8.3 KiB
| title | date | score | game_release_year | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_developer | game_genre | tags | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outlaws: a Classic LucasArts Western Shooter | 2023-08-24 | 4 | 1997 | 6833 | 5.7 | Outlaws | LucasArts | FPS |
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Before modern incarnations like Call of Juarez and Red Dead Redemption, there weren't many western shooters out there. In fact, at the time of Outlaws' release, in 1997, as far as I can remember and as far as the Interwebz tells me, there were none at all. And even twenty-six years later, there are still very little pure FPS games set in the West that manage to get the theme bang-on (hah!) like LucasArts did.
Outlaws is not a great shooter, neither is it a graphical powerhouse. At that time, it lagged almost a year behind Quake, and people were starting to move beyond 2D sprites as enemy and item graphics. The engine used was a modified Star Wars: Dark Forces one that, albeit it manages to does the job adequately, falters at more than one time during my playthrough. But we'll get to that in a minute---what I'm trying to say is that despite its mediocre parts, Outlaws is fondly remembered and still a very lovely and thematic playthrough today. This shooter is what you'd call a "story-based" shooter, where high quality animated cut-scenes in-between levels tell a tale of a kidnapped daughter you're trying to rescue, and where at the end of each level you'll have to face the bad guy of said video.
This, combined with the atmospheric country soundtrack that adapts to tense moments, the almost cartoony look of the guns (that remind me of the much later XII shooter), and your typical cards that act as the HUD, really make Outlaws a unique but way too short game. Enemies that are wandering around with you in the neighborhood keep calling you out: "Don't be a fool marshall!" or "Where are you marshall?" followed by "There he is, git 'im!" and a gurgling "urrgh" when biting one of my rifle bullets. It's a fun way to tell the player they've missed a few enemies, perhaps on higher platforms, initially unreachable.
I can see why some players might find this to be tedious and repetitive sounding after a few hours of facing the same enemies and hearing the same voices, but to me, that was part of the charm. When it comes to enemies, there's little variety in Outlaws. You've got your standard bandit, the dual-wieling pistol kind, the redneck with the rifle, and even a few shotgun-wielding foes that love sticking close to windows. Aside from a few color palette changes to help you discern the difference, that's about it. No monsters or beasties to kill here---this ain't Duke 3D or DOOM: the theme stays consistent. The bosses are just regular-sized but slightly more unique enemy sprites as well.
My mixed feelings became most apparent when thinking about the level design. Some maps, like the first two and the fort, are pretty basic: a big map littered with saloons and buildings that usually contain the classic consecutive keys (in this game: iron, steel, brass) in order to progress. Other maps, like the canyon and later cliff sides, are quite open in nature, but had me go round in circles until I gave up and got rescued by GameFAQs as to where the hell I was supposed to go. All levels promptly end, not by hitting a button like in the aforementioned Duke 3D or DOOM, but by killing the stage boss. The problem is that the conditions for spawning said boss sometimes were unclear: do I have to hunt down and kill all enemies, or do I just unlock this door with the brass key I don't have yet?
Some stages like the cliffs and the sawmill come with a bit of puzzling. The problem is not interacting with buttons or puzzle components but finding them! Most are built right into the walls and neatly concealed with shoddy texture work, even for a 1997 game. I activated one puzzle accidentally when reverting to my Wolfenstein 3D "hug walls and press spacebar on everything" tactic. That still works here to discover the odd secret, but far less often. Instead, you throw a dynamite stick---stylishly lit with your cigar---to a cracked wall. But then we bump into the shortcomings of the Dark Forces engine: accurately throwing stuff just doesn't work here.
Nevertheless, blasting stuff does work, and it works well! Well, almost. The guns themselves fit neatly into the theme, are more than varied enough, and come with alternating fire modes: you've got your revolver (that can be slammed to rapidly fire out rounds), your rifle (with or without scope), a small shotgun, a sawed-off and fully featured one, and in the one rare case if you look around in the cellar of the last level, a gatling gun to help take down the end boss. The bigger shotguns fire off two shells that can help rapidly clear a room, while the rifle is essential to deal with enemies at a distance. I also never felt that the good ol' standard revolver became obsolete as I found more potent weapons, which is a good thing.
Actually taking aim and shooting felt a bit more weird in Outlaws. If you fire your rifle in quick succession, the weapon "recoils" and shifts to the left or right, indicating your next shot will likely miss. But sometimes it didn't, and sometimes it did. Just like sometimes shotgun blasts also seemed to take down enemies that aren't close, while at other times, it didn't. I guess this is just part of the Western shooting charm? In the end, I just rolled with it, fired at stuff that moved, now and then mixed up the arsenal, and had a lot of fun. If accuracy is your thing, Outlaws likely won't be.
That is not to say that the shooting isn't great: it should rather be treated as a Western "gallery shooter", not as a boomer shooter or a modern realistic one. The bosses are tough as nails, by the way, at least if you star the game with the "ugly" difficulty. I chickened out quickly and alternated between "bad" and the too easy "good" modes. Speaking of chickens, I love the chicken sound effect if you jam ESC to quit the game!
The amazing cut-scenes and soundtrack really puts this single-player story-based shooter a cut above the rest. The animated scenes in-between levels remind me a lot of The Curse of Monkey Island, which shouldn't come as a surprise since multiple people worked on the same game (that also was released in 1997). The same is true for the music, done by, among others, Clint Bajakian, who's responsible for a slew of awesome game soundtracks, including the very recent Return to Monkey Island! Another music engineer, Hans Christian Reumschuessel, also produced LucasArts' Curse music. I know I'm repeating myself here, but I've yet to come across a thematic shooter of this caliber---pun intended.
The only sad part, besides the janky bullet and dynamite physics, is perhaps the sheer neglect of this cult classic. The game was met with mostly positive reviews and still features on many "best of" lists. I guess it just didn't sell well enough, or was released during a period of turmoil when LucasArts management was (further) losing interest in the (PC) gaming scene? For people actually interested in trying to spin this thing up on their modern PCs, it got worse. Before the GOG release, Outlaws was notoriously hard to get running and involved emulating a Windows XP machine, including fiddling with compatibility settings. I didn't bother getting this to run on my Win98 build and just went with the 32-bit GOG installer that worked just fine on Win XP.
To conclude, this is a short and janky shooter from the makers of the Monkey Island series, where in true LucasArts fashion, atmosphere more than makes up for its mechanical weaknesses. After finishing single player mode, there are a couple of historical maps to plow through, and you can try your hand at TCP/IP multiplaying---just don't forget to haul your yellowed midi tower to that LAN party.
