Outlaws

aka: Outlaws: Cidade Sem Lei, Outlaws: Die Gesetzlosen, Outlaws: Une histoire de feu et de sang
Moby ID: 931
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Description official descriptions

Marshall James Anderson had been a great gunfighter. He had worn the badge of the law and put men to death or to jail. But a Marshall can only travel alone so long. And so James Anderson retired; he got himself a wife, got himself some land, got himself a daughter and dedicated himself to the peaceful life of a home on the range.

The Gentleman, Bob Graham, has other plans for James Anderson's plot of land however. It sits right along some prime real estate for where the railroad is going to go, and whoever could own that land might be able to get rich setting up a town. So Bob hires himself up some of the roughest and toughest ruffians west of the Mississippi to try and "persuade" Anderson and the other land-owners to sell or abandon their lands.

James Anderson returns home from town one day to find his homestead aflame, his wife killed and his daughter abducted by Bob's henchmen. Not willing to trust in the fates, Anderson dusts off his six-shooter, digs up his buried shotgun and dons his old tin star. He's about to follow the trail of these men across deserts and valleys, until he finds his daughter.

Outlaws is a first-person shooter set in the American Old West, featuring hand-drawn graphics and a stylized soundtrack. Locations include outdoor as well as indoor areas, most with a characteristic Western flavor: a small town with one main street and a saloon, a canyon, a speeding train, and others. The Marshall uses firearms such as a revolver, single- and double-barrel shotgun, a rifle (with or without a sniper scope), and others. In dark areas James can light a lamp, for which he will have to find canisters of oil.

The game contains no supernatural elements: enemies encountered in it are exclusively human. The gameplay focuses on combat, though exploring the levels is necessary in order to locate various keys needed to unlock the next part, or discover secret areas. Manual reloading of the guns is required during combat.

A secondary game mode, called "Historical Missions", allows the player to relive Anderson's rise to the rank of U.S. Marshal. Each of the missions involves the protagonist capturing a killing a criminal, preferably recovering gold stolen by them. Ranks (Deputy, Sheriff, and Marshal) are awarded to the player upon a mission's completion.

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Credits (Windows version)

177 People (154 developers, 23 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 29 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 84 ratings with 10 reviews)

The Law's Come Back to Town

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!

Windows · by MAT (240759) · 2012

One of the best, most atmospheric and important contributions to the FPS genre.

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!

Windows · by John Romero (1450) · 2002

Spaghetti Western Shoot-em Up

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.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2001

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
No music. The Fabulous King (1332) Jul 19, 2007

Trivia

Patches

The update to version 2.0 adds four new additional levels ("Civil War", "Ice Caves", "Villa" and "Wharf Town") with completely new terrain never before seen in Outlaws such as ice and vast snow terrains, huge rivers or sunken cities. It also adds music to the levels on the second CD. A Direct3D patch lets the game use slightly higher resolution and improved textures.

References

  • "1138" sighting: Engine number of the train in the intro. (1138 is a reference to George Lucas' first feature film: THX-1138)
  • Bob Graham's Big Rock Ranch is a tribute to George Lucas' Big Rock Ranch in Marin County, CA.
  • The character 'Bloodeye' Tim was named as an homage to Tim Schafer who Shaw worked with on Full Throttle.
  • Max, the wicked bunny from Sam & Max Hit the Road makes an appearance in western style in Outlaws.

Soundtrack

Outlaws' musical score was included on the game CDs on Red Book Audio tracks so one can listen to the music with an ordinary CD player. As of 2000, a separate stand-alone soundtrack album is available at LucasArts Company Store as a bonus for the buyers of Outlaws.

Story Spoiler

"Dr. Death" Jackson is killed when Marshal Anderson drops him down a mine shaft. However, a crash landing can be heard behind the music as Anderson turns away, and Dr. Death distinctly shouts "Dammit!". It's not known if the villain was meant to survive his fall to appear in a possible sequel or if this was just a humorous secret included by the game developers.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 1998 (Issue #164) – Musical Achievement of the Year

Information also contributed by Chris Mikesell, JayBee, Kasey Chang, MAT, mwnoname and Sciere

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Andrew Hartnett, Swordmaster, Shoddyan, Atomic Punch!, chirinea, Jason Musgrave, Sciere, Alaka, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, RetroArchives.fr.

Game added February 29, 2000. Last modified March 5, 2024.