Aside from seeing its cover pop up in a few of Dunkey's videos, I knew next to nothing about God Hand going into it, but seeing its immensely high average rating on Backloggd and the reviews that were exclusively just quotes from the game kept me curious about what the game was actually like. Although I have played through a few of Shinji Mikami's games in the past (with the original Resident Evil 4 being one of my favorite games), there was so much about God Hand that made his other games feel tame and restrained in comparison, so when I found out that this was essentially his passion project, it totally made sense to me. Although it took me a bit to fully grasp everything about the game and its mechanics, I immediately fell in love with God Hand once everything clicked, and it was one of those games where I spent practically every waking moment thinking about how amazing it was.

God Hand is going to be celebrating its 17th anniversary later this year, and I don't think that a single game has come out in all that time with a combat system that even comes close to the one that is present here. This game's in-depth and hectic combat system is one that blends seamlessly with its high difficulty curve, as customizing your combos with new moves from several different martial arts means that you're constantly trying to find ways to take enemies down effectively while also trying to dodge as many attacks as possible. When you kill an enemy in God Hand, you practically send them into another plane of existence, as all of the moves both look and feel satisfying to execute thanks to their pure, raw aggression, with the pummels, stomps, suplexes, and spankings being especially fun to pull off with their flashy animations and use of button mashing. Despite how tough it can be at times, God Hand never felt outright unfair to me, as the lack of any real secret to being good at the game other than just knowing its ins and outs meant that every victory, no matter how small, felt immensely rewarding. This especially applies to the boss fights in God Hand, as the cranking up of the game's fast pace and focus on reaction time and positioning leads to some of the hardest, most pulse-pounding, and exciting boss fights I've ever seen in a video game.

In my eyes, the gameplay alone was enough to make God Hand an all-timer for me, but it also managed to stick the landing in so many other ways that I ended up loving the game even more than I could've imagined. Even with its challenging combat, God Hand practically never takes itself seriously, as its quirky brand of absurdist comedy made it so that my encounters with poisonous chihuahuas, punk rockers, and boss fights against lucha libre gorillas never felt out of place alongside the slapstick-heavy action, over-the-top storytelling and lovably campy voice acting. The game's stylish art direction made all of the environments and enemy types feel very memorable, with the major boss fights looking especially striking in their scaly, hellish designs. The music for each of the game's stages are all immensely catchy, and they also fit the tone and atmosphere of each stage really well. God Hand also allows you to gamble in between stages in order to potentially get closer to getting that next upgrade, and not only are the more conventional card games like blackjack and video poker already fun and laid-back to play, but you also get the opportunity to bet on chihuahua races, and while I lost money every single time I played that minigame, I still found it quite fun. There's no doubt in my mind that God Hand is one of the very best games I've ever played, and while there are still a ton of character action games that I still want to play, I don't think that any of them will be able to get any better than this.

Before there was Oblivion with guns, there was Resident Evil 4 without guns. More so than with respect to even its emphasis on crowd control, dynamic difficulty scaling or abundance of contextual carpal tunnel generators, God Hand’s arguably most reminiscent of its spiritual cousin in terms of how forward-thinking it is.

An action game likes convenience. To be able to jump in and fight what you want, when you want with as little fluff as possible’s part of why DMC’s Bloody Palace (or equivalents) became a genre mainstay, why Bayonetta 3’s revamped chapter select system is probably the single most underappreciated feature of 2022 and why the not-infrequent complaint about Nioh having a level select menu is so mystifying. Play enough games from when this family tree was still in its relative infancy and you’ll likely realise how easy it is to take such features for granted, which is why it's so cool that God Hand had something like the Fighting Ring so early on in the genre’s history.

A practice area coupled with all sorts of bespoke combat encounters you can tackle and/or fail any number of times, totally free of consequence, would be a natural fit for any action game, but it’s especially great for God Hand because of how its equipment system works. There’s not just a litany of attacks at your disposal, each with their own distinct properties and niches, but you can also equip any of them in any order and assign them to any button. It’s an unprecedented degree of customisation that might’ve otherwise been overwhelming without an area like this, and which I’m not sure’s been matched before or since. The likes of The Wonderful 101, God of War 3 and DMC5 might let me switch from one weapon to any other in any order, but not even they let me build a moveset out of pimp slaps if I feel like it, purely because I can.

The draw of experimentation that comes with this is hampered a bit by certain rough patches – for example, multi-hit attacks occasionally feel disincentivised in a way that doesn’t seem intentional because of how frequently enemies block and counterattack as the difficulty level increases (especially on Hard where you’re permanently at the highest), while low profile moves which dodge enemies’ high attacks for some reason don’t avoid jumping grabs – but what helps keep the combat malleable despite these is the counterhit system. Interrupt an enemy or boss’ attack with one of your own and they’ll varyingly flinch, be stunned, get juggled or launched, even if none of those properties work on them normally. It creates an engaging sense of back-and-forth and ensures you’re never completely strapped for options no matter how suffocating the situation you find yourself in or which moves you've equipped, especially when taken in tandem with being able to cancel any of Gene’s attacks at any point with one of three different dodges (which, provided your thumbs can remain intact, is also particularly helpful for circumventing the aforementioned issues with multihit attacks).

On that point, God Hand’s handling of defence is something more games could probably stand to learn from. The Great Sensei is a sink or swim moment in this respect and, in my view, the embodiment of what makes it shine, stringing together high attacks, vertical attacks and crowd control in blistering succession that demands you have an iron grip on each of Gene’s dodges and what they’re for like no boss before or after him. He would still be infamously difficult because of all this in a vacuum, but I think part of why he’s such a challenge also stems from how many other games with real-time combat systems treat their (often singular) dodge as a one-size-fits-all invincibility bubble and how tough it can be to break the conditioning that that sort of standardisation instils. Lost Judgment is another 3D beat-‘em-up which plays excellently, but despite being 15 years God Hand’s junior on platforms multitudes more powerful, it can’t help but feel comparatively primitive whenever Yagami “evades” a sweep kick by ducking his head. In contrast, God Hand’s more nuanced combination of side/backward dodges and bobbing & weaving reminded me loosely of Soulcalibur, which on top of its counterhit system makes one wonder how much other action games might benefit from leaning into their common ground with fighting games.

Not all of God Hand’s boss fights or enemies utilise its mechanics equally well, the final boss in particular running the risk of jettisoning the player’s goodwill into the bin, but some scattershot ups and downs are to be expected when your game is so bonkers at every turn. It speaks to how entertaining its stages manage to be, both conceptually and in design, that you end the game with no further mechanics than what you start with and it never once feels stale. There’s an inherent excitement that comes with cramming so many clowns, demons, cowboys, Venetian canals, floating pyramids and other seemingly disparate ideas that you don’t know what to expect next; while some might be surprised at the fact that he considers Resident Evil 4 to be the opposite, it’ll likely shock nobody that Shinji Mikami feels that God Hand is the game with the most amount of himself in it. What results is no doubt chaotic, but more than worth looking past the imperfections of for experiencing what’s essentially his and a bunch of other loveable goofballs’ collective personality transcribed onto a disc, which also happens to be perhaps the only game that feels like an interactive version of an action film’s fight choreography.

If you happen to still have a PS2 lying around, I can attest that the ~80 gamerbux that used copies of this bad boy go for are worth it. You may not be you know who, but you’ll feel like it by the end.

Yes, I lied in my last review. I played God Hand before The Wonderful 101.

Actually, I played halfway through nine months ago and I stopped because reasons. It was one of the top-tier games on my shame list and now it's one of my favorites.

I did a lot of mental notes while I was playing then I came to the obvious conclusion that I don't need to review every game in my backloggd but this one was becoming so special to me that I can't help but comment (a little) about it. Surely one day I'll come back with a RE4R-ass-long review but for now, my two cents:

1. The last fight against Azel is the best in the genre
2. Counter hits fucking rules

That said, the male fantasy surrounding it, the discriminatory jokes, the fucking spanking prompt and overall characterization make me sure that God Hand could be defined with this meme. And I don't know how to feel about it.

(i'm not dissing mikami y'all, the person would be the game itself lmao)