You play as Gene, a very opinionated drifter with good intentions. After a fight with demons trying to defend the female character of the game, Olivia, he loses an arm and thus is given a God Hand.  The God Hand is part of a set of two hands that were obtained by an ancient warrior who defeated a race of ancient demons. The hands were kept by a tribe through generations until a man went to steal them. 

God Hand is a third person beat ‘em up, undoubtedly a risk the developers took, since it is very hard to make a brawler in 3D with a camera set directly behind the character (and come out with something good). However, the game plays smoothly, the movements are easy to perform, attacks hit the desired target without any problems and if checking your surroundings for weird looking foes might be a little hard at first, you always have a radar on the top right that will let you know where your enemies are at all times.

I have mentioned that the game story is hilarious, that the title itself is very fun to play, but don’t get the wrong idea. The game is by no means easy. In fact, finishing it in the Normal mode can be quite difficult, to the point of frustration even.  God Hand has an adaptive difficulty, which basically translates into this: if you are good, the game will be merciless; enemies’ attacks (even the most common enemies) will drain a lot of life from you while your own punches, kicks and magic will be less effective on them. If you are not that good, then the game will be a little softer and will try to balance certain aspects, but don’t expect too much kindness either. The level of difficulty is show on a bar that goes from level one being the easiest, to level DIE which is just as hard as it sound. Despite its difficulty, God Hand is fair, the game won’t throw you anything you cannot handle and it is solely up to you to be skilled enough to outperform your enemies. The better you are, the more gold you will receive at the end of each stage and that gold is your currency to boost your magic meter, your life bar and even to acquire different abilities that you can trigger directly from your God Hand, that’s your right arm, by the way. Money can be also multiplied by going to the casino at the end of each stage and betting on games like black Jack, poker, Chihuahua Racing, etc. Though most of the times, you will be losing more than you win, just like in real life.

The controls are reduced to three buttons (all fully customizable, thank you), kicks, punches, basically any attack can be added. The L buttons can be used to taunt, turn around and the Rs activate the Roulette Wheel which in a nutshell is a new menu full of power ups and the God Hand, which will make you invincible and extremely powerful for a short amount of time. God Hand also has a button that can be activated depending on the context, for example, if an enemy is dazed and confused (Led Zeppelin pun fully intended) just by pressing the circle, Gene will stomp fallen enemies, stinger heavy opponents, pummel adversaries by hitting the circle repeatedly and also throw boxes, barrels and other items at will. You may notice that I never mentioned a button to block incoming attacks, and that’s not an omission. There isn’t a button to block. If you are good enough, and lucky at times, you might be able to dodge all or most of the attacks. That’s, in fact, the only chance you‘ve got of beating the game.