Identity theft...but who's the culprit??

Box art is a pretty tricky thing.

For some odd reason, people put way too much importance on a game's packaging. Of course, there are examples of both good and bad, but they are hardly anything worth discussing.

It's when you start noticing trends that you become a little more observant. Suddenly, the likelihood of a game arriving on store shelves with a protagonist pointing his massive gun at you increased ten fold. And the probability that you would notice this would increase eleven fold. A designers disregard for our tastes made their efforts stand out even more than those that tried.

But now, a new trend has happened upon us.

The hand.

EA is spearheading the effort with both Dead Rising and Left4Dead. One could argue that while Dead Rising is purely their decision, I imagine they muscled their "partners" at Valve to raise awareness of the importance of a character's hands.

It's such an odd trend, I'm worried that we'll be seeing outstretched hands all over our local retailer's shelves. Is this the direction we want to go? Feet I can understand, hell, a navel might not be that bad either. But a hand? Their all veiny and needy, crying out for moisturizer and other such creams. A foot toughs it out though. Have you felt the bottom of your feet? Hard as all heck isn't it? You don't hear any complaining.

When will it be the foot's time to shine, EA? When?