System demo - a response to the inaccurate review IGN gave Godhand. I'm hoping to show that the game's camera is perfect for the fighting system, the way Jean is always in clear view and the way it auto-locks to the exact point you always need it to while on the offense or defense I feel is a superb achievement.
I've purposely boosted the game's level to Level-Die to show that even with the initial setup you get at the start of the game, you can cause some real mess and have great fun with the creativity this system allows you to put into your fighting.
God Hand is a game I enjoy playing precisely because of how deep the combat system is. You can almost completely customize all of Gene's individual actions providing a wide variety of options for fighting. It's perfectly possible to keep playing the game with the relatively simple moveset demonstrated by Saur in his video, but with all of the different moves you can purchase in the shop experimenting with different movesets is too tempting to resist.
After you beat level 1-1 and the shop opens up you realize you've only begun to scratch the surface of this game's mechanics. Gene starts off with a four move combo that can be used by repeatedly pressing square, and a couple of techniques mapped to the face buttons with a couple of variations that are triggered by pressing a direction and face button. All of these different inputs are customizable. So, creating long combos requires optimizing your choices for Gene's moveset to ensure the moves you have chosen can be easily linked together.
The circle button is used to handle events in the game. So, if you want to trigger events like pummeling, and countering you'll hit circle when prompted by the game - it is extremely satisfying.
The Roulette Wheel, and the namesake of the game the God Hand, are also useful methods to attack enemies. The Roulette Wheel provides a variety of different special and customizable moves that are used at the cost of at least one Roulette Orb. These special moves each have a particular focus such as: low attacks, high attacks, attacks for single enemies, attacks for groups of enemies, and healing. The God Hand is a temporary boost in speed and strength that allows you to kill a particular enemy (or a group of enemies) with ease at the expense of your Tension Gauge.
The moves that are permanently fixed onto Gene's character are the ones that I find myself using the most in combat. Gene's dodge, for example, can be used to make Gene maneuver in a variety of ways: he can execute a string of four ducks, he can perform back flips, and he can perform sidesteps. All of these different dodges are necessary for handling waves of enemies with defense instead of offense.
All of these different options for attack and defense are necessary because once you start performing well in God Hand the game adapts to your difficultly level to ensure it isn’t too easy or too hard. The game's current level of difficulty is the meter on the far left of the HUD. The difficulty could be set to one, two, three, or Level-Die and as the level becomes higher the enemies become more aggressive.
God Hand is an interesting example of a 3D beat’em up. I’ve never played a 3D beat’em up with a Biohazard 4 style over the shoulder camera where the combat system was precisely this deep and customizable.
