God Hand is the ultimate expression of the joy of humanity, specifically the punching part of the joy of humanity. We all like to punch, but some of us do not like to hit, maybe because we do not want to get hit, or maybe because we think it isn’t nice. Some of us don’t mind so much and enjoy both punching and hitting. Whether that is true for you or not, God Hand is true punching.

But maybe that’s being a little harsh. The cutscenes do frequently pull off some good horror. Despite that, a movie isn’t really going to feel a whole lot like playing Clock Tower. It’s supposed to be about you finding hiding places to escape the killers, whose only weakness is thinking that there’s no way you’d be hiding in a closet in the room they just saw you go into. If you can ignore the gameplay contrivance, though, it can pull you in and be suspenseful. The music cues help a lot. Watching a person on a movie screen doing the same thing, however, will just encourage you to point out how dumb it is and the music will come off as hammy.

Regardless of what I think though, good luck to this Jorge Olguin fellow directing the movie, as I’ve never met a Jorge I didn’t like. You’ve got until production begins this fall to find a way to make it work.

Not in stock yet, but due to be this month. Buyer beware, and try not to wonder about why Red Octane aren’t themselves releasing different body styles. All they’ve ever had was a limited edition that was the same body with the classic Gibson Cherry color instead of black. Why? It is a mystery and— as Dio would amend— always a mystery, just like you and me.

Guitar Performance w/”Shredder” controller [Lik Sang, via Kotaku]

Anyway, Sony is publishing Rule of Rose in Japan, but declined to do so here as well. Luckily for all you “loli” pervs, Atlus decided to pick up the hot, hot slack.

Read – Press Release [Atlus]

Here are the games arriving in stores over the course of this week. Mostly today.

PC

• Battlefield 2: Deluxe Edition (EA/Dice) – Now with more luxurious loading screens. ($50)
• City Life (CDV) – SimStadt. City manager game. ($40)
• Flight Deck 4 (Abacus) – SimFlugzeugträgerlandung. A simulation of landing jets on a carrier. Also makes The Movies seem much more like a game. ($30)
• The Movies: Stunts And Effects (Activision/Lionhead) – And boozed up director management game. ($30)
• Jaws Unleashed (Majesco/Appaloosa Int.) – Head attachments not included. ($20)
• Rush For Berlin (Atari/Stormregion) – Hey, guess what the winning tactic in this RTS might be? ($20)
• Cars (THQ) – Here in my license/I feel lamest of all/I can cash that pay check/It’s a low way to dev/For Cars ($20)

PS2

• And 1 Streetball (Ubi Soft) – ($40)
• Cars (THQ) – ($40)
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (Rockstar Games) – The port from PSP drops the multiplayer but also drops $20 off the pricetag. ($20)
• MLB Slugfest 2006 (Midway) – A celebration of all things slug. ($20)
• AMF Xtreme Bowling (Bethesda) – Did you know that modern bowling balls are techincally just one molecule? That’s pretty Xtreme, I guess. ($20)
• IHRA Drag Racing: Sportsman Edition (Bethesda) – Good, the Inveterate Couch Potato Edition was way too condescending and didn’t really capture the sportsmanly drama of drag racing. ($20)

XBox

• And 1 Streetball (Ubi Soft) – ($40)
• Cars (THQ) – ($40)
• MLB Slugfest 2006 (Midway) – ($20)

GameCube

• Cars (THQ) – ($40)

DS

• Magnetica (Nintendo) – ($35)
• Big Brain Academy (Nintendo) – The dean is famous for his ability to infer the reasons behind the naming of fast food in France. ($20)
• Scurge: Hive (Orbital Media) – This might be a wackier marketing misspell than Xtreme Bowling. It also reminds me of Surge, which gave me hives when I drank it. ($30)
• Cars (THQ) – ($30)

PSP

• Gradius Collection (Konami) – Gradiuses I-IV plus PlayStation classic Gradius Gaiden in one ($40) package.
• Astonishia Story (Ubi Soft) – A throwback to the era of PS1 throwbacks to the SNES era— a tile-based RPG. And it’s ($40).
• Cars (THQ) – Wheeled vehicles on a PSP, who would have thought of such a thing? ($40)
• Race Driver 2006 (Codemasters) – Ooh, and this one’s all about racing! What a coup for the platform. ($40)

GBA

• Cars (THQ) – Cross-platform champion of the week! ($30)
• Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure (Atari/Webfoot) – Scaled back to GBA when they realized that if it was on DS it would have to be Dual-Screened Doings($30)
• Juka and the Monophonic Menace (Orbital Media) – Wait, the most significant attribute of the menace is that it’s not in stereo? This ought to be good. ($30)