God Hand - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

In Japan, God Hand was listed on Famitsu's "Top 10 Reader's Most Wanted" for a few weeks. The game was the fifth best-selling game during the week of its release in the country, selling 48,280 units. Capcom managed to both ship and sell nearly 60,000 copies of the game in the country by the end of 2006. God Hand was later re-released under the CapKore line of budget titles and the PlayStation The Best range. Critical scores for God Hand were somewhat mixed yet generally positive from many magazines and websites. The game currently has a 73 out of 100 on Metacritic and a 75% on Game Rankings. God Hand received almost universal praise for its combat system and an attempt at adhering to an "old-school brawler" formula, attributes which the same critics found to overshadow glaring flaws in its graphics, play control, level design, and camera. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine opened its review by commenting, "God Hand is a terrible, terrible game, yet I can't stop playing it. There's just something horrifically appealing about how bad it is in almost every conceivable way." Despite IGN scoring God Hand 3.0 out of 10 during its original release, the website ranked the game at #100 for their "Top 100 PlayStation 2 Games" list in 2010. Independent PlayStation Magazine listed God Hand among the "11 PS2 Games You Need to Play (But Haven't)." God Hand was a nominee for "Best Fighting Game" at the 2006 Spike Video Game Awards. Rab Florence of the Scottish television series VideoGaiden claimed God Hand to be one of the best games ever made. The presenter summarized his review by stating, "What an epitaph for Clover Studio: We made one of the best games of all time and it was just a game about punching people." God Hand is the final release of developer Clover Studio, which announced its dissolution mere days after the game's release in North America. In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.