God Hand: Backhanded by IGN

   God Hand was a PlayStation 2 exclusive that was released in North America on October 10, 2006. It is an homage and satirical take on old school brawlers, and game play mainly revolves around hand to hand combat. It also features an adaptive difficulty system where the game gets more difficult as the player does better in combat.

  It's difficult to say just how many copies were sold because God Hand never reached any of the best seller lists in America. Sadly, American consumers all but ignored this quirky beat em up adventure. However, when it was released in Japan just a month before its American debut, it quickly became a top seller and over 48,000 copies were sold. So why was there such a big difference? Reviews. Most of the reviews for God Hand, in both America and Japan, gave it a decently above average score and usually only had complaints about difficulty or graphics. One of the most prominent American game reviewers, IGN, gave God Hand its death sentence in the form of one of the most controversial reviews of all time.

    Saying that God Hand was too hard or that its graphics were bad is understandable. There is no doubt about how brutally difficult this game is and the level design could be considered pretty bad for an old N64 game, but IGN's review by Chris Roper is inexcusable. The various aspect that Roper holds against God Hand, including things like mindless button mashing, bad camera angles, and boring enemies, are unfounded and blatant lies. Kind of makes sense once you realize that he never played more than the first few levels.

   That's right; Roper eventually admitted that he did not fully play the game once IGN listed God Hand in their Top 100 PlayStation 2 games list. Evidently, Roper wasn't willing to get used to the unconventional game play so he just based his review on his run through the first few levels and repeatedly getting his butt kicked. He just slapped a 3 out of 10 on it and went about his business.

   Luckily, God Hand is still available for download on PSN with only a few minor bugs and original copies can still be found on sites like Ebay. If nothing else check out the credits on youtube so you can at least get a feeling of how zany God Hand is.

   Until next time



Sources:

   IGN (Nov 2, 2010). Top 100 Playstation2 Games. Retrieved from http://www.ign.com/top/ps2-games/100
     
   Chris Roper (Oct 10, 2006). God Hand Review. Retrieved from http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/10/10/god-hand-review

   (2013). God Hand. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Hand. [Last Accessed March 24, 2013].