God Hand

God Hand, by all reports I'd seen, has always been one of those "love it or haven't yet played it" games. And it's easy to see why. First cutscene: a man and a woman walk into a dusty town and spot a group of tough-ugly thugs, and the first thing out of the guy's mouth is an insistence that they're better-looking than the girl. Aggressively gay protagonist? I am all over this one.

I'm just being silly, of course. There's much more to God Hand than homosexuality. But in case you want more, there's also Mr. Gold and Mr. Silver, two scantily clad, quiveringly effeminate henchmen of a villain called "Elvis." They turn in a bizarre, squealing performance that makes me feel like I should be offended on behalf of actual gay people. Like some other Japanese portrayals of homosexuals, though, like Hard Gay and those guys from Mother 3, it seems more affectionate than derisive. It's like putting a cowboy hat on an American character.

Okay, okay. The fighting is the important thing, right? It's fast-paced, intense, but somehow thoughtful and patient as well. A thinking man's fistfight. You customize your attacks, building a pattern to best suit your enemies' inclinations, you read your enemies' movements, you asses the position of threats... It's got me thinking and caring about what I'm doing more than damn near any other game in recent memory.

I'm forced to compare it to another game I've played recently, the anime fantasy RTS Grim Grimoire. Like God Hand, I found the story engaging, and the game was fun - but God Hand handles tension better. Grim Grimoire is slow-paced overall, with units crawling towards each other over the course of tens of minutes.

Tens!

Still, it's tense all the way through. And that's the problem - I'm scrambling to gather my forces, all to keep ahead of an enemy who's doing the same, ever growing stronger and creeping towards my base from behind the fog of war. I get burned out on tension, playing that kind of game. There's no break from the tension, just a perpetual low-level rumble in the stress center of my brain.

In God Hand, the tension comes in discrete encounters that the player enters at his own discretion. For the most part, the player can hang back, see what he's getting into, and make a plan. As a result, the game's interest curve is perfectly ribbed for the player's pleasure, rising and falling as the player chooses to meet each new challenge. There's also some unexpected spikes in difficulty in the form of enemies who transform into demons when defeated - it's always a surprise, because even on repeated playthroughs it's never the same enemies. It's not always a welcome surprise, but it keeps things interesting and the treasure drops are good.

Oh, and that's another thing! In God Hand, failure is instructive. Because combat is won by quick thinking, rather than button-mashing and luck, the player bounces back from each loss with a little more knowledge and a little better prepared to win. But in the same spirit, the player also keeps all the treasure and currency he's won, giving struggling players a chance to pull themselves up. It's a simple form of difficulty adjusting, but it works. And God Hand can use it, because it's one hell of a hard game.

I've played other difficult games. All too often, not only am I defeated, I feel defeated. See my Ninja Gaiden II review - I was bitching about a boss that kept kicking my ass. His patterns seemed unbeatable, his actions unpredictable, and the way he fought was utterly without precedent in the rest of the game. I had a similar experience fighting Elvis - you know, the boss of Mr. Gold and Mr. Silver - but as I played, his movements began to make sense, I learned to dodge his attacks, and I figured out that son of a bitch.

If I had beaten Ninja Gaiden II, it would have been a labor of pure stubbornness. I'm inspired to keep playing God Hand because, at every turn, each challenge seems surmountable and worthwhile, made up of pieces that make sense individually and collectively add up to something like a puzzle. It's no exaggeration to say that God Hand is the Braid of brawlers. Silly and meaningless, perhaps. But not, technically, an exaggeration.

And in the end, isn't that what's

Oops, just reached my self-imposed word limit. See you later!