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)

Lazy Lucasarts

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.

Windows · by okos ember (14) · 2007

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

It had all the right stuff... but just couldn't put it together.

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.

Windows · by Andrew Romig (10) · 2000

[ 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.