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	Game Review - Dead Man's Hand   Contact Mr. Shade and make fun of him   Publisher: Infogrames Interactive Developer: Atari, Inc. Rated: T for Teen Length: Around 8 hours (27 missions) Genre: Western FPS Website: Dead Man's Hand System: Xbox OVERVIEW El Tejon, AKA the "Frito Bandito," was shot and left for dead by his former gang, The Nine. He gets put in prison but soon escapes during a peasant rebellion. El Tejon picks up his guns and goes after his former compadres. For the MovieMark readers who don't speak Spanish, El Tejon is Spanish for "The Tejon." Stock bad guys and poor, repetitive gameplay ensue. MR. SHADE'S TAKE I was really excited when I heard about this game. I love Westerns and FPS's, so what could go wrong with the combination? Apparently quite a bit. Beware the $30 starting price tag. Anyways, lets start off positive. The Good: Graphics and levels design are both pretty good. I believe the game uses some form of the Unreal engine. The levels all look pretty authentic - there's a ghost town, some canyons, woods, and even a train. The cutscenes stand out the most in this game. Before each boss there is a black and white cutscene that has the sound of an old timey projector in the background. It gives the game an authentic Western touch. The physics in the game are remarkably good for this style of game. Nearly everything you shoot reacts - wagon wheels spin off of the walls, ropes break, sending the items they are holding to the ground, and wagons filled with explosives roll down hill. You won't mistake this game for Half-life 2, but it's much better than you would expect for an arcadish FPS. The poker before each level and the point system are original. You play poker to get additional ammo and power-ups. During the levels you get points for shooting hats off of enemies, shooting items and people out of the air, and dropping heavy items onto enemies. After you beat a level it shows you your score for that level. Your high score on each level is also saved. The Bad: The character models are pretty average, but the real problem is that there are very few of them. Almost every enemy looks the same. The sound is the same - the music is great (very Western sounding) but your enemies use the same phrases on every level. There's about 10 different lines throughout the game - things like "You're gonna wish you were never born!" or "Look out, he's got a gun!" The plot is pretty weak as well. The story gets introduced but then goes nowhere. Each level plays the same - kill all the bad guys to get to the boss and then kill the boss. All the characters in the game are cliches. You fight an Indian, a gambler, a preacher, an accountant, twins, a strong man, and a bad-guy-turned-senator. That's as much character development as you get from the game. This game uses the cheap "no save point" tactic to stretch the game out to ~8 hours. The game saves after each level but not during the levels. Fortunately for this game the levels aren't longer than 10-15 minutes, but you still don't want to play through them more than once. The Ugly: The AI and collision detection are horrible in this game. The bad guys basically "appear" behind a wall or door and react once you get to a certain location. By react, I mean they shoot at you, move behind something, and then slowly shoot again. Even this might be entertaining except for the collision detection. Hitting enemies from far away seems much easier than shooting them up close. If you try to shoot at someone behind something, say a table, you'll end up hitting the table most of the time - even if you shoot well above it. Now add to this that the enemies in the game can't seem to hit a moving target. This means that it's easier to just walk around the obstacles and shoot the bad guys than hiding behind something and trying to snipe them off one by one. The whole game basically consists of you shooting the bad guys, moving side to side while you reload, and then shooting the next bad guy. The bosses are a little more complicated - you shoot until needing to reload, hide behind something, reload, and then pop out and shoot again. Rinse and repeat until boss is dead. Category Description Score Presentation The levels look great and the cutscenes before the bosses are well done. 8.0 Graphics Graphics look decent but there are only about 5 different enemies. 6.0 Sound Great soundtrack for this game. Sound effects are adequate and voice acting is minimal. 7.5 AI Completely braindead. 3.0 Gameplay Kill the bad guys as you make your way through a linear level to kill the boss. Repeat 25 times (one level actually has you defend a house). 3.5 Replayability The only reason to replay a level is to try to beat your high score. 4.0 Overall 5.5	RETURN TO HOME PAGE Journey to the Center of the Earth Hancock Get Smart The Incredible Hulk The Strangers Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Young at Heart Iron Man Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed The Forbidden Kingdom Weekend Results: 1. Hancock($62,603,879) 2. Wall-E($32,509,203) 3. Wanted($20,050,070) 4. Get Smart($11,109,408) 5. Kung Fu Panda($7,318,635)

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