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Controls overview
Most of this stuff is addressed in How to get good at God Hand (video)
God Hand is a 3D Beat 'Em Up with Tank Controls and the game pretty much handles the same as Resident Evil 4 -- which is no surprise since both games were directed by Shinji Mikami.
HUD
Pause menu
Controls
Dodging and Cancelling
Locked moveset
The God Hand
When your tension gauge is full (turns gold), press R2 to unleash your godhand. You'll gain total invincibility, your attacks are unblockable as well as twice as fast and you get a 1.5x damage boost (doesn't affect Roulette Moves. However, picking up a Heat Card will affect Roulettes damage output with a ~20% damage bonus). This ends when your tension gauge is depleted. It is not possible to deactivate the godhand meter manually.
You gain God Hand meter by dodging attacks, taunting, hitting enemies, getting hit, and picking up Bikini Cards. See TAUNTING for more info.
Roulette Moves (God Reel in JP version)
Roulette Moves are performed by pressing R1 (you need at least one roulette orb). This heavily slows down time and a list of roulette moves will appear. Press R1 repeatedly (left/right on the left stick works as well) to shuffle through them and X to select. You're only given a short time to select your desired move. So long you've not selected any, you can press Triangle to cancel and close the wheel. If an enemy hits you before you manage to select a move, you'll get knocked out of roulette.
Opening the Roulette Wheel is also used turn around and lock-on enemies. The targeted enemy will be highlighted and glowing.
Moves in yellow cost 1 orb, blue costs 2 and red costs 3. The order of the moves that show up on the menu is randomized each time.
You can also increase the number of orbs by buying a Golden Plate from the shop. You start with 3 orbs on Easy and 2 on Normal and Hard. You refill your orbs by picking up Roulette Cards from breakable objects or fallen enemies. See Items picture for reference:
Guard Break
Enemies block randomly. You can only attack a guarding enemy a few times before they break your attack by smacking your arms away.
To avoid that, perform a move with the attribute 'break' (e.g. Guard Breaker, Spinning Backfist) at a guarding enemy and you will break his guard instead.
A successful guard break renders an enemy vulnerable for a short time. In that time your attacks inflict more damage, some move property drastically change (a quick Charged Punch will send an enemy high up in the air, a High Side Kick will instantly launch an enemy, etc. More info on that later) and your tension gauge and enemy level increase faster.
Stun and Dizzy status
Punch an enemy enough and he'll get dizzy, with stars flying over his head. The stun status lasts for 5 seconds, the duration is the same with every enemies in the game. You can land anything you want during this time.
Press the Circle button to perform a Prompt Attack (the prompt changes depending on the enemies, you can get a Pummel, Suplex, Stinger, etc. and are invincible during their whole animation.
Watch How to get good at God Hand at 3m41s for more information.
Counter-hits
A counter-hit is when you interrupt an enemy by hitting him right before he attacks, or when he's in the middle of an attack.
Counter hits inflict 2x damage and also drastically affect the damage dealt by Charged moves.
Taunting
Gene says a couple different lines each time (Boring, Ahah!, Bring it on, Time for a little fun) and he either points his finger in front of him or taps his arm. Enemies become berserk when taunted, their faces turn red and steam comes out of their ears, they get a huge damage boost and start hitting like trucks (I don't know the exact damage data, something like 20% to double the damage they usually deal) and they also start dodging and countering you more often I think; they're just more aggressive than usual.
There's two ways to turn enemies berserk, by taunting them or by hitting them a lot (this usually happens against airborne opponents, they'll turn red and backflip in the air to break out of your combo, kind of similar to how enemies in Bayonetta 2 react and combo-break you when attacked from the front.)
Taunting has two uses:
1) You aggro an enemy from far way, you can pull dudes one by one by positioning yourself properly;
2) You get a tiny bit of God Hand meter back (the data I have from the JP guide book says "12" on level 1-3 and "6" on level DIE, I have no idea what this number is supposed to mean or how much god hand meter you have to begin with). Here's the God Hand page from the guide book anyway with a partial translation:
4. Tension meter refill
By damaging an enemy
- Jab (0.8) *
- Other normal attacks (1.5~3.0) * (see 5 for "*")
- Yes Man Kablaam *
- Stomp *
- Pummel *
- Suplex *
- ???
- Stinger (0.5 x number of times kicked+1)
- Cobra Twist (1.0 x number of times strangled+1)
- Punishment - Spanking (0.5 x number of times punched+1)
- Gorilla Throw
- Belze Pummel (0.5 x number finger rotations)
5. *Fill rate varies for counter hits depending on difficulty,
4.0 level 1-3
1.0 level DIE
6. Taking damage from enemies
Fill rate = Damage / Player maxHPx10
7. *Fill rate maximum is 10.0
8: Taunting enemies
Lvl1-3 - 12.0
Die - 6.0
9: Up-dodging
# times dodged Fill
once = 1.5
multiple times = 0.5
Up-dodging
10. You get God Hand meter back +1.5 the first time and +0.5 any subsequent times