gone full circle. Gameplay The game is somewhat unusual in that between levels, the player plays poker for extra health and ammunition. The character is armed with four default weapons; a knife, a pistol, a rifle and a shotgun. Other weapons that can be found are TNT and Whisky bombs. The player can shoot objects such as whisky bottles, cans and enemies to score legend points, thus filling up the "trick shot" meter that lets the character use the secondary mode of firing which varies depending on the current weapon. The combat in the game also makes use of the game's physics engine, with the player being able to trigger physics based traps such as shooting a rock and causing it to fall onto an enemy below - kills obtained this way are rewarded with extra points and a greater increase in the "trick shot" meter. Development The game was originally set to release in Fall 2003. Reception Dead Man's Hand received "mixed" reviews on both platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, where the Xbox version was ported for release as part of the Xbox World Collection on September 2, 2004, Famitsu gave it a score of two sevens, one six, and one seven for a total of 27 out of 40. Playboy gave the Xbox version an early review, over three months before it was released Stateside, and stated, "A unique scoring system lets you unlock killer trick shots - if ya ain't a coward that is." The Times gave the game four stars out of five and stated, "The Wild West theme lends itself well to the FPS treatment, and the primitive weaponry brings an almost liberating freedom to the gameplay. Given the game's fairly tame content, its 16+ age rating seems harsh." However, Maxim gave it three stars out of five, saying, "The concept and play consistently deal a royal flush, [but] just ignore the choppy visuals, which can irritate like a pesky infection picked up at Miss Kitty's Cat House." References External links 2004 video games First-person shooters Human Head Studios games Multiplayer and single-player video games Multiplayer online games Unreal Engine games Video games developed in the United States Video games set in Mexico Video games set in the 1890s Western (genre) video games Windows games Xbox games