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God Hand is truly something special. It is one of the stupidest, most ridiculous, most infuriating games I have ever had the (mis)pleasure of playing. The game oscillates between bad and astoundingly ultra-terrible, at which point it becomes so bad that it wraps back around to amazing. Sometimes.

Here's an accurate recreation of how God Hand came to be:

Clover Studios Game Designer: Hey, guys! Let's make another critically acclaimed, original, and artistic game like Viewtiful Joe and Okami!
Programmers + Artists: Yea!!

Capcom Executive walks in
Capcom Exec: Sorry everyone, making original and interesting games isn't profitable. Clover Studios is now dead, and you will all be reassigned to work on Mega Man Battle Network 9. Bye!
Capcom Executive exits

Clover Studios Game Designer: fuck. Let's all get wasted tonight and make the shittiest game ever.

IGN gave the game a 3.0 out of 10. A 3.0! You know a game is truly in its own class if it can garner a 3.0 from a major reviewer. From the awkward controls, to the weird camera angle, to the hilariously bad dialogue, something went terribly wrong. Every second playing the game will be spent questioning, "Why? What substances must one ingest to produce and/or play this game? What utter contempt for humanity caused this abomination to be unleashed upon the universe?"

And let me emphasize that God Hand is hard. Unfortunately, hard isn't an extreme enough phrase to adequately convey the difficulty of the game. Therefore, the designers summarize the game as ball-bustingly hard. I found this description especially apt -- particularly after I died for the four hundred fifty-sixth time whilst throwing the controller at the wall, thanks to one of the many bullshit enemies.

And the enemies truly redefine "bullshit". Even a single punch will decimate your life bar, sending you futilely searching for one of the random Pac-Man fruit that "reward" you a few pixels of health. In the unlikely scenario that you manage to scrape by and defeat the last enemy, the game flips you off and randomly spawns a demon enemy simply to crush any hopes and dreams of victory.

In fact, the enemies are so unforgiving that they constantly spout obscure Mike Tyson quotes. Not even the funny quotes -- just random, out-of-context ones, leaving you with no clue what the hell anyone is talking about.

For as horrendously difficult and utterly bad as God Hand is, it has one thing going for it:

It is awesome.

Updated: 12/12/07 10:53 AM Log in to comment! | Share this!

The People Have Spoken

16 Comments

Dec. 11, 2007 | 5:04 PM Zailotech says:

i've seen footage of god hand on x-play, and cheat. but it didn't seem that bad till i played it at my friends house. when i played it i instantly put the controler down, hit my friend and said wtf was that!

but okami is a pretty fun game mike. if you havent already try it.

Dec. 11, 2007 | 5:22 PM KupaMan says:

I just checked out GameStats' tracking of this game, and its score are more wide spread across the board than any game I've ever seen. It literally has reviews from 0.0 to a 9.0.

Dec. 11, 2007 | 6:02 PM voidshatter says:

i miss clover studios... okami was amazing *insert certain amount of crying*

Dec. 11, 2007 | 6:53 PM Ross says:

A 3.0 from IGN is pretty harsh.

Is it harder than Battletoads for the NES? That game was depressingly, maddeningly, spitefully difficult.

Dec. 11, 2007 | 8:58 PM JohnnyUtah says:

clearly mike doesnt enjoy games, he just likes WINNING.

and he wins a lot UNFORTUNATELY.

Dec. 12, 2007 | 12:31 PM snake23 says:

Maybe IGN did give this a 3.0 but IGN also did give Assasin's Creed a 7.7. The only real fault with this game is that it is insanely hard.

Dec. 12, 2007 | 1:03 PM EvilSeed says:

wawawait... is that the same God Hand that has 8.0 out 10 in Gamespot???

at first sight it doenst look that bad, and that score helps, but who knows, you have to play to decide and some people have diferent taste in videogames...

Dec. 12, 2007 | 3:03 PM ShadowWest says:

i used to have god hand! it rocked! awkward controls? i actually thought the controls were excellent. it had a weird camera angle, but i got used almost straight away and never annoyed me. definitely had bad dialogue, but its what made the game cheesey and likeable (well for me anyway). Ball-bustingly hard? more like throw-your-ps2-out-of-the-window hard. the enemies and "bullshit" paragraph i completely agree with. the 3.0 IGN gave was very harsh. it deserved at least a 5.5 imo.

PS: the bosses ruled! Midget gay power rangers? genius!^_^

Dec. 12, 2007 | 3:37 PM RabiesIsMe says:

Did that guy in the ending credits just use the term...pimp hand?
Also, "Dragon kick your ass into the milky way" Thanks, Mike. That's honestly the best ending credits song in the UNIVERSE.

Dec. 12, 2007 | 8:12 PM Zailotech says:

to add to my earlyer comment i was watching a cut sceen and figured the main caricter was gay... along with most other people... like HIM.

Dec. 14, 2007 | 9:29 AM god-monkey-pickle says:

nice :)

Dec. 14, 2007 | 9:32 AM Notcrud says:

Wow...really that bad?

Dec. 16, 2007 | 7:42 PM Wiiporter says:

I'd make the worst game ever if I were forced to make Megaman sequels for the rest of my existance.

Wait, what?

Dec. 16, 2007 | 11:12 PM Russ3ll says:

I think the reviewer who played God Hand had a stick up his ass or something, because the majority of all the other reviewers gave it about a 7 or 8.

Dec. 18, 2007 | 9:29 PM HangManFred says:

Are those even real trailers for the game?

Feb. 13, 2009 | 2:43 AM Panzerknacker says:

Dude, I fucking LOVE Godhand! IGN don't know shit, here we have a game that is pure gold, and they give it a 3? Morons, I say! Awkward camera angle? In that case, I hope for their sake they said the same about RE4... Crappy controls? Pfff, learn to play! Hard? Yes, but it's a fair kind of hard. Your own skill is what determines if you make it or not. It is possible to avoid almost every attack easily, if your timing is good. The story is so bad it's good. Oh, and you can kick people into orbit, literally. That is AWESOME!
Still, people like different things, and Godhand really is a love it or hate it kind of game. Wow, look at all this text! Did I do this? Cool!
Peace!