God Hand

God Hand was Clover's last hurrah, before being officially disseminated. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of it. It's been mostly ignored by the gaming public, and received lukewarm reviews from the media.

Set in the wild west, God Hand is the story of an audacious man with the power of the gods in his hand, and the demons who are trying to strike him down. At least, I think it is. The manual had that much in it - after completing a few stages (I think?) of the actual game, the narration and dialogue have explained basically nothing. Including the controls; the provided screen in the Options menu is about as enlightening as a plank of wood. It wasn't until I bought new moves and had to equip them, that I found out what the actual button combinations for executing said moves were supposed to be.

I started in Normal mode, and died inside of a minute, but even Easy mode is kicking my ass so far. There is a level-up system in God Hand where you gain experience by landing blows and defeating enemies, but you also lose (a lot of) experience by getting hit, and can in fact level-down. For me, passing level 1 is infrequent and brief.

What I will say for it is that it is funny. Stomping a fat guy's head into the ground is pretty neat, and a cutscene I just saw with a demon lady talking smack to a spanish pimp was very amusing.

Honestly I'm kind of fed up with it after less than 20 minutes. I think I'll start playing Shadow of the Colossus instead.

Progress: Gave Up -- Stage 1A?