gene also has two other aces up his sleeves. If you really want to make enemies scream like the little sissy girls they are you can press R1 to bring up your Roulette Wheel. Once selected, time slows to a crawl and a list of powerful super moves appears on the screen. The player then has a limited amount of time to scroll through the moves and select the one desired. Most of these moves are really strong, and all have vastly different effects. One pulls a single enemy close and stuns him. Another refills a portion of Gene's health. And one has Gene simply haul off and deliver a devastating kick to an enemy's genitals. Depending on the strength of the moves, they consume one to three Roulette orbs that Gene can recover by picking up special cards.

   Finally, Gene can also make use of the titular Godhand. By fighting enemies the player fills Gene's TP gauge, and once it's reached a certain point, the player can press R2 to unleash the Godhand. Apparently Gene has the right arm of a great warrior (I am working real hard to suppress a "Master Bator" joke here... oops! failed again!) who once wielded divine power, or something like that. Regardless, the Godhand is to your enemies what cheap liquor is to sorority girls; it makes them really easy. When using it, Gene is effectively invincible, his attacks are unblockable, and his hits do more damage. The catch is, of course, the TP meter runs down very quickly when using the Godhand, so the player needs to ration it for when he's facing large groups of enemies or bosses. Or someone who wants to touch him inappropriately.

Hilarity ensues.

Weenies need not apply.

   I already knew about the game's quirky sense of humor when I fired it up, so I was expecting good things. After playing for about an hour, however, I hated it. As I continued to play more my hatred grew to the point that I actually hurled myself from a window to my death. The Devil sent me back from Hell, though, because he felt playing God Hand was more torturous than anything he could think up. It's not the humor. Like I said, that's good. The voice acting is solid, the graphics are fine (although getting too close to buildings often causes walls to disappear in a way that is very disorienting), and the music is great. It's the MOTHER *%^$ING DIFFICULTY!!!! AAAAAAAAARRRRGGHH!!!

   God Hand is a mean game. And I'm not talking about "dismissively shoving you into a locker while it's walking by" kind of mean. I'm talking about "violently hurling you into a puddle of mud while you're asking out the girl you've had a crush on for like three years and then pulling your pants down as you stagger blubbering to your feet" kind of mean. God Hand hates you, and it wants you to know it. Enemies hit hard, and though most are easily dispatched on their own, they tend to swarm like fat guys at a Super Chinese Buffet. There's no easy way to fight multiple enemies, so you spend much of the game throwing a couple of punches, dodging away, throwing a couple of punches, dodging away, rinse, repeat. To make things even worse, many stages are long and have only one measly checkpoint. I can't tell you how many times I made it to the end of a stage only to have two huge dudes come running up and graphically demonstrate what I'm afraid will happen if I take a shower at the gym, sending me back to arduously clobber my way through the entire stage again, at which point the same thing happens. Also the camera, rigidly fixed on Gene's back, really doesn't provide the optimum view, especially when fighting several guys, which is pretty much all the time. Once you've passed an enemy, he disappears from view, but his punches to the back of the head still hurt just as much as if he was standing right next to you. The game does give you a little Halo-style radar in the upper-left corner, but in a game like this you really need to know what an enemy is doing, not just where he is. And my absolute favorite thing (note the subtle use of sarcasm) was the Difficulty Gauge. Essentially, the better you fight the higher the gauge goes, and each time it goes up a level the enemies get tougher. So even if you get really good your foes will always be more than capable of kicking your ass. Sweet.

Oh God Hand! I can't stay mad at you!

   Strangely, though, around the end of the third area my rage began to abate. Battles seemed to go smoother, stages progressed quicker, and the locales got more interesting. In fact somewhere in the fifth level, despite routinely cursing up a storm while playing, I started to really enjoy myself. I don't know if it necessarily got easier, since the Difficulty Gauge ensured most fights were still bitches, but I seemed to have found the rhythm of the game. God Hand definitely espouses an old school, trial-and-error, pattern memorization style of gameplay, and though it's really hard, it's certainly not impossible. You really, really have to work for victory, but when you finally get there, it feels that much more rewarding. And since the game is so hilarious, each stage has something weird or funny to make it feel like it was worth struggling to get there. When those spastic credits roll, you'll certainly have a mighty sense of accomplishment, which you'll probably want to celebrate with the most loud-ass detonation of your favorite bodily noise that you can muster.

Get out those God Thumbs!

   Even with some of its frustrating flaws, and the fact that it made me cry on three nonconsecutive occasions, God Hand gets the thumbs up from me. Like that sort of ugly guy who still gets all the ladies, its goofy charm and clever sense of humor make it too hard to resist. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for pathetic little girly men, but if you're a tough, hard-bitten gamer with nothing left to lose, you might just want to high-five the God Hand!

       ... Mike Zeller