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Resident Evil 4 is one of the most important games of all time, everyone knows this and why that is; it is essentially, the first "modern" game as we think of them. And a brutally difficult question you will inevitably have to ask after experiencing a landmark title like that is of course, well, how do you follow that up? If you want a simple answer, Resident Evil 5 is probably your best bet. If you want the real answer, its God Hand.

If Resident Evil 4 is ushering in the modern age of games, then God Hand feels like a celebratory send off to a now bygone era. I doubt anyone would've known that at the time making it, but considering we're only just now returning to this style of game over fifteen years after the fact it harkens completely true. God Hand was made in a relatively short development period, very obviously using design elements and ideas directly from Mikami's now magnum opus and creating something so completely different out of it. It reminds me a lot of Majora's Mask funnily enough more than anything in that regard; taking one of the most influential games of all time and using that framework to tell something completely new and fresh. All of that is to make God Hand sound very legitimate and classy, and in some regards, yes; it absolutely is. But its also fucking God Hand; maybe one of the most batshit, off the wall experiences that we got of the sixth generation.

This is the kitchen sink of action video games. Absolute ridiculous nonsense, and absolutely revels in it. Capcom during this era were pumping some of the best action games ever made during this time, and God Hand truly does feel like a grand last minute after-party. It controls oddly, but when it clicks (and it takes like five minutes for it to) your life is never the same again. Everything is snappy and responsive, stylish and cool, and so intensely customizable and yet; simple, its stupidly impressive. This game is hardcore as hell, and while "this project couldn't be made today" usually makes my eyes roll, I'll say it for this. Playing this game geniunely makes my hands sore, and I don't care for even a second. It is absurdly addicting, every punch and kick has that over the top weight that makes you feel like a God among men. The game is hard, stupidly so, and why wouldn't it be after Devil May Cry 3 was such a landmark title for Capcom; but when you play well, you feel like you're on top of the world.

The absurdity of this game also seeps well into the games concepts too. What it lacks in environments, it makes up for by doing every gaudy over-the-top decision Capcom made and then some in this game. The first thing that happens in this game is Gene complaining to his partner that a bunch of mooks he is about to beat up are sexier than her; and then youre literally kicking them across the entire map not even a minute later. Trying to explain what happens in this game wouldn't do it justice; it knows what it is and it probably knows you love every second of it, and yeah, I do, and clearly everyone else does too.

This is one of those pieces of art that in the moment, it feels like the greatest thing to ever exist. And obviously, God Hand is not the greatest game of all time; but fuck it, maybe it should be. My hands hurt while writing this after beating the final boss of the game and I couldn't be happier.

i've been thinking about my relationship with art, and my thoughts at the moment are that what i want in a piece is to feel something. it's not only about being entertaining, it's about catharsis. it's about feeling extremely happy or deeply miserable. it's about having the teeth grinding, the foot tapping, the head scratched. it's about going insane over the details. i want to feel alive. maybe it's a sick thought. maybe i should just live my own life, but i can guarantee, i've been living my own life a lot! much more than i would like to, sometimes.

all the games i've finished this year so far (very few) were a good time, some of them were amazing, really thought-provoking like anodyne 2, but none of them hit me like a truck. until GOD HAND.

GOD HAND makes you feel extremely happy, deeply miserable, with your teeth grinding, your foot tapping, your head scratching... pretty much at the same time! it's commonly known as a very difficult game and it's not an impossible one, but it does require you full commitment. starting with learning the controls: when action games were about swords and guns, with fast-paced movement, GOD HAND was about throwing punches while moving in tank controls. it's all about positioning, a 1v1 it's already a difficult task, but a 2v1? a 4v1? does not help when your crowd control movements are slow as hell! but don't be confused: GOD HAND is not a slow game! actually, if you can't keep up, you will pretty much ended up cooked lol, you have to adapt to the rhythm of the fight. it's all about learning and once you learn, it's about going wild.

and it's not a flashy game. you throw punches. real punches. punches that hit, than you can feel when it hits. GOD HAND it's a dudes rock game but every single dude is rocking on you (in a not-homosexual-way (unfortunately)), and you got rock on them instead. GOD HAND it's a videogame that loves action games. it's a videogame that recognizes the masculine archetypes about the action genre in overall media and at the same time it honors it and it also makes fun of it. GOD HAND is very "manly"! i mean, having blackjack and poker and dogs races as a way to make money makes me think that shinji mikami and the team are either the funniest guys ever or the most heteronormative of all time! and it's very funny either way.

what really matters is that GOD HAND is a videogame that made me feel everything, and in a year that is definitely NOT being my year, with a lot of work and study and personal problems as well, making me sometimes lost my interest in my favorite hobby, it reminds me how great videogames can be and how i can always just punch a son of a bitch when it needs to. you better watch out mf!!!

For some reason I’ve spent hundreds of hours of my life grinding the most boring parts of videogames in order to get all the achievements. At the same time, I couldn’t stomach playing Devil May Cry 4 for more than half an hour at a time despite loving the core combat. Maybe I was just burnt out from playing the first 3 games back to back, but try as I might I couldn't find any motivation to finish this one other than “well, it’s only 8 hours long”. Even Devil May Cry 2 was able to hold me for the agonising 4.5 hours it took to beat, but I guess that was mostly fueled by morbid curiosity. I think the problem is that Devil May Cry 4 is complete mediocrity. Everything good about the game (the new additions to combat for the franchise, particularly Nero’s whole moveset) is present in Devil May Cry 5, undoubtedly my favourite game in the series. So there isn’t much this game has left to offer that you can’t find anywhere else (apart from “The Idol of Time And Space”, the best song ever).

I found the beginning very promising, but once I left the town and started going into the drab, grey mountains, my interest started to wane. Level design, artstyle, enemy encounters, puzzles, they all became very boring very quickly. Basically from level 3 onwards I was indifferent to the game in front of me. The special edition having all the unlocks at the beginning was something I thought I would want to avoid to not ruin the flow of the game, but frankly, being able to unlock every combo immediately is the only thing that stopped me from falling asleep.

Of course, as many are already aware, the game kinda collapses once you get to the Dante missions. First of all, every enemy is designed around the use of Nero’s Devil Bringer to bridge the gap between you and them and keep combos going. Dante doesn’t have this, so it’s back to the same issue as DMC2 where you’re spamming Stinger or Trickster after every move to get back to the enemy that was just launched across the room. Dante doesn't even have any air combos so any enemy/boss with a hurtbox not on the ground is a pain in the ass to deal with. Dante is theoretically fun as always, but you can tell they didn’t have much time to accommodate the enemies around him, making combat quite frustrating. Second of all, his levels are just Nero’s but in reverse. You also have to fight most of the bosses in the game three times each. The other DMC games do this a bit too but it feels worse here when even the final boss is a refight and it feels like nothing past mission 11 is new. Now, every DMC except 5 has a healthy dose of backtracking. But in this game it feels extremely rushed and not designed well. Nero will spend 2 levels in a row going back and forth in a single location, and then Dante will do the exact same thing later in the game. So you're basically seeing 4 missions worth of areas stretched across 16.

Fun fact: Less than 9% of players have beaten the Xbox version of this game on any difficulty. More people have beaten the SECOND Devil May Cry game than this one. Maybe it’s because the numbers are divided between all difficulties so it looks smaller than the collective number of completions, but still, I think that speaks a little to the retention value of this game.

The story is pretty funny because it’s just Nero screaming “Kyrie!!!!” for 5 hours while failing to kill anybody. Then Dante does a better job at defeating the old bosses while giving 0 shits. Other than that it’s probably one of the more uninteresting stories in the series. I don’t get the Nero hate much like I didn’t get the Raiden hate in Metal Gear. I think people are just annoyed when they wait years for a sequel only to play as a different character than their favourite. But yeah, Nero and Dante are pretty good in this game. It’s nice to see a more adult Dante with the same personality as DMC3.

Special Edition has plenty of bonus content as well, with a whopping 5 characters to play as, several difficulties and Blood Palace. Although, I’m not really itching to replay this one any time soon. It’s a fine videogame, and lands about in the middle of the franchise quality-wise, so I’d only recommend this one if you've played a couple of the others first.

Pure energetic and soul restoring tag team action

I'd like to preface that I am not a fighting game guy at all in the modern times. I'm not good at them at all and a complete casual in this space. Funny enough, this technically isn't the first time I ever played this game, it's actually the first game I ever got for the PS2 at the time since my stepdad was a huge tekken fan at the time and where I ended up becoming a fan myself. Definitely had positive experiences back then but then I wondered if the magic is still there, laying in dormant for the past twenty two years. To put it bluntly, I missed this game so much.

Something about the whole experience is just extremely enjoyable from start to finish no matter what mode you play. Amazing visuals for a launch title, beautiful stages, one of the best fighting game soundtracks in my opinion, surprisingly feels easy to pick up and beat from a casual perspective (against Normal CPU). Back when fighting games always kept content heavy from the start, you had essentially every character up to this point (barring Gon and Doctor Bosconovitch), all your usual modes and one of the best extra modes Tekken ever introduced: Tekken Bowl. The amount of time I've spent bowling in this game alone probably surpassed all the bowling I've done in any video game ever and combined.

Hazy school days. White forest. Flashing lights of the carousel. The ugly evil. Who are you?

Even with unlocking everything, I still come back to this one every now and then. It almost takes you back in a sense. Could be the nostalgia talking but I wouldn't like it more now than I did before if it was. Man where does the time go?

fellas, it's been 2 decades and i am pleased to report that this game still fucks severely. i will always be amazed that people saw the graphics of PS2 games and still thought we could improve upon them, because this game still looks beautiful to me. the soundtrack fucks out loud too, cannot say enough good things about this game. it took tekken 3's stiffness and totally loosened it up. love this game man.

Thinking about Roger's ending in which he plays Rock Paper Scissors with Yoshimitsu and always loses because his boxing gloves always make him choose rock.

Although I have dabbled in fighting games here and there, the only major franchise in this genre that I'd consider myself to be a devoted fan of would be the Super Smash Bros. series. In terms of the genre's most iconic franchises, I find the first three Mortal Kombat games to be irresistibly charming and nostalgic (even if they barely work as actual fighting games), and the phrase "not my thing" constantly echoed throughout every match of Street Fighter II I've ever played. Other than that, the only fighting games I've really sunk my teeth into were the Super Smash Bros. games, Injustice 2, and, for some reason, the Wii port of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. Despite all of that, the Tekken franchise has always looked intriguing to me after playing a bit of Tekken 6 at my cousin's house a few years ago, and since I've heard a lot of people say that Tekken 3 was the best game in the series, I was pretty excited to give it a go.

I don't know what it was about Namco's late-90s offerings on the PS1, but they always seem to be jam-packed with personality, but unlike the laidback confidence of something like Ridge Racer Type 4, the cool allure of Tekken 3 comes from its in-your-face aggression. Even when you're not fighting an opponent, Tekken 3 still knows how to put you in the mood to fight someone from its varied cast of characters, as the stylish menus, energetic prerendered cutscenes, and amazing music do a lot to make the game look as exciting as it feels to play. Speaking of which, the actual combat in Tekken 3 is awesome, as the tight controls, buttery-smooth animations, and the well-implemented third axis meshed well with the impressive amount of moves and combos to make each punch and kick feel natural and weighty. The satisfaction that comes from experimenting with the roster is amplified by a ton when it comes to learning combos, with characters like Bryan Fury and Eddy Gordo being especially fun to play as thanks to how flashy, yet intuitive their movesets were for me. Pretty much every positive thing I've said about Tekken 3 is increased tenfold when multiplayer is involved, as this game is an absolute blast to play with a friend.

As great and mechanically robust as the traditional one-on-one fights are, I will admit that the most enjoyable way to play Tekken 3 for me came from the ever-so-silly "Tekken Ball" mode, and while the actual path to unlocking it can feel a bit grindy due to how often you have to keep replaying the game's standard arcade mode, the amount of fun that I had playing the mode made it all feel worth it. Playing through that mode was also satisfying in its own right, as it not only unlocked the rest of the game's roster, but each playthrough rewarded me an ending cutscene that pretty much always made each run feel worthwhile in how over-the-top (and occasionally funny) they were. My only real complaints with Tekken 3 can be found in its single player content, because while there are quite a few modes to choose from, a lot of them just felt like slight variations of the arcade that you're already going to spend a lot of time with. I also wasn't the biggest fan of the "Tekken Force" mode, because while the concept of a Tekken beat-em-up is really cool, it was all very clunky in its execution, and actually beating it feels based more on luck than anything else. These gripes pale in comparison to just how fun and stylish of a game Tekken 3 is, though, and it definitely deserves its legacy as one of the best fighting games on the PS1 (although it's not like it had very much competition to begin with).

There are two ways that you could look at a game in the Virtua series: as a game on its own, and as a technical achievement for the genre it tackles. Using Virtua Racing as an example, at the time it came out, there were no other racing games like it, and it paved the way for other 3D racers to come afterwards. But, as a game on its own, it is as barebones and basic as racing games got, with the 3D graphics being severely outdated, even by 1993, when games like Ridge Racer came out and looked MILES better then it. So yeah, as games on their own, the Virtua games may not be something to get too excited about, but it is always interesting to go back to these titles, as it seems like they represent a transitional period between where these genres already were, to where they could potentially go in the future. So, to continue looking at these games, I figure I would take on a genre I am a bigger fan of other than racing with Virtua Fighter.

Out of all of the games from Sega to receive the “Virtua” sub-title, Virtua Fighter is definitely the most popular and long-lasting of the bunch, with it not only being Sega’s primary fighting franchise (which isn’t really something to brag about), but it has had plenty of different installments and updates that have released all the way to this day (even though there hasn’t been a core title in the series for almost 20 years). Despite that though, I myself hadn’t really tried out the franchise at all, not because I got distracted by other things like usual, but more so because I didn’t have any desire to. I just thought it was “the one that was 3D” more than anything, and that it wouldn’t contribute anything else aside from that. But of course, like they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover, so I decided to play the first game and see if I was wrong, and to the surprise of nobody, it turned out I was right. For what it is worth, for being one of the very first 3D fighting games out there, it still holds up somewhat to this day, and it did definitely do a lot for the genre at the time, but like with Virtua Racing, it mostly wears all of its issues on its sleeves and suffers for it.

The story is insanely generic for a fighting game, where a World Fighting Tournament is organized, and many warriors from around the world come to not only fight, but also discover the sinister secret behind it, which is basically the plot of every single fighting game that has ever existed in the history of ever, but somehow this game makes it sound even more generic than it actually is. The graphics are on the same level of quality that Virtua Racing was on, in which it may have looked extremely impressive at the time, but nowadays, it looks on par with Elon Musk’s Cybertruck, the music is way too good for this game, having plenty of up-beat and memorable tracks to go along with the gutter trash you look at when you play the game, the control is more simple compared to other fighters at the time, but it works fine enough (for the most part), and there are plenty of combos you get to work with, so it is fine, and the gameplay, like with Virtua Racing, basically does the bare minimum with not much else to offer aside from its central gimmick.

The game is your typical early 90’s fighter, where you take control of one of eight different fighters, take on a set of opponents that you will take down one by one, deliver plenty of punches, kicks, throws and combos to deplete your opponent’s health to nothing at all, make sure to block and dodge at all appropriate times to make sure that you stay up and fighting for many more rounds, and… that is about it. Yeah, when I said this game does the bare minimum for the genre, I meant it, because aside from the obvious, there really is nothing that this game offers the player when revisiting it after over 30 years. With that being said though, I will say that I did have a fine time with the game as a whole, and there are some admirable qualities to it.

Like with Virtua Racing, the main thing this game has to provide the player is its 3D visuals, with the game itself playing almost exactly like a regular 2D fighter, except all of the environments and characters are all fully 3D. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but like with the previously mentioned game, everything runs very smoothly, even when playing on an original arcade cabinet (which I did), and as such, all of the attack animations also look pretty smooth as well, even if it is nothing compared to what we have today. But again, it doesn’t try to do more other then the bare minimum, only focusing on the fighting, with no different bonus stages, no extra cutscenes before or in between fights, and not even any proper endings for any of the characters, which does kinda suck, but that is probably for the best in this case.

That being said though, this game certainly has aged over the course of 30 years, as you could imagine, and not just in terms of the visuals. Not only is the character roster pretty limited when compared to other fighters at the time, which had up to almost 20 characters at that point, but whenever you actually try to play the game, it feels pretty rough. Pulling off the moves can feel somewhat heavy a lot of the time, which is an unfortunate consequence of the visuals, so if you are looking for a fast-paced fighter to have fun with with your friends, this is definitely not gonna be for you. What also doesn’t help is that, whenever you try to jump with any of the characters, it feels like they are on the fucking moon. And of course, since it is an arcade fighter, it comes with the bullshit these games typically get, such as fighting game syndrome, where all of the opponents are way too over-powered, and will make sure you will never be able to win a round against them without you abusing certain combos to win, which is what I did for most of the game. Then again, given the fact that you get nothing when you beat the game, would you really wanna try to beat it at all?

Overall, despite its charm for what it is and how I didn’t completely hate my time with it, this is definitely not the kind of fighter that I would ever be willing to revisit, not just in terms of the graphics, but because of the more clunky and slow gameplay, along with the lack of things to see, do, or admire. Don’t get me wrong, for what it is, it is a good game, but unless you are either a big fan of the series, or you are fan of early 3D fighters like this, then you would probably just wanna stick to later games in the series or other similar titles. Also, like with Virtua Racing, or even with Ridge Racer, I would suggest not looking at the characters in this game for too long, especially in their victory poses. I swear, it almost feels like Akira is gonna bust out of the arcade machine and eat me, it is disturbing.

Game #467

funny proof of concept for Tekken 2. Very ugly in every way and if you're just slamming through all the character arcade modes you're gonna want to throw your (legitimate Playstation 1 Entertainment Console) into the river.