God of War is very pretty and fairly competant, but I prefer God Hand for my beat em up purposes, for a few reasons.

1.Those button press action time things, not as many, and mainly to add damage.
2.Kratos is a clown. Well, Gene is a clown too but Kratos is the kinda ultramasculine clown that teenagers that think Creed's "I stand alone" is their personal anthem happen to like.
3.Because Gene punches and the most effective dodge at high level play is a bob and weave with a half second of invincibility that leaves you right where you are, and the importance of split second counters and guard breaks, the combat is tenser in comparision to the pokefest of God of War.
4. I like fist fighting
5. I like Capcom.
6. I like Clover Studios
7. God Hand has better music, or more than one piece of super epic symphony music.
8. God Hand versus Devil Hand is one of the best boss fights in videogames.

Syd Lexia wrote:

God Hand got reamed by critics IIRC. Played a little bit of GOW, loved it.

God Hand did get reamed by critics. Its why you take reviews with a grain of salt.

Cause its a particular game for particular tastes. I don't mean so bad its good, people use this when what they mean is "I have bad taste justified by hipster douchbaggery leave me alone". It's a game that reveals itself to beat em up aficianados willing to put up with its quirks, making it inaccessable to people looking for mindless entertainment. Its twitch gameplay, so on the other hand its not an intellectuals game. You have to be looking for a challenge, and desire silly violence.

Some foul neckbeard at the Gameshtopo heard me mention it, and called it stupid, then said that he "played it for a bit and theres this attack where you punch someone a lot and knock em off into the sky, and thats just stupid." He then sung the lovely praises of the new Wolverine game, citing "where you stab a guy in the stomach and you jump on him and like rip his head off and its just so brutal". I found the former to be entertaining, a fist of the north star parody that has fun with itself while being an intensely satisfying thing to do. I found the latter to be crass and a pointless indulgence in bloody violence like early nineties comics having just discovered the adult label.

I've gotten off track. what I'm saying is that god hand should not be sold short, if you think you may like it then you should give it a fair shake cause it could be one of your favorite games.

Back to the subject at hand, GoW is definitely worth a play. Not my favorite beat em up, but worth a try. Its sequal has a starting set piece where you fight the Collosus at Rhodes that is a must see.

Since we are talking beat em ups, later I'll post about Yakuza and Yakuza 2, as well as Urban Reign.

MOGHARR wrote:

RobotGumshoe wrote: Since we are talking beat em ups, later I'll post about Yakuza and Yakuza 2, as well as Urban Reign. How was Urban Reign anyways? I remember playing a demo for it and it seemed really fun. I just forgot to buy it.

So Urban Reign was designed by people who had worked on tekken, so it reeks of that. Plot is minimal, and the only kind of mission is beat people up. But, the combats not too shabby, and I like the grappling system, where each attack targets a specific range of body parts (head, body, legs), and varies based on whether the guy is facing you or not, whether your facing them, and if you perform a running start, and has a counter point in the move where if you push the same direction and grapple at the right time in the grapple you reverse the move on your opponent. Its pretty deep for the genre.

Yakuza 1 is better, and probably yakuza 2. I'll make a new thread for those.

Adrock4 wrote:

Syd Lexia wrote: God Hand got reamed by critics IIRC. Played a little bit of GOW, loved it. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_uYCV9lwNaAg/SkTyuhLk_MI/AAAAAAAABj8/jQ09GVBnh8s/s1600/Godhand%20IGN.jpg Note the "increbily" typo.