Outlaws

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!