God Hand [PS2]

There are also "roulette attacks", named after the spinning list you use to call them up. These are like powerful spells, accompanied by some of the best and goofiest animated interactions (the aforementioned kick to the nuts is one of these). You use roulette attacks by spending power orbs that enemies might drop. Finally, there's an adrenaline meter that fires up the God Hand, putting you in blinding speed rage invincibility glowing arm crazy berserker mode. These are the times God Hand turns up to eleven.

There's no camera control to futz with, as you're always looking over your character's shoulder. The right analog stick lets you quick-dodge, which is the closest you'll get to strafing. It can sometimes be a pain to get through a door, but the combat doesn't suffer from the lack of traditional controls. What's more, a radar minimap makes it easy to keep track of who's where.

Using these relatively simple mechanics, God Hand presents a streamlined but flexible and moderately deep combat system. There aren't any blocking, jumping, or complicated combos to memorize. A dynamic difficulty system will level up enemies if you do well, which increases the reward you'll earn at the end of a stage. But if they start getting too hard for you, the level drops back down. It's a simple concession to the fact that not everyone is a fighting game savant who can deal with issues like timing, juggling, counters, and other staples of the genre. Those are all in here, and they're waiting for people who play on those terms. For everyone else, it's still extremely gratifying to just punch the crap out of bad guys at supersonic speeds, grooving along with the bitch slapping, nut kicking, kee-yahing of it all.

God Hand's graphics aren't just low-tech for how current gen they look, but also for the way it sometimes feels pasted together out of gaudy construction paper. There are plenty of times where the camera will swing through a wall and -- oops! -- clearly show you what's on the other side, even if it's just a vast expanse of nothing.

But you won't be getting this game for the advanced graphics engine. Instead, you'll be getting it for the fact that during one early battle, someone sticks a piece of paper on your character's back that says 'Kick my ass'. And it stays there throughout the level. Any game that refuses so steadfastly to take itself seriously, and manages to do so without chucking meaningful gameplay out the window, is something special indeed.