That’s for the very best players, though – a striking part of God Hand’s appeal is its difficulty, which is prohibitive to most players and somehow pleasingly elitist. It’s possible to juggle enemies without ever taking a hit. The idea that the entire pace of the fighting can be adjusted completely on the fly is what made God Hand such a revelation to hardcore players – no game of this genre has ever been so ambitious in the way it opens up its mechanics, while hours upon hours can be wasted in tweaking the system perfectly. Using this system, players can adapt to the challenging mechanics of the game in any way they see fit, as new moves are dotted around the game world and can be purchased in between levels. Every button command can be adjusted to your liking, so if you want your basic square combo to be composed entirely of power moves or karate chops, it can be. The game’s most ingenious stroke isn’t immediately obvious: the combos in God Hand are entirely customisable.
A lot of this is easy to miss upon first putting the game on, yet anyone who sticks with it and explores the content outside of the levels will discover that there are in fact hundreds of entertaining and energetic combinations. God Hand is more than just a side-scrolling beat-‘em-up – it’s an invisible RPG one of the most customisable action experiences released on a mainstream console. It was a product of its time and the experimental mindset of its creator. The spirit of Clover Studio lives on in Platinum Games, of course, yet it’s unlikely anything as bizarre or brave as God Hand will ever emerge again. From that gesture of closing a studio whose very name was a portmanteau of ‘Creativity Lover’, Capcom veered towards the often flavourless pro-Western design philosophies that dog its current output. The title turned out to be a commercial bomb and Clover was shut just months after its release. Rather than making it straight-faced as convention usually dictates, though, Mikami opted to lace the cut-scenes, combos and setting of the game with a freakish array of funny touches, ranging from Quick-Time Event arse spankings to a poison Chihuahua. God Hand was a beat-‘em-up put together by the Capcom veterans at subsidiary Clover Studio, which became notorious due to its much-loved but poor-selling softography. Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil who reinvented the franchise (and the third-person shooter) with its fourth instalment, next directed something that couldn’t be further removed from survival horror.
When a world-renowned game designer – one whose last project is widely credited as one of the greatest titles ever created – steps outside of his comfort zone to make a 3D update of the side-scrolling beat-‘em-up, the results of that kind of stylistic switch are always going to be fascinating. How Clover Studios reinvented the scrolling fighter
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