Outlaws

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

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

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

To call this an Italo Western is like calling Bon Jovi a rock band.

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.

Windows · by micnictic (387) · 2008

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Discussion

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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.