Outlaws

The Good
Even though Quake was out when Outlaws was released, there were still almost no true 3D games available. Outlaws used a modified Dark Forces engine which upped the resolution and added areas above other areas (using a trick).

Clint Bajakian's score for Outlaws is still one of the best for any game, period. Outlaws' music won several awards when it was released.

The first level has a really awesome secret on it too. The Historical Missions was a great addition and showed that Daron Stinnett was really working to make this game original and not a "me too" product.

The Bad
Just about the only thing I could criticize was the fact that you had to exit to the menu to save/load your game and the Control Config screen didn't match the rest of the game (it used the GDI inside DirectX). Other than that, this game is just magnificent.

The Bottom Line
You MUST play Outlaws to see what's missing from the genre. This is a highly original Western shooter that, I daresay, may have been the first game to introduce the first elements of today's tactical shooters like Ghost Recon. One or two shots and you're dead - do NOT mess up!

The Good
I was worried at first that the game would be a dated Dark Forces clone with a thin western look washed over it. So when I got the demo I selected the hardest difficulty level, "Ugly" because I was a Dark Forces veteran, and walked confidently into the small western town. And got shot dead instantly. Ok, I thought, I'll have to be a little more cautious then that, and next time I kept my eyes pealed as I walked carefully into town. Someone called out "Hey sheriff!" as the saloon window shattered and I fell dead to the dust. Ah, I thought, this is going to take a little work. Next time I made my way carefully down a side ally into town, creeping around behind the saloon. As I carefully rounded a corner, crouched on the ground, I came up on a cowboy who turned, yelled and we both shot at once. His shot took a chunk out of the wall by my head, he fell dead, I had survived for once. By the time I had crawled up the back stairs, dispatched 3 more rustlers, dropped into a small store room and came out into the saloon proper with six shooter blazing (getting shot dead again in the process) I was thoroughly in love with this game, I bought it the next day.

It provide a tense, one-shot-one-kill game-play that I simply hadn't experienced up to that point, you had to THINK and be cautious as well as shoot strait to survive in this wild west. The AI could make use of cover, circle around you and was quick on the draw, but get good at it and when you burst into a room and clear it leaving one shot remaining in your six-shooter, you'll fell just like Clint Eastwood. What a feeling.

Add to that the hand drawn movies which moved the (relatively generic 'defeat the robber-baron') plot along, some good voice acting, some excellent level designs, the first sniper scope, satisfying weapons, wonderful Spaghetti Western music and some fun multi-player and you've got a surprising winner that never got the props it deserved.

The Bad
Quake had already shipped by this time and screen shots for Unreal were everywhere, the game world was clamoring for the true 3D experience and Outlaws was 2.5D with flat sprites and a cartoon style that, while it worked for the game, belied the literally killer game-play underneath.

Not all the levels were excellent, some were long and tedious hikes while others became grueling switch hunts.

In anything but the Hard difficulty mode the game plays more like a western mod for Dark Forces.

The Bottom Line
How much did I enjoy this game? I'd never been a big western fan, I thought they were OK but I didn't go out of my way to see them. While playing this I started renting all the spaghetti westerns I'd never seen. Pure Man-With-No-Name goodness, and now I'm a fan. That's a good game, one that can turn you on to a genre.

I think they did themselves an injustice allowing for the weaker difficulty levels. Sure the instant death represented by the hard mode would have alienated many people, but it was clearly the way the game was meant to be played. Play it on hard or don't play it at all.

I can't help but think that this would have been a big hit instead of an underdog if they had used a more up-to-date game engine to make it with. I eagerly anticipated Outlaws II which would, I hoped, use the Jedi Knight engine or something new.

I'm still waiting.

No western game since has captured this ones game-play. Rent "A Fist Full Of Dollars", get this game, strap on your six shooter and prepare to eat some dust!

The Good
In brief, what I liked most about Outlaws was the atmosphere and tension which was created largely by the unique (for the time) nods to reality it made, while remaining within the action-shooter genre (which was rapidly becoming stale.)

Although you could play on easier settings, the hardest difficulty level was and is the only way to play Outlaws. On this level your opponents hit the dirt in one or two shots, and although stronger than they are, you yourself are highly vulnerable. When combined with the realistic (if extremely rapid) manual reloading of your weapons, the combat experience became tactical and tense in a way that none of its peers could ever hope to match.

Imagine yourself, a gunman standing at the corner of a building, your back to the wall. You duck around the corner and back again. Three men. A shout of alarm -- one of them saw you. You grit your teeth, and step out with your double-barreled shot-gun levelled. The left barrel explodes, and the first man crumples. Instantly you spin and let loose the second barrel, but your aim is off; your target jerks but doesn't fall. A shot whistles through the air where you were standing, but you are already back behind the wall. Grimacing, you eject the empty shells and push the fresh cartridges home. The barrels snap closed, and you press yourself flat against the wall again, breathing heavily. Your eyes flick quickly from one side to the other, looking for signs of movement from the other direction, in case others have been drawn by the gunfire. One down, one injured, one unhurt. You try to imagine whether they've moved position, and prepare to step out from your cover once more...

Let yourself sink into the atmosphere of the game, and this is what playing Outlaws is like.

Throw sniping with your rifle and scope, tossing sticks of dynamite into an ambush, panic-stricken 'fanning' of your six-shooter as you stumble into sight of an opponent, fantasic music, and some wonderfully realised scenarios and scenery into the mix, and you have an idea of why people loved this game (and in many cases still do).

The Bad
Outlaws isn't perfect by any means. The graphics engine was aging at the time of its release, but this isn't all that big an issue. My major annoyances with the game are:

a) The general stupidity of your opponents. While the sheer number of people you eliminate in the game may necessitate that they not be the fastest and most accurate guns in the west, you do tend to get the impression that these people have been inbred to the point where you're surprised they don't shoot themselves instead of you. (Although they do occasionally shoot each other; generally a happy occurance for the player :)

b) While often very aesthetically appealing, the level design is often less than ideal from a gameplay perspective, and frequently completely irrational from a practical perspective (not that this is a new thing for FPSs)

c) The introduction is nicely done, and certainly puts you in a vengeful frame of mind, but the 'story' is, in reality, next to non-existant. "May be the first shooter with a plot!" (paraphrased) read one of the box quotations. Well, maybe this was true in a purely literal sense -- there was a game, and it was accompanied by a plot -- but there was pretty much zero integration of the two beyond the basic theme. You fought a bunch of guys in the setting introduced by the previous cut-scene, and then moved on to the next cut-scene. (Having been spoiled by System Shock, which features one of the finest integrations of plot and gameplay ever seen in a first-person game, I suspect this deficiency annoyed me more than it did many people.)

The Bottom Line
Outlaws is a highly atmospheric, tense, and unique action-shooter.

The Good
First of all, I loved the whole "Spaghetti Western" theme used in the game. I'd really like to see another first person shooter game using this theme. I also liked the way Lucasarts designed the game to be as faithful to the genre as possible, it seems they went out of their way to avoid being over-the-top or campy. You won't get your hands on a rocket launcher, you'll never run into a steam-powered giant spider, and the last boss won't be a guy in bullet-proof 19th century power armor complete with arm cannon.

The way Lucasarts tries to keep the gameplay "realistic" can be seen throughout the game. All the weapons look completely authentic, you won't find a single one that looks like it doesn't belong in a Spaghetti Western movie (again, no rocket launchers). The most powerful weapon you'll find is a gatling gun you pick up in the last level, and even that is limited by the fact that you can't move around when it's selected. On top of that your weapons run out of ammunition and have to be reloaded manually, bullet by bullet (they don't have weapon clips in the old west, sorry). This adds a strategic element to gameplay since you can't rely on the computer to reload your gun for you when you run out of ammo. One particularly fun item is a telescope you can add to your rifle to create a rudimentary sniper rifle, allowing you to pick off your foes at a distance.

The types of enemies is a bit limited. There are only three or four different types of cowboys, however the game tries to create a bit of variety by giving each type three or four different sprites with different cloths on. There are also a few tarantulas, a couple of chickens, and some civilians who run around certain levels. The enemies seem to be moderately more skilled than most FPS enemies, since they run fairly quickly, can shoot while moving (strange how rarely this happens in FPS), and occasionally are smart enough to run away from your fire or duck behind obstacles. They also yell a variety of taunts at you (with enough variety to avoid too much repetition) which helps make them seem more lifelike.

The game makes up for the lack of enemies with its wide variety of boss characters. Most FPS games only have three or four different bosses overall (the newer, polygon-based FPS games have even less). Outlaws has at least 12 different bosses, ten at the end of each level and two in the middle of levels. Each boss has their own unique taunts which they yell at you as you fight them, which serve to give them each a unique personality. Your character, on the other hand, is the strong silent type who (unlike Duke Nukem and his ilk) doesn't make ill-placed wisecracks while killing, which also fits in to the genre.

The enemies are also realistically designed. Your foes are all flesh-and-blood cowboys, even the strongest of them takes only a few bullets to kill. Even the bosses are relatively mortal and most of them can be taken down with a single shotgun blast.

The game balances this out by making your character very much mortal as well. Bullets do quite a bit of damage, and a single shotgun blast will take off more than half your health (and kill you on higher difficulty). The bosses in particular do a great deal of damage, and the toughest of them can kill you with three or four shots.

All this makes the gameplay in Outlaws a bit different from other first person shooters, as instead of charging in guns blazing you'll often have to duck, take cover being obstacles, and sneak up on your enemies or snipe them from afar. Of course if you really prefer the "Doom" style of play the easiest difficulty setting allows it (In this game difficulty doesn't cause more enemies or respawning, but instead decides how human or superhuman your character is and how much damage they can take).

Level design is also top-notch, and most of the levels look like they'd fit perfectly into a wild west movie. The majority of levels take place in large, wide-open outdoor spaces, showing how good the "Dark Forces" engine is at this. Level locations include frontier towns, Spanish forts, desert canyons, gold mines, and even a speeding train. The last level in particular is a huge ranch-style mansion that's really fun to run around in.

The main "story" part of the game is a bit short, with only ten levels overall. However there's also a "historical missions" game which has six extra levels as well as three bonus levels which are unlocked with points gained by completing the extra levels successfully. The bonus levels contain some cool surprises, such as a shooting gallery, an Indiana Jones style cave adventure complete with booby-traps, and a showdown with the game's only superhuman enemy, Max the psychotic rabbit from Lucasart's own Sam & Max Hit the Road.

The music in this game is amazing. The music in the intro credits actually sounds like it belongs in a real wild west movie, and the in-game CD music is very much the same.

The animated cutscenes are simply breath-taking. There's a cutscene at the end of each level which helps to move the plot along and link the different levels together. The animation is very smooth and the coloring seems to be in a sort of "watercolor" style which makes for very beautiful backgrounds. The style of animation is fairly mature and not "cartoony" which fits the serious subject matter. And it is quite serious. Your wife is killed by outlaws in the intro movie, and by the end of the game almost every character except you and your daughter will end up dead (you kill most of them). The game's violence is high but not graphic. There's very little blood in any of the cutscenes even though a few characters are killed rather violently off-screen (one guy gets cut in half by a sawblade), and only a little in the game itself. The hand-drawn animation is also not limited to the cutscenes. During the game, all of your weapons are hand-drawn as well. This is certainly interesting to look at.

Finally, there's the game's surprisingly strong story. This is perhaps one of the strongest stories I've seen in a first person shooter. It's also rather derivative with many of its elements being taken from old wild west movies, but that's all part of its charm. There's the vengence seeking ex-lawman, the greedy land baron, the cold-blooded murderous henchman who quotes Shakespeare and the bible. In fact the game's plot is more inter-woven and complex than you might first realise, and the ending manages to elevate the over-arching story to an entirely new level.

First Person Shooters always seem to have short, pointless endings (even today this seems to be true). I'm glad to say Outlaws is at least one game that doesn't suffer from this problem. Marshall Anderson's last gunfight with Bob Graham and the subsequent ending cutscene actually manages to tie-up the game's plot, and there's even a strong surprise at the very end. Finally there's a touching scene of you and your daughter leaving Graham's Big Rock Ranch behind and riding off into the sunset while the credits roll.

The Bad
I can honestly say that there's nothing about this game I don't like. The only real complaint I think anyone might have is that LucasArts is still using the Dark Forces bitmapped engine when true-3D polygon games have already been out for more than a year, and Quake 2 about to be released. However the gameplay is so good I really don't mind that the technology seems a bit dated.

The controls can also be a bit awkward since there are so many buttons you'll need to press in the middle of combat (fire, secondary fire, reload, duck, jump, etc). The default configuration isn't very good and it took me about an hour or so to get a custom configuration which I was comfortable with.

I would have preferred having a bit more variety in the enemies, but I can understand how the game may have limited the enemy types in order to stay faithful to the genre (the poison spitting tarantulas were probably streching credulity already).

The Bottom Line
Outlaws is a first person shooter set in the style of the old spaghetti western movies. Its differs a bit from the standard FPS formula, but does so in a good way. If you like westerns or like first person shooters and aren't married to your Voodoo II, than you'll probably enjoy this game. I know I did.

The Good
The music in this game is above and beyond any western music ever made. Phew, how come computer games have such a perfect music, at least large number of them. Their music can easily shadow the ones from some movie without a doubt. The game comes on two cds, and all the music is placed on the first cd, so when you get to the later levels that play from second cd, you'll only be surrounded by sounds and effects, no music whatsoever. That gives me the idea, if you have two cd-players in your tower/case, you can switch one to play music, while you're playing from the other one. I'm sure that'll work, 'cuz I did the same thing when I was playing C&C: Red Alert. I used soundtrack from The Rock movie, and turned off the music from original Red Alert game, leaving only sounds. You can create many tricks that-a-way if you get bored of the same music.

So, let the game begins... you're in a role of ex-marshal that has retired from chasing bad guys, instead, you live with your beautiful red-haired wife (no matter how sweet they are, LucasArts rarely made a happy end in their games, anyway, even when using just a few colors, they sure know how to paint a woman) and young and childish sweet daughter of no more than ten. The main megalomaniac as they always exist in the games (in rare occasions they don't), is up to the idea to buy all the lands in a row, because railroad's coming up soon. I guess he's determined to take a bigger straw when selling the land later. Whatever he had in his plans, he sure was never going to achieve them. Maybe if he finished in the land of the dead back there in Grim Fandango, and Manny Calavera will help him out. Otherwise, not a frickin' chance. So, he sent his guys to 'persuade' the farmers and land-owners what business seem to be the best.

Anyway, that very same day, just as a sun was going down, your wife sent you to town to buy some supplies. Meanwhile, the of the 'persuaders' waited for you to leave, so they can come to your house. One of them was called Doc, a trully magnificant character with such an evil tense that you gotta like him. Eventually, and that'll be fast enough, you'll hate his guts and let him check how deep is the well. Just as you're getting back home, you saw a big smoke caused by the burning of your house. After touchy love-scene (the last words from your wife) you get a doll from the floor and now clearly decide not to negotiate anymore. After passing through many rocky areas and few cities, you'll eventually rescue your daughter, and kill the bastard we spoke of earlier. Somewhere in between the animations, you'll find out that he happens to be the one that killed your father.

Whatever it seems to be like, his idea wasn't to kill your wife and kidnapp your daughter, but only to teach you some lesson or two. Instead he tought a lesson of death and destruction. Playing the game is rather easy, and tricks and traps are not too hard to solve (I mean, even I was up to those without asking anyone for help :). Moving is bestly controlled with arrow keys, and looking/aiming up and down with mouse control. Left click is for shooting, and right one for reloading. You can use other things to help you through the game like kerosene lamps (to help you through the dark areas), shovels, dinamits, etc.

Trully amazing story this game gives you, with neverseen music as good as this one before. Sound effects are great, especially when it comes to provocating and taunting sounds like 'where are you marshal?' with a special accent on idiotism that make this atmosphere richer for a half. When it comes to speech, LucasArts is the best company ever - even if I have to compare it to some movie company - that has on helluva voice control. Characters speak so real, that even a slight step aside is not seen. And no matter how LucasArts games are good or bad, their sound quality is among the top ones, always.

Graphical elements are okay, well, great better said. That game got out sometime like Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny, and that means somewhere about late 1997, almost 1998, when 3d cards were better known only as Voodoo cards, and that means only Voodoo I series. Both, Lnads of Lore 2 and this game wasn't made for 3d cards, and yet, they marked their time. Anyway, Lands of Lore 2 later made drivers for other and incoming 3d cards, while this game only made drivers for Voodoo cards, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, this is more then great to play even without 3d cards that actually only makes blur to the walls and other elements, so if the game was not originally made for them, you cannot achieve the look like if they were made for 3d cards. No matter what others say, this game is one of the best 3d 1st person arcade-action games that has an excellent story and other elements like music and audio stuff. Noone can compare some piglet from Duke Nukem 3d with this game. Don't you even dare to mention Doom or Quake which marked the history as how the game can be stupid, which was unbelievably high factor for these two games. Who ever say big red tomato shooting fireballs, or a monster with a rocket launcher. Stupid and disgusting, really. Only games that can match Outlaws would be Wolfenstein 3d, Lands of Lore 2 & 3, and now if we step higer, we'd accomplish to reach the realm of fantastic Half-Life.

The Bad
Maybe this game has too little levels to complete, and since it comes on 2cds, you'd expect it to be at least a little bit longer to play. Beside that fact, it's unbeatable.

The Bottom Line
The story like some ordinary western movie ones, animations better then Full Throttle, but still two-dimensional (2d) will give you excellent pointview of characters, story, and the time of wild wild west. You, as an ex-marshal whose kid's kidnapped is gonna teach a lesson to those punks and retrieve the lost gold of youth, which happens to be your sweet li'l daughter. From LucasArts you can only expect the best things (at least in few occasions like this one), which they prove by many titles so far. Would you be so arrogant to skip this one? I think not. This is not one of the best 3d shooter-action games by the time he got out, but you actually look at THE best one. Yahooo!

The Good
This interesting LucasArts game uses the oft ignored Western genre for a fps. The story is the typical revenge plot you'd expect in a Western and has the typical old west guns. Your six-shooter, rifle, and shotgun all come in handy. Plus there's dynamite for those people you just can't seem to reach.

I was also very impressed with the levels. There were some beautiful settings with great looking water. I wish LucasArts had stepped behind this game and made it a series.

Some cool Easter Eggs, too.

The Bad
As cool as the Western setting was, the design decision to use animated cutscenes and cartoonlike villains was a poor one. Also the linear design and find the correct key nature of the game diminshed the gameplay and re-playability.

The Bottom Line
An animated first person shooter set in the Old West.

The Good
After making adventure games for years, LucasArts decided to take a rest from them and focus on creating a first-person shooter that has a Wild West setting. It is called Outlaws and it tells the story of Marshal James Anderson, who has just retired from gunslinging and bought himself a plot of land, along with a beautiful wife and daughter. Bob Graham (a.k.a. The Gentleman) wishes to get rid of this land to make way for a railroad, but Anderson refuses to budge. Then one day Anderson returns home from town, only to find his house burnt down, his wife murdered, and his daughter kidnapped.

All these events can be viewed in a CG-rendered cinematic, and this sets the game up nicely. Similar cinematics are displayed in between the game's levels and has someone telling Anderson where his daughter is and also has him riding his house to his next location. Special filters are applied to make the cinematics appear hand drawn, similar to what has been done with The Last Express.

There are about nine levels in the game, and each one is populated with cowboys. The aim of each level is reach the bosses and destroy them to get to the next level. As common with most first-person shooters of its day, there are certain doors that require a key. Outlaws is one of the last games to feature a map, which you can use to get around the level and navigate dark areas without the need for oil. Not only can you zoom in and out of the map, but you can find out how many secrets you've discovered and how close you are to the boss.

The game includes some realism. Nearly all of the weapons you can pick up - pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, dynamite - are common back in the Wild West era, and you have to manually reload them instead of the game automatically doing it for you. I like the little stamina meter on the HUD, which goes down while you are performing specific movements. If you keep jumping around, Anderson will start huffing, and this adds a nice touch to the game.

Outlaws has some great graphics and stunning locations. In the first level, you browse a village that consists of a couple houses and I loved looking through these; and in the next, you are shooting through a town that consists of buildings that are common back in the era, such as saloon, bank, telegraph office, and jail. And in the third level, you get to shoot cowboys on a moving train. Each level has clouds that serve as a skybox. You can make the clouds move by enabling hardware acceleration, but doing this caused the game to crash on my system. Oh well, you can't have everything. Finally, the backdrop used for the credits look stunning, especially when you view them at the end of the game.

LucasArts may have stopped making adventure games after 1995, but that doesn't mean they couldn't incorporate adventure and puzzle elements into the game. In almost each level, you have to find certain items other than dynamite, health, or ammo and use them in a specific area that will direct you to the level's boss. As for the puzzles, the most challenging one has to be on level five, where you need to alter the water flow of a channel that will lead to different areas.

The game's music is stored as CD Audio tracks, a technique a few game companies used in the mid-nineties. The music is brilliantly composed, and fits the western theme of the game quite well. Unlike other games that also use CD Audio tracks such as Quake II, the music doesn't loop while you are on a certain level, but instead plays the next piece of music in the queue, and since the music used for the entire game is split across the two CDs, this means that if you get sick of the same tracks playing, you are free to insert the other CD and listen to other tracks without consequence.

The sound effects are nice. Each weapon in the game has realistic sounds, and when you pick up an item, the game makes a rattlesnake sound. The cowboys in the game taunt you, saying lines such as "Don't be a fool, marshal" and "Hey, Mr. Law Man". Only the bosses use specific lines. I found the Indian known as Two Fingers hilarious, as he says such nonsense like "You are a dead man walking" and "Too slow. You will regret that".

The game features an extra mode called "Historical Missions", and this mode chronicles the life of Anderson before he became marshal. There are five levels, in which you go around shooting cowboys, solving puzzles and killing a leader. One of these is the "Marshal Training" level where you can enter what looks like outhouses, and one of them features characters that totally look out of place in the game, and they do a pathetic job at killing you. I decided to play these missions before doing the actual game.

The Bad
You have to swap discs during the game, because the first half of the levels are on one disc while the other half is on another. I don't see why LucasArts couldn't ask you to do this during the installation, then have the soundtracks as MP3 files. Also, I agree with John Romero in his review: you are forced to go to the game's menu if you want to save or load a game, and this becomes tedious after a while.

The Bottom Line
Outlaws is not the first first-person shooter LucasArts made. Dark Forces was released two years earlier, and Outlaws uses the game's engine. The game incorporates CG-rendered cinematics which add more depth to the story, and both the graphics and sound (including the soundtracks) blend in with the game's wild west theme. The gameplay, meanwhile, is a mixture of action, adventure, and puzzle-solving. Realism is added in the way you have to reload your gun manually, and your stamina levels decrease over time if you do certain tasks. Although there is a fair amount of CD swapping, this is a good game that every fan of Western games should play.

The Good
I remember, when i've first encountered some screenshots from this game. I almost started to drool :) A cartoon western adventure from Lucasarts! Well, it just has to be the best game ever! Do you remember DOTT, Sam and Max, or Full Throttle? Those were the best games of their age, so I had quite high expectations from this one, since it's been two years since Full Throttle. One day, I finally grabbed my copy of this game, installed, then launched it. As the intro started with construction workers putting down rails, and the dust arose in that great american desert, I was already sucked inside the game...

The Bad
After that, the first characters appeared. The mean ones. I recall, that I liked the raw lines, and simple, rustic shapes. It seemed, it would be an expressive interactive cartoon, that suits the western theme so well.

Then, they started to move.

I really don't want to sound like an asshole, but in the animation looks a little cheap. Broken Sword came out a year before this one, and its ingame animation was about the same quality, or better. I had classmates at animation school, who had done better than this in second grade. 3D objects sometimes fall off from the scenery, and most of them should've been done in in 2d as the characters. That was the first time I felt that the game was rushed.

The plot is okay to me. After the intro stopped, and I started to play, I had to realize, that it's nothing more than a western fps. It has no real adventure elements to speak of. It should've had some, but as I said, this game seems rushed.

The game itself is butt ugly. It has come out in the same year as Redneck Rampage, which was at least colorful and quite proportional. This game is almost monochrome ( all things still or alive is brown ), and has the proportions of an alien base: Not scaled for humans. As I watched the little enemy sprites running around in those strange, cubic, lopsided areas, I almost ordered a book about harmonic division for the level designers.

But I shouldn't have expect more from the engine. It is the very same engine, that brought us Dark Forces, in 1995! So that is, what happened: instead of buying the rights of a better, and more up to date engine ( or designing a totally new one ), they dug up this old engine from the bottom of their drawers, to cut down the budget. Rushed, and lazy game.

Gameplay is very similar to Dark Forces. And it has all its flaws too. I had to run around in medium sized, and mostly opened areas ( and some closed too. If you can remember Dark forces had those dark areas, where one couldn't see a thing. Well, you can enjoy them again ), collecting a lot of keys, solving a lot of puzzles about pushing buttons, and run some more after that, to find the doors to those keys. There are some items, that you can use on the environment, which is fun, but that's a very rare opportunity ( for example: there is a place where you have to dig with a shovel, but only once through the whole game ). And there are the weapons. Revolver, Winchester, Shotguns, a Sawed-off, Knives, Dynamite, and a Gattling gun. The only difference between them is their firing, and reloading time. If I shoot someone with a pistol, or a gun, he dies from one shot at most times. If not, I still have plenty of time to reload and shoot again.

The game length would be proper, if it would be an adventure game, but since it's a shooter, It is way too short. I must admit though, that if it would be longer, the game would be much more boring. If I want more, I can play the historical missions, but to be honest, that idea never came to my mind.

The Bottom Line
This game should've been great. Those people at Lucasarts headquarters should've put more money and time into its development. I still loved the atmosphere, which is so powerful, it saves the game from being ignored.

The Good
Actually there was alot to like about Outlaws. The western theme was unique for any FPS and the storyline was classic. A peaceful man driven to violent vengeance against the outlaws who took his daughter and killed his wife - sounds good to me.

In addition, the weapons were unique for the time this was released, classic Colt .36 Peacemaker Revolver, legendary Winchester .30-30 Repeating Lever-Action Rifle, simplistic Double sawed off 12-guage shotgun, and of course, throwing knives and dynamite, all very interesting and fun.

And while the soundtrack was certainly much inspired by already-made western film scores, I enjoyed it immensely.

The Bad
But sadly... the actual game didn't work, the graphics engine was very sub-par for the time and though this game was later patched to include 3dfx support, it still looked horrible, but it played pretty smoothly on the Pentium 150 I had at the time.

Probably the worst thing about this game was it's level design, the maps were really quite pointless, mission objectives were strewn about in foolish and illogical fashion and all it seemed to be was "Go over to one side of the map, find key, go back to other side, open door, find next key, repeat." Not very exciting if you ask me.

A strong competitor with the poor map design was the absolutely laughable AI. When your supposedly mean and gritty enemies turn their backs to you in order to walk 2 paces left then slowly turn to shoot at you and miss, you can't help but break out in laughter.

The Bottom Line
Great concepts, poor execution. The AI and Map Design stink, the graphics engine is lame. However the story, weapons, and music are good. I still have the first cd but I threw away the 2nd to make better use of a double CD case.

The Good
While "Outlaws" is overall a huge disaster, it has its bright moments. The credit sequence, that is part of the introduction, is an example therefor. It's quite a cool rip-off from the opening credits of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" - the famous ending to Sergio Leone's "The man with no name"-trilogy, that made Clint Eastwood a star.

Yep, "Outlaws" is a video game, more exactly a first-person shooter, that's trying to be a homage to a cult movie genre, namely the Italian Western. The opening credits are one of the rare examples, where this experiment shapes up as a success. Another one is the soundtrack, written by Clint Bajakian, who stuck to the musical works of Ennio Morricone, that emblazed many famous Italian Westerns. While the quality of the pieces isn't anywhere near those composed by the great Maestro, Bajakian managed to deliver a decent imitation. All the elements of Morricone's epic Western scores show up: the whistling, the choirs, the trumpets, the guitars, the typical rhythmic and melodic figures. One could call it barefaced plagiarism, but who cares? The music enhances the atmosphere greatly.

When it comes to gameplay, "Outlaws" is your standard-shooter with weapons a little different. The designers chose a rather realistic approach here: you don't have any rocket launcher to your pleasure, but mainly different guns and pistols as well as some additional gimmicks like throwing knives or dynamite sticks. What's more you have to reload every single bullet manually. If you forget about that, you will make the experience of standing in front of your enemies, while your shooting device will not make "BOOM" but only "click". I found this annoying at first, but came to appreciate it as authentic little detail after a while.

Last but not least, there is a good variety in the settings, that are used as levels in "Outlaws". Speaking of levels, the game features only nine of them, but they are quite spacious and will keep you occupied for a while. You will fight in a ghost town, a mine, a canyon and on a moving train among other.

The Bad
Be warned, that I have a lot to say in this section. To shorten myself a little, I will let the game's visuals aside, although they certainly deserve criticism, as even contemporary games tended to look a lot better. But I still could have lived with the graphics, if the game had been able to catch my imagination. But this is not the case. Story and atmosphere – exactly those things, others praised all the time – offended me the most. Many critics stated, that "Outlaws" would be a great homage to the Italian Western and would resemble the movies of Sergio Leone. I happen to love those movies and therefore I know, that this is just not true. I hope, I can make my point clear by explaining the differences.

A hallmark of the Italian Western is its unique way of displaying violence. I'm talking about those famous, well-known duels, where the key to survival lies more in keeping the nerves than in anything else. In those scenes, the actual act of violence erupts suddenly and is a matter of split seconds. Much more important than the flying bullets is quite actually the prelude: for example the duelists feelings, their concentrated expressions, as they stare each other into the eye. The violence in "Outlaws" is almost exactly the opposite. You won't have the time to take a look into your enemies eyes. And even if you take the time, which normally leads to immediate death, you will only get the impression of a mushy heap of pixels. The actual gameplay is very simple: you're constantly moving, moving, moving (because you must not get killed) and shooting, shooting, shooting (because you must kill). That constant moving and shooting is only occasionally interrupted to make way for some of the games "clever" little puzzles, that have you doing things like using a crowbar on a locked door (I figured this solution out without consulting a walkthrough and I'm still mighty proud – ha, ha, ha). Seriously now, the actual gameplay is your typical brainless shooter stuff. I discovered nothing that would make this in any way superior to "Doom" and the like.

Even when the locations quite frequently change, "Outlaws" is a very repetitive game at its core: it's just firing and killing and almost nothing else. In fact, not even Loco, that merciless headhunter Klaus Kinski once played in "The Great Silence", would have ever dared to dream of sending as many people to hell as Marshall Anderson does. By the way, I act for the theory, that the game throws so many enemies at you, because LucasArts realized, how dumb their AI was. Those stupid gunslingers run around like deranged Lemmings begging for bullets and would hardly provide any challenge, if they wouldn't come in such enormous masses. Exterminating these zillions of foes can even arise some philosophical questions like: where do all those bad boys actually emerge from? And how comes it, that I'm the only brave soul in this whole Wild West society, while all the others are criminal, child-kidnapping bastards? I found no answers to this questions, but one thing I'm sure of: a mindless nonstop mass killing like this does in no way resemble a Leone movie. Period.

Let's put the actual gameplay aside and come to an even more overhyped aspect of "Outlaws": the story. Just as anything in the game, the story aims at resembling an Italo Western and just misses its target. Think only of the protagonist's motivation for forcing the action: while Clint Eastwood just does it for the dirty dollars, Marshall Anderson embarks upon his record-breaking killing spree to save his oh-so-sweet little daughter and her oh-even-sweeter little dolly... OUCH! Can it get any worse? Oh yes, it can. The whole story is just an awfully incompetent, disrespectful rip-off from the plot of "Once upon a time in the West": Anderson's wife is killed and his daughter kidnapped, because his land is in the way of an unscrupulous businessman's railroad-plans. This worn-out idea is presented without any skill or imagination. Not only are the characters flat and uninteresting. Also everything was cut out, that made the arrival of the railroad such a brilliant motif in "Once upon a time in the West".

It is important to understand, that Italian Westerns are no simple action movies. Although they are not exactly talkative, they are always telling you something. It is well known, that Sergio Leone was absolutely crazy on tiniest little details – and when you watch his works carefully, you can notice that. Every scene in his movies makes sense in some way, that not always has to be related to the main-plot. His Westerns were also remarkable for bringing on a cinematic view of the West, that was very different from that of the American Western. When directors like John Ford were virtually romanticizing the Old West, Sergio Leone was systematically deconstructing this rather naive, sentimental view. Think only about his disillusioned vision of the American Civil War in "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" or of the Mexican Revolution in the often underestimated "Duck you, Sucker!". His movies were quite often dealing with difficult themes and thereby showed no fear of breaking conventions. His quite sarcastic, immoral revisionist picture of the Old West is an integral part of all his Westerns.

How does "Outlaws" stand in this tradition? The answer is simply, that it doesn't even make an attempt to make any greater use of its setting. The Old West is just a battleground for Marshall Anderson's private war. There is no attention for details, no interesting story, no interesting character to be found. Actually it is quite difficult, to establish any interesting character, when the protagonist immediately kills every person, he comes across. As the story of "Outlaws" works this way, the player is left with Marshall Anderson as the only character, he can relate to. And what a flat one he is! His creators must have thought, that anybody who doesn't talk much but smokes all the more, would have to resemble a typical Italian Western hero. What they obviously forgot (or didn't even notice), is that those characters, that Clint Eastwood, Franco Nero or even Bud Spencer embodied, also had distinctive personalities. What made them cool and despite their brutal and selfish nature in my eyes even likable, was for example their humor. The protagonists of the Italian Westerns were anti-heroes: they were greedy, filthy and cynical, but (when we leave Bud Spencer aside) they were also clever. And here "Outlaws" fails again: if the Marshall wasn't such a gun fanatic, he could easily bore his enemies to death by talking to them. Actually it would be much more painful for them. The Marshall's remarks are blatant nonsense, "humor" seems to be a foreign word for him and his head appears to be empty except for his lust for vengeance. He is the guy who raises his eyebrow and says: "I've never met an innocent man". It's so pathetic, so dumb, so sad.

I also remember countless people slobbering over "wonderful cut-scenes" in reviews of this game. And indeed they are made in nice comic-style. Even I have to admit, that they are quite pleasing to the eye, after having suffered through the in-game-graphics for a long level's duration. But what do they tell us? Well, here is a little synopsis: Marshall shoots villain, villain goes down and babbles stupid last words, Marshall makes equally insightful remark, villain dies, Marshall gets on horse and rides to next level. This petty little scheme is reproduced in almost every cut-scene until the very end. There are only few exceptions and they aren't any better. There is no substantial story-telling, no noteworthy content to be found in this entire game. And as if they were applying to some sick rules of dramaturgy, the people at LucasArts saved the most disgusting movie sequence for the finale. There, in a sugar-coat romantic image, the Marshall rides towards sunset, together with his oh-so-sweet little daughter and her oh-even-sweeter little dolly. If anyone dares to say, this ending would in any way capture the spirit of the Italian Western, I insist, that we immediately meet and shoot it out. (Not literally, of course)

It is amazing, how far "Outlaws" is away from what it's trying to be. Sometimes this is according to differences between the media. In my eyes it's extremely doubtful, whether a video game can ever accomplish something similar to Leone's movies. For example, his slow-paced, individual art of direction is very hard to emulate – especially for a first person shooter. But still, "Outlaws" is a disappointment not only by fate. If it wasn't such a thorough misconception, it could at least have failed a lot less miserably. I sometimes was really enraged by the careless and silly ways, this wanna-be-homage treated its subject with.

The Bottom Line
As "Outlaws" still has a good number of fans, maybe I'm not making new friends by writing this. But anyway I really don't understand, why this game was (and still is) praised so much. That question gave me a hard time and finally I can only come up with the uncertain theory, that people were so used to raving at everything wearing the LucasArts logo, that they, regardless of what was served, just couldn't drop that behaviour. Nowadays it is near to common knowledge that this once so creative company sank to mediocrity, but the beginnings of that trend were mostly overseen. I think, in games like "Outlaws" it already showed. When I consider that "Duke Nukem 3D" and "Quake" were already released, I don't see how this pseudo-western had deserved any nice word by critics when it came out.

I do not intend to repeat myself about how miserable the game is at imitating the style of the Italian Western. But let me tell you that: even if you don't give a damn about things like story, atmosphere or Westerns and if you really just wanna shoot, there are numerous better games within the genre. "Outlaws" is neither pretty nor is it innovative – if you're looking for great ideas, you should search elsewhere. Only when you don't care for creativity either and really just wanna shoot shoot shoot, then I guess, this game might be right for you. It's your average, primitive bloodshed – this time with a cool soundtrack.