Dead Man’s Hand – Review

A first person shooter set in the genre of the Wild West sounds like it’s got it all going for it. It’s different and it’s something we can all relate to, even if we’ve only seen one spaghetti western in our time, but is naming a game after what is essentially a bad omen a good thing? Apparently Legend holds that Wild Bill Hickok was shot to death during a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota, and that the hand he held was two pairs, black aces and black eights, aka the Dead Mans Hand. Will the game survive a full on review or will it lay keeled over the poker table of doom? Let’s take a peek….

You play El Tejon, an outlaw who, upon realising the error of his ways tries to leave the band of murderers he’s previously hooked up with otherwise known as ‘The Nine’. However, as he tries to flee he is gunned down by the Nines leader and winds up alive but in a Mexican jail. As luck would have it however, an uprising by disgruntled inmates leads to El Tejons escape, where he can (in good western style) now reap his revenge on the Nine for trying to kill him.

The weaponry in the game is what you would expect from something in this genre, you’ve got your various revolvers, rifles, shotguns and of course dynamite to name but a few. At the beginning of each level you get to choose your preferred weapons from each category and as expected more are opened up the further you play. Once you’ve chosen your weapon and you’re ready to blast bad guys to pieces an odd thing happens… you get to play a few hands of poker. The reason for this is simple, winning hands gain you more life, ammo etc. but it’s actually a little like ‘why bother’ since it can mean you are playing various levels either at a distinct disadvantage or advantage dependent on what hands you’d been dealt prior to the level commencing, perhaps it harkens back to the legend of Hickock but to me it seems a little pointless.

In game locations are as varied as your average western flick, you’ve got the canyon, the plains, the boulder filled desert, the ghost town etc. Graphics are pretty enough with some amusing touches straight out of the western genre but it soon becomes obvious this game has some REAL issues, not least of them being the frame rate and bad AI. The aim too is worth a mention, there really is little point in concentrating too hard on precise aiming when the game really offers nothing of the sort, aim reasonably close and hopefully you’ll hit what you’re trying to. The backgrounds too are fairly interactive and hitting things such as lanterns, windows, bottles etc can gain you some handy extra points which you’ll need to open more weapons, sadly the AI of the so called bad guys matches that of one of these inanimate objects which although amusing can get tedious.

Sound can either make or ruin a game and Dead Mans Hand appears to fall somewhere in between the two, whilst the music is atmospheric and lends itself to the spaghetti western style it is severely let down by very average voice overs which sound as though they’ve been taken to the stereotypical extremes.

Gameplay is a strange one, despite it’s many technical flaws, it does have ‘something’, although it fails me as to what it is. Although not wholly addictive overall it certainly has whatever quality it is that can make a game enjoyable despite being… well… let’s be honest, a bit crap. The concept of the game is something that appears to be coming back to the fore, what with the release of this title, Red Dead Revolver and Nightwatch all within months (if not weeks) of one another.

Xbox Live Multiplayer however is part of the package that these other releases lack and it is one of the reasons Dead Mans Hand may actually sell a few more copies than it would have if it were a stand alone game. Let’s face it, the thought of being a cowboy / cowgirl in some mad multiplayer action is enough to wet most gamers appetites because without various patching etc it just hasn’t been done before. If you can get past all those annoying technical problems, particularly the staggering framerate there could be a few hours of gaming goodness here in it’s online incarnation because the overall concept isn’t stale.

Overall you might despise this game for all of its technical problems and if you suffer from motion sickness the longevity of this game each session will be fairly short. If you’re more of the forgiving type, you may well find yourself loading it and yelling yee harr to your friends down your xbox headset in the early hours of the morning and playing the game on the different difficulty settings to see if those AI cowboys get any smarter or are just too dang difficult to kill. I like this game despite its faults but I wouldn’t say it was a fantastic game. I think this is one where you really need to try it yourself and perhaps the fact it’s a different type of game that you can share with your online buddies might clinch it for you.

Review by Tracy

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