This is a video game.
This, is a video game.
This shouldn't have to be said. But ever greater grow the perverse incentives which have led astray this nubile young artistic medium, trying desperately to please the tastes and desires of a growing audience who want video games to be something else. To enjoy God Hand, you have to be a fan of VIDEO GAMES. If this experience turns you away, perhaps you've been lying to yourself that you actually like video games in the first place. Maybe you're the problem.
God Hand doesn't give a shit. God Hand is a game. God Hand will make no attempts to reward or please you through any way other than the satisfaction of play. Mastering a system, making it your own, and overcoming hardships through pure intrinsic reward and intuition. When you play God Hand right, it's like a symphony in your hands.
From a gamefeel standpoint, the words that come to mind are raw, snappy, crunchy. This game is proof that simple is better. Write a system, and trust the player to deal with it. ( And throw in some incredible audio design feedback to top things off )
More games used to be this way. Perhaps it was merely a consequence of an era where developers simply didn't know better, Pandora's box hadn't been opened, they were blissfully ignorant of the power in their hands. But modern devs understand now how to fine tune and cheat gamefeel to be friendlier to the player, ease them into success, give them an edge. What they fail to recognize however is that sometimes that power is best left unused, a temptation of sin that's so hard to ignore when you're overly concerned with playtesting, metrics, and broadening your audience.
When you're so eager to over-engineer your gamefeel, it eventually leaves your game evoking words more akin to gummy, sticky, or prescriptive. Particularly now in taking a step into the past, God Hand is just so refreshing. Animations play, hitboxes clash, and you deal with the consequences.
I had a far better time with it then I expected to have. The game's sense of humor, fantastic cast, and novel surprises were just icing on the cake which kept any part of this game from feeling stale or dull. Even the sometimes excessive repeated content didn't detract to much for me, as it often served to give me an opportunity to display how much I'd grown at playing the game by dominating a once imposing threat in seconds flat.
This game never stops expecting MORE from you. The scenarios are built at your expense, and almost any moment of quiet or reprieve where most games would seemingly step off the gas, God Hand takes the opportunity to sucker punch you, up the ante, lay on the pressure, and let you know that you need to stay on your toes.
This is how you demand mastery. Take the rough stone that is the player, apply enough pressure, and a diamond will come shining out the other end. A game SHOULD expect you to actually be good at it in order to succeed, shouldn't it? If your goal isn't to be good at something, why are you even playing? God Hand understands this implicitly. Having one of the best mirror matches in any game makes it clear what they valued, here.
The only things I could really find to complain about playing God Hand was that the auto-lock-on was occasionally a bit disagreeable, the camera could have benefitted from backing out in a few fights, and that the game ends a bit abruptly. I would have killed for a more bombastic "mine is the drill that will pierce the heavens!" style ending that turned things up to 11, but what is there is serviceable enough.
I laughed, I cried, my wrist hurts. Sounds like any good session of chain yanking to me. What more is there to say?
This, is a video game.
This shouldn't have to be said. But ever greater grow the perverse incentives which have led astray this nubile young artistic medium, trying desperately to please the tastes and desires of a growing audience who want video games to be something else. To enjoy God Hand, you have to be a fan of VIDEO GAMES. If this experience turns you away, perhaps you've been lying to yourself that you actually like video games in the first place. Maybe you're the problem.
God Hand doesn't give a shit. God Hand is a game. God Hand will make no attempts to reward or please you through any way other than the satisfaction of play. Mastering a system, making it your own, and overcoming hardships through pure intrinsic reward and intuition. When you play God Hand right, it's like a symphony in your hands.
From a gamefeel standpoint, the words that come to mind are raw, snappy, crunchy. This game is proof that simple is better. Write a system, and trust the player to deal with it. ( And throw in some incredible audio design feedback to top things off )
More games used to be this way. Perhaps it was merely a consequence of an era where developers simply didn't know better, Pandora's box hadn't been opened, they were blissfully ignorant of the power in their hands. But modern devs understand now how to fine tune and cheat gamefeel to be friendlier to the player, ease them into success, give them an edge. What they fail to recognize however is that sometimes that power is best left unused, a temptation of sin that's so hard to ignore when you're overly concerned with playtesting, metrics, and broadening your audience.
When you're so eager to over-engineer your gamefeel, it eventually leaves your game evoking words more akin to gummy, sticky, or prescriptive. Particularly now in taking a step into the past, God Hand is just so refreshing. Animations play, hitboxes clash, and you deal with the consequences.
I had a far better time with it then I expected to have. The game's sense of humor, fantastic cast, and novel surprises were just icing on the cake which kept any part of this game from feeling stale or dull. Even the sometimes excessive repeated content didn't detract to much for me, as it often served to give me an opportunity to display how much I'd grown at playing the game by dominating a once imposing threat in seconds flat.
This game never stops expecting MORE from you. The scenarios are built at your expense, and almost any moment of quiet or reprieve where most games would seemingly step off the gas, God Hand takes the opportunity to sucker punch you, up the ante, lay on the pressure, and let you know that you need to stay on your toes.
This is how you demand mastery. Take the rough stone that is the player, apply enough pressure, and a diamond will come shining out the other end. A game SHOULD expect you to actually be good at it in order to succeed, shouldn't it? If your goal isn't to be good at something, why are you even playing? God Hand understands this implicitly. Having one of the best mirror matches in any game makes it clear what they valued, here.
The only things I could really find to complain about playing God Hand was that the auto-lock-on was occasionally a bit disagreeable, the camera could have benefitted from backing out in a few fights, and that the game ends a bit abruptly. I would have killed for a more bombastic "mine is the drill that will pierce the heavens!" style ending that turned things up to 11, but what is there is serviceable enough.
I laughed, I cried, my wrist hurts. Sounds like any good session of chain yanking to me. What more is there to say?