Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure

The Good
I didn’t like this game when I first started it. But, it grew on me and I liked it more and more as I continued to play.

You play in 3rd person perspective in and around a western town. The town has the normal things you’d find in a Western – a Saloon, a general store, Sheriff’s office, the bank and the train station. In addition to the town, you’ll be exploring 2 farms, a school house, fairgrounds and a railway bridge. Each of the locations looks authentic enough in its cartoon style.

There are a good number of non-player characters. Those NPCs are a bit rough around the edges (too many “points” on the school teacher, if you get my drift). Fenimore looks good as do most of the men.

Music was entertaining throughout, mostly heard in the background. Sound effects were funny .. especially when Fenimore pulled something out of his pants! Voice acting was great in the English version.

Puzzles are really just “situations” – conversation and object based. None of them were really hard (except the “action” segments – see below) – and even though you can die, you get a second chance without having to restore.

The “point and click” interface wasn’t what most players have become used to. Not many arrow cursors to tell you where you can and can’t walk. Just click somewhere and Fenimore walks there. Saving and loading games is easy. Only a picture and the date are shown (no option to name your games). You aren’t limited to the number of spots, that I could tell.

The story and the humor in the telling of that story are the best parts about this game. It’s fresh and new. You get to do some unusual stuff – pull a tooth, rob a bank, blow up a bridge, play rhyming insult duels (similar to one of the Monkey Island games), become a bull fighter, and other amusing antics.

The Bad
Even with the latest patch (at this writing it’s v1.1), WANTED still has a few problems.

1st – action segments caused my system to bog down. Re-loads showed the wrong graphic locations when this happened. The game even dropped me to my desktop after defeating one of the most difficult of the challenges – frustrating to say the least! A system reboot cleared all memory and I was able to continue without problems, though.

2nd – 3D wasn’t really necessary. It reminded me a lot of Simon the Sorcerer 3D in many ways. The irritating thing about the 3D was the movement from one screen to another. You’d miss parts of a room if you weren’t careful. Picking up an item from a drawer was a multi-step process – Open drawer, Look at Drawer, Pick up [item], Close Drawer.

3rd – Some action segments were just too hard for most adventure gamers. In order to solve some of them, the player must accelerate the mouse speed to the max.

4th – And speaking of action segments, the shootouts were all different. Just when you think you’re good at it, they change the entire premise of the next. So practice didn’t mean anything.

5th – That darned horse ate too much and feeding him all the way through the game became tiresome.

The Bottom Line
WANTED is a very cute and entertaining game. The situations and problems that the player has to solve intertwine together to make a believable story. Humor abounds and you’ll find yourself laughing out loud often.

It’s not a perfect game, by any means, but I’d recommend it as a worthy play.