Ball breaking action!
In addition to using a set of standard fighting techniques, such as a fist in the face or a roundhouse kick in the testicles, there are dozens of additional techniques and special moves to master. Now, we played through God Hand on the easy level so we could complete as much of the game as possible and still found that we died fairly easily, such is the degree of difficulty. Due to this fact, collecting money to buy more powers and fighting techniques became extremely important; especially if you’re like us and get frustrated at repeating a sequence over and over again. The fighting itself is extremely entertaining and the range of moves on offer gives you the freedom to experiment on a wide range of techniques and prevents the action from becoming too stale.
Fighting is made more compelling thanks to the God Hand Roulette, which is accessed by pressing the right bumper, once you have filled a tension bar and providing you have enough Roulette orbs in your possession. This allows you to pull of a range of devastating blows to any enemies that cross your path and will take out a huge chunk of their health metre. Once the roulette wheel is selected, time slows down and as a clock ticks down you have a set period in order to select one of the special moves by scrolling through the list. Our personal favourite was the ball breaker, in which Gene delivers a painful low kick to the groin which makes your enemy clutch his goolies and wince with pain, but you can take your pick from the likes of the ‘head slicer’ or ‘God Stomp’ and all of the roulette techniques are visually impressive and great fun to execute.
One of the nice features in God Hand is the ability to customise your combo techniques in the main menu. At the start of the game you can map four techniques onto one button, although this increases as you progress. Each time you press the button, in a chain of attacks, it will go through that sequence and deliver the four blows exactly how you had mapped them. There are so many different techniques to choose from (114 so we hear) that experimenting with the moves can have some quite spectacular results. Initially we lined up a straight punch, followed by a left hook, then a right and ending with barrel roll kick, but as you unlock more techniques, the moves become more interesting and devastating and you can combine the likes of a guard breaker, with a backfist strike, then an uppercut, followed by a charged punch to send your enemy flying in the air to the other side of the level. The customisable options and the range of techniques is really what sets God Hand apart from standard beat ‘em ups.
