Dead Man's Hand

by Atari

Product Features

• Ride through 20 dangerous missions, exploring deserts, hills an abandoned mines across the Old West
• Use the environment to your advantage -- take out other gunslingers by knocking over posts or sending wagons down a cliff with a well-placed shot
• Choose from authentic Old West weapons, from six-shooters and rifles to Bowie knives & dynamite sticks
• As you play, you'll build Legend points - use these to earn trick-shot moves you've only seen in the Western movies
• Before each mission, you'll get to the saloon for a game of poker -- try to win extra Ammo, health or legend points

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009M986
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches ; 4.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: March 16, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,284 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Dead Man's Hand - Enter the Old West for fast, realistic shooter action taken straight from classic Western films! A gunslinger named El Tejon was set up by his own gang, and served time in jail for their crimes. Now he's free, and he'll make them pay for the years he lost -- with their blood. Challenging shooter scenarios like trying to shoot bandits while riding a horse, shooting it out on a moving train and more Exciting first-person shooter chock full of gun fights and dripping in frontier lore!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Hogan's Alley 2004, March 7, 2004

By 

thefrankeinstein - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Man's Hand (Video Game)

Boy howdy have I waited a long time for a good video game set in the Western genre! Howdy doody is this not it! Darn tootin'!

Dead Man's Hand, unfortunately, is just a glorified shooting gallery. You score points for shooting random objects (hanging signs, wagon wheels, window shutters, lanterns, etc.) and, occassionally, an outlaw. But the outlaw AI is nothing like you'd expect, no, it fits right in with the shooting gallery theme, so that your enemies simply pop up (or run) into view so you can shoot them down, a lot like the ducks in ol' Duck Hunt. And the killing of these stupid bandits factors in the silly trick shot mechanic as well, with you earning the most points by shooting the hat off of a foe's head, shooting a nearby powder keg and exploding them, or what have you. The problem is that the auto-aim is so intrusive that you can line up with a powder keg or other environmental hazard, and when you shoot, the game instead registers your shot in the bad guy's chest, thereby losing you the points you could have earned by blowing him up with the powder keg. And in a show of really poor quality control and testing, many, many times I've shot a bandit dead, and had the auto aim still focus on his dead body (or even where it had BEEN before it disappeared), so that when I try to shoot a watermelon (*sigh*) that's halfway across the screen, my bullets instead completely ignore my crosshairs and slam into the ground where the dead guy had been! Ugh!

Boss battles? In an FPS? How exciting! And it seems as though the developers tried to rise to that expectation, with the obligatory "evaluate the boss' attack pattern and attack accordingly." For instance, before the battle with Apache boss "Flat Iron," your in-game persona suggests you keep your back to the wall (because the Apache is fast on his feet), and he only uses knives in his attacks, so do your best to shoot them out of the air. Okay, I thought. Boring, sure, unoriginal, yeah, but they tried. But you could've fooled me, because there's zero strategy involved, leaving you to simply shoot the supposed overlord repeatedly until he's dead, just like his henchmen.

Okay, okay, but what about the weapons? I've seen better weapon models come from an amateur mod team, the Peacemaker in particular. And on top of that, your "secondary fire" option (with the Peacemaker it's obviously the option to fan the gun, thereby shooting rapid-fire and generally just being really cool) has to be earned by filling up a meter with those boring trick shots I mentioned, and then it depletes with use, only to have to be filled again. And on top of even THAT frustration, the Winchester rifle's secondary fire isn't even the cool rapid-fire method seen in The Rifleman! It's a boring old sniper scope that doesn't even work anyway, because of the stupid auto-aim feature!

And while the story itself isn't very good either, being the expected rehash of every Spaghetti western you've ever seen, the atmosphere's alright. Once while inching my way down a canyon I looked up to notice, for the first time for any game in memory, the clouds in the sky actually blowing with the wind. But that's probably been in plenty of other games before Dead Man's Hand; it's probably that they just weren't so boring that I actually took the time to assess the cloud physics. The music, I've got to admit, is the high point of the game, with its combination of that classic Spaghetti western guitar and rythm with a modern drum beat. And finally, the art direction is just as boring as the gameplay, with all of the evil bosses being a pretty nondescript guy with a mustache and/or sideburns.

So really, this is just an update to those old novely lightgun shooting galleries of the '80s. I've longed for a Western adventure with a lightning-fast Peacemaker strapped to my leg, but walking around shooting bottles and hats is not what I had in mind. And unless that sounds appealing to you, you may as well just stick with Gunsmoke on your NES until Red Dead Revolver gets here.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good game for $30, May 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Man's Hand (Video Game)

For those of you familiar with the HBO series "Deadwood", the "Dead Man's Hand" title is based on the cards (Aces over Eights, suited black) that Wild Bill Hitchcock died with while being shot in the back of the head during a poker game. Just an interesting bit of information.

That said, this game's first level looks horrendous, the graphics aren't anything too great (sharp, but often bland), there is an auto-aim feature that can not be turned off and often screws up a bullseye shot, and before you die the game pauses for a brief second. So, the game's not perfect, and at times feels unfinished.

All the bad stuff aside, after playing the game for a couple hours I found myself involved in the atmosphere that Dead Man's Hand creates, and it creates it well, for some. There are some great gun battles and the difficulty advances significantly as you progress through the 25 or 30 something levels--which is really much longer than I think anyone expected this game to be. On normal difficulty expect a game that gives you something like 40 hours of gameplay due to a few hard situations, consequentaly making you re-play some levels a bunch of times.

Online mode is great fun and an excellent addition to a $30 game like this. Although it feels limited, this game is a great time killer and not a bad game at all.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great game set in the old west!, March 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Man's Hand (Video Game)

Dead Man's Hand is a game set in the old west. The game has a great storyline with some good single player mechanics. You can do so many things in single player it is a blast. You can shoot other objects and if an enemy is near them they will feel the effects. The game also has some good multiplayer through System Link and Xbox Live. It has Death Match, Team Death Match, Posse, and Bounty. All are quiet fun with my favorite being Bounty. Bounty is a form of not it. Posse is you and your buddies are trying to hold off wave after wave of enemy soldiers. I gave this game 4 stars cause it did not have splitscreen multiplayer and the frames per second could be just a tad better. You won't really notice it very much at all if you don't know much about frames per second. The thing I didn't like was when I died it took a split second to fall down and for the game engine to recognize I was on the ground dead. Overall this game is one to get because it is good, cheap, and has a good lasting appeal.