In the previous installment of my weird games series, I discussed Baten Kaitos, beginning with the overall positive first impression that game left on me. There was a lot to like out of the gate, before frustrations with some of the game's more novel design choices might lead a player to abandon the game. God Hand (2006), on the other hand, so to speak, has overwhelmingly negative first impressions. The backgrounds are hideously unfinished in tones of gray and brown, and despite being a third-person brawler, the game saddles the player with tank controls for movement and an extremely limited field of vision, fixing the camera directly behind the player character. I imagine many players did not last more than 15 minutes before throwing in the towel, which is a shame, as like the other games in this series, God Hand is a game with more than might meet the eye at first glance.
Before we can really talk about the game, however, we must first take a look at the studio that created it. God Hand was the final production from Clover Studio, a semi-autonomous group of Capcom employees responsible for Viewtiful Joe and the critical darling Okami. Their mandate was to develop new intellectual properties for Capcom, but overall low sales numbers resulted in Clover being shut down and most of the employees being reabsorbed into Capcom. God Hand's production was caught up in this internal struggle (the studio was closed immediately following the game's North American release), and I view the game as something of an "unfinished symphony" as a result. The game features the kind of innovation that Clover was known for, but lacks the polish that was also a trademark in their earlier games. Per Wikipedia, the game's review in the November, 2006 Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine opined, "God Hand is a terrible, terrible game, yet I can't stop playing it. There's just something horrifically appealing about how bad it is in almost every conceivable way." This is as good a summation of the game and it's appeal as I can find anywhere.
Because, without question, God Hand is fundamentally broken and, as I said, unfinished. In addition to the previously noted tank controls and fixed camera (which frequently allows enemies to attack you from blind spots), the game's mechanism for accessing special abilities requires you to pull up a reel with a list of moves, then scroll through them and make your selection while the action on the screen continues at a slowed pace. So enemies can, and do, move out of the way while you are selecting your action. The controls make movement during combat difficult, but the game also contains a handful of platforming segments, where the controls make movement nearly impossible. The game also has an unflinching difficulty curve, mitigated only by frequent checkpoints. This makes deciphering (let alone mastering) the controls an uphill battle, while the flatly ugly background designs do nothing to hold your attention to the game. Perhaps one might assume the story would hold the player's attention, but that is also weird. While not as abjectly broken as some of the other elements, it is definitely an acquired taste. The prompts are often unclear (it takes several chapters before you learn why you're doing anything); there's a certain type of comedy-anime logic that dictates the story; the stakes are pretty low until the very end of the game (most of the game is spent goofing around, getting into fights and making jokes, with an abrupt pivot to deadly seriousness at the end, when you must face your rivals in life-or-death encounters which culminate in a final boss fight against a mammoth world-ending demon god); and there are some severely problematic elements in it that will be discussed in a moment.
This sounds like a heavy load of complaints, especially in a series that promised to explore my favorite video game oddities. The fact of the matter is, the game is a failure. For all of the above listed reasons, the barrier to entry is extraordinarily high. However, when we discuss failing in an interesting way, God Hand is perhaps the most interesting, the most fascinating, and the most fun example I can name. If a player can make it through the first half hour to 45 minutes of the game, it explodes into a virtually non-stop rollercoaster of an experience, littered with bizarre (but exciting!) choices and unexpected twists on familiar ideas.
Let's start by revisiting the controls. While they are every bit as difficult to work with as I said earlier, they also have some very interesting innovations. By fixing the camera in place, the control scheme frees up the PS2's second analog stick. This is used for a dodging mechanism - forward to rush in, back to backflip away, and side-to-side to quickly dodge an opponent's blows. This means that a skilled player can shuck-and-move, remaining untouched before unleashing a combo on the enemy. The game responds by upping the difficulty the longer you go without being struck, however there are some fights where the dodge mechanism must be used to win. Mastering these difficulty controls (or at least, becoming competent with them) is a genuinely rewarding experience. It is intensely satisfying when you pull of the right combination of dodging and attacking.
As for the story, again, there are problems with it, but there are also some amazing design choices here, mostly in terms of the character work. The player character, Gene, is a fairly typical Japanese punk with a heart of gold, who came into possession of one the titular God Hands when his arm was cut off. He was given the God Hand by Olivia, whose clan was tasked to watch over the God Hands since ancient times, in exchange for his help tracking down and retrieving the other God Hand, which was stolen by demons. Most games would start with this pivotal moment, but God Hand instead starts quite a bit later on, parceling this backstory out over the course of the first chapter, and largely confusing players at the outset of the game. Gene and Olivia are set against the Four Devas, the leaders of the demons. These include the leader Belze, a demon in a purple suit; Elvis, a massive, cigar-smoking glutton with a thick Spanish accent; Shannon, a seductive circus performer; and Azel, a human who possesses the other God Hand and who serves as Gene's opposite number. Each of these characters is invested with substantial personality and unique design choices (including final demonic forms that the player must defeat).
The minor characters are equally colorful, including a gorilla in a luchador mask, an android, a pair of rock musicians that sold their souls for power, and the Mad Midget Five, a quintet of fighters named for playing-card suits dressed like multi-color versions of Viewtiful Joe (incidentally, they also provide one of the hardest fights in the game). However, I also have to talk about the first boss fight in the game: Mr. Silver and Mr. Gold, a pair of extremely flamboyant homosexuals. God Hand contains a handful of content that is problematic, not only by modern standards, but frankly even by the standards of the mid-aughts. Silver and Gold are stereotypically effeminate, flirting with Gene throughout their encounter, and are played for laughs; Mr. Silver literally has no testicles, which is both commented on by Gene and confirmed if you use the game's attack which specifically targets that area. The fact that it's quite a difficult boss encounter doesn't mitigate the choice of framing for these two characters. Other problems arise in terms of Olivia's treatment by Gene, which is more than slightly dismissive and misogynist, and the game does rely on some sophomoric sex appeals in several areas, most notably during the boss fights against Shannon.
Even while acknowledging the problematic content, the game is, above all else, fun. It doesn't take anything seriously, and while that is the kind of attitude that leads to problematic content in the first place, it's also the kind of attitude that allowed the designers to experiment with character designs and storytelling devices. For example, the player's first meeting with Elvis is played for straight comedy, but as the game progresses, he provides several intense boss fights, which culminate in a struggle against his titanic demon form. Upon his defeat, Elvis dies, and Gene acknowledges him with respect and a sort of admiration which is weirdly earned and deserved. God Hand resembles nothing else so much as a season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in its mix of charming and colorful characters, bold action, intense drama, and nearly-misplaced comedy - not to mention it's frustratingly unkillable boss enemies. God Hand has become something of a cult classic after the fact, with many players discovering it's charm on the secondary market. If Clover had been able to polish the game, tweaking some of the control issues and improving the background art (as an aside, I've leveled relatively few critiques of the art aesthetic here, but rest assured, this is one ugly game), then yes, it's likely that God Hand could have been more of a success. However, even as unfinished as the game is, it remains memorable to me over a decade later; an interesting failure that provides the very definition of a weird game.
Dr. Daniel Gronsky is a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Cultural Science, focusing on media studies in film and video games.