Sometimes, there comes a game almost out of nowhere that strikes like a bolt of perfectly arced lightning, beautiful and ferocious in its fleeting moment. It’s energy focused towards only delivering pinpoint strikes of such immaculate vibe and quality that after you’ve witnessed it, you just stand there in awe and say to yourself “holy **** that was ****ing awesome, like Jesus Christ, why is no one else seeing this?” before it dissipates back into the earth, a one-off occurrence. The chaos of nature formed into just such the perfect bolt of conflagration, the staggering amount of variables that collided just where and when they needed to shape it into that primal visage. I’m of course referring to the absolute cult classic boomer shooter, ChexQuest. ChexQuest is digital lightning.
Best cereal-inspired boomer shooter. Also, the only cereal-inspired boomer shooter, not counting its two sequels. ChexQuest had sequels.
Though ChexQuest is somehow a bizarrely competent starch fueled murder game, we ain’t talkin’ about no cereal mascots. We’re actually talkin’ about goddamn LucasArts’ Outlaws; this game is so wild west manly that it will put morally grey hairs under your white hat and gristle on your stoic stranger ass.
LucasArts are primarily known for making and/or publishing Star Wars games and a whole lot of adventure games, but they did occasionally make something else before the early 2000s hit when they almost exclusively published Star Wars games by the truck full; absolute classics of course, but still. There was, uh, 2008’s Fracture?
…
Oh, Gladius on the PlayStation 2; that’s a good one. Uh, RTX Red Rock? Metal Warriors on the SNES? Yeah, they didn’t go too far out of their contractually demanded IP comfort zone often after their first couple of years. But when they did, it was usually something good, unless it’s RTX Red Rock. Outlaws. Gunpowder thunder out of a revolver barrel.
Outlaws is definitely an outlier in the company's non-Star Wars or Indiana Jones branded output for a few reasons. One; they developed it themselves which after this game would become a fairly rare occurrence. Two; it's a FPS, and in 1997 there was only one previous such game under their belts, being the fantastic Star Wars: Dark Forces two years prior. Three; while it wasn't their first boom shoot, it holds a couple pretty important firsts for the genre. And lastly; this game ****ing slaps, and LucasArts put far more oomph and production value into this game then they had any right to do.
The game features some seriously great cutscenes in-between the ‘wranglin’ of bad guys’ (read; gunning down without mercy like the varmints they are), and they are impressive both visually and for the talent involved in them. The game has a killer sense of style to its characters and animation; the main character, James Anderson, is like 90% legs and arms but it makes him cut such a sharp silhouette and adds measurable character. Each of the major cutscene characters are immediately identifiable through design alone, the hallmark of quality animation. This is doubly impressive as the animation isn’t actually hand-drawn, despite appearing to be so. It’s actually CG graphics done using LucasArts’ proprietary INSANE animation engine, the same used to much the same effect for their earlier Full Throttle (a seriously under discussed point-and-click, by the way) and The Dig, to generate the images then applying filters to make them appear hand-drawn. Honestly, I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t actually traditional animation until I read that fact in my research and looked at it again; it’s a damn good job. There are times where something is obviously a 3D object, but I had assumed that it was a 3D graphic put into a hand-drawn game and not simply one of the game assets without the filter being applied. It’s convincing, basically. The quality of the animation itself isn’t exceptional, particularly looking back on it now of course, but it's that style it has that carries it, complete with cinematic flair and direction. LucasArts wasn’t holding anything back in making this; these cutscenes compete with an actual cinematic movie in direction, a Western pulp made into computer rendered image. This game has no right to go as hard as it does, but it does anyway.
More than the look of the cutscenes, they are also spectacular in another sense; holy ****, they got John de Lancie and Jeff Osterhage as voice talent. The game has an absolute powerhouse lineup of voice actors for these characters, as befitting how hard LucasArts was cooking on this game. Osterhage plays the main character, and for those unfamiliar with his dulcet drawl he is a veteran actor specifically in Westerns; he first fried his pork-and-beans in the 1977 True Grit, the third installment of the unofficial True Grit adaptation series at that point and one trying to be a backdoor pilot for a never-picked up TV series (to be subtitled A Further Adventure). More than that, he went on afterwards to be one of the trio cast for The Sacketts alongside Sam Elliot and Tom Selleck which is some classic syndicated Western genre television. His best role, other than Outlaws of course? Why Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, as remember every Octopus article is somehow only one degree of separation away from a BioWare deep cut; he played everyone’s favourite cornrow’d stalker/Cowled Wizard killer, Valygar Corthala, hangin’ out in his log cabin. There’s more than Osterhage of course, if you’ll excuse my very rare BioWare/Western fan crossover; John de Lancie of Star Trek: TNG fame, Richard Moll from Night Court, and even some established video game talent such as Cam Clarke and TV animation veterans like Jack Angel.
The story of the game is the perfect pulp Western set-up; James Anderson, a retired US marshal is living a simple life on his farm with his loving wife and precocious daughter. He’s a former lawman due to an incident where he got wrapped in some gunfight and killed some men who weren’t proven to be guilty, setting up that he’s a particularly gritty and thorough individual. A particular standout line in the opening, something if anyone else but Jeff Osterhage delivered would be grossly cringe, is “I’ve never met an innocent man”. It would be a shame if something were to happen to make him pick up his revolver and deputy star again…
So the villains come-a-knockin’, kill his wife and kidnap his daughter. Was Outlaws the first John Wick? Only without the car and the dog, I guess.
Yep, a truly heartbreaking scene. We can only imagine the conflict within, the sheer weight of his grief struggling against his violent nature in a stoic battle, a chaotic mess of emotions.
Welp, moments over; better get to that killin’.
The story is just a perfectly simple, pulpy Western set-up. It doesn’t need to be anything more, and is carried by the performances of its cast as you chase the aptly named ‘Dr. Death’ across some desert dirt while working your way up through the scum. You shoot an armada of outlaws across nine levels in the main story campaign with a boss in each, consisting of a good variety of environments; there's a spooky mine shaft, an outdoor canyon level, an up-state mansion, an old Texas style military fort, a saw mill. Oh god, the saw mill. My personal favourite is the second level which is a very well designed frontier town; it's one big open area with a multitude of thematic buildings filling it. Enemies are all around you, and you really feel like a true Western gunslinger taking on a whole town as you duck in-between the buildings while spitting bullets, dodging shots from all angles and being assaulted with the same two enemy voice actors’ call out lines. Beautiful.
But how does it play? Why, absolutely awesome of course.
Outlaws was a rare energy that was ahead of its time. It featured some gameplay elements that wouldn’t catch on for years after it came out which is a pretty good ****ing sign of a cult classic in my books.
There are some seriously well done cinematic camera shots through-out. This game has no right to go this hard.
First, the single greatest part of this game to me; it was the first shooter of this era, at least as far as I’m aware, that features actual gameplay integral and player controlled reloading. Duke3D of course had a sort of weapon reload, but it was automatic after so many shots per weapon and didn’t involve ammo at all. It was just a canned little animation made to give a little detail, and the HUD didn’t actually keep track of how many shots you had left. In Outlaws, you have a dedicated reload button. You have to consider that this was 1997. When you reload, you load a single individual bullet into whatever gun you’re using; this is the Wild West, there’s no automatics or detachable magazines here. This is a relatively small detail that both serves a mechanical gameplay function, and a more abstract game function in that it ****ing rocks. It is integral to the game's vibe. It creates tension in the gameplay though having you need to make every shot count due to how long a reload can potentially take, and it hits again in making you feel like an actual Western gunslinger. If you take anything from this article, take how awesome this game's reloading is. Do you fan the hammer of your Schofield on the enemy down the hall? It will probably take him out pretty quickly, but those four shots will take you just as many seconds to individually replace in your blued-steel chamber, and there’s bound to be more enemies around. Can you spare those seconds? In fact, they’re calling out as you creep down the hallway of the saloon, “where are you, marshal? Come on out!”
The soundtrack is a real orchestra instead of a digitized MIDI score like other games of this type, and it is clearly taking profound inspiration from the same source material that inspired the rest of the game. Clint Bajarkian’s score is straight out of a Sergio Leone film, calling back liberally to his movies' unfathomably iconic soundtracks. The trumpets swell and bellow to a heroic tune before simmering down to let whistling melodies flutter out when the last enemy has gotten lead in his gut, sometimes devolving into more chaotic drums beats, and it’s mixed in so well you can practically taste the sarsaparilla in your mouth even when you’re not actively listening to it as you’re dodging bullets. Absolutely 10/10, no further notes or elaboration necessary.
The game has three difficulties, thematically named because of course; the Good (easy), the Bad (medium), and the Ugly (hard). Good difficulty is a very forgiving experience, with enemies frequently taking entire seconds to begin lazily shooting at you. Bad is something more standard for this era of shooters, with you only being able to take maybe three or four good shots before you drop. Ugly? Ugly is beautiful. You can legitimately die in a single close range bullet from enemies who are just as quick to react as you are. Even on Bad, the game can still be difficult which adds much to the game's feel. Since you can only take a few good shots, you really have to take things more slowly than other shooters of this era. More than that, you really have to employ something else this game was ahead of its time in implementing; cover. You learn pretty quickly to utilize the various barrels and tables and saloon doors around you to stay protected, and again this was 1997. It was going for something tactical, maybe even a little bit realistic, and it makes it absolutely stand out amongst its contemporary peers. It's almost even a stealth game to a certain exaggerated extent, especially when you’re playing on Ugly, really seeing you have to cautiously creep around while constantly keeping an eye out for a shambling outlaw in a corner, of which there is always at least two huddling in every corner.
The double barrel shotgun; accept no substitutes when you need to creep through cover and annihilate approximately fifty-seven odd henchmen per level.
Outlaws just feels so great to actually play, seeing you crouching behind tables to buy you time to reload your revolver, before ditching it to pull out your Henry rifle, peeking out from your hiding spot to fire shots over the blazing trumpets on the music score. Then in the next level, you could be crawling slowly around a mine shaft, carefully checking your corners with your single shot boomstick as even a few bullets piercing your longtailed coat is enough to end your pulpy revenge story. And all of this without having a locked-in button based cover system, or complicated weapons and mechanics; it's just from its smartly designed levels and a few key decisions. Gaming as it should be. If you’re looking for the most ideal Outlaws experience, I’d recommend at least Bad difficulty, though the manual makes it really seem like the developers' intended level was actually Ugly. The difficulty is smart, never unfair; enemies still die in a few shots, so you never truly feel like you can’t shoot your way out of a situation. It’s also an example of a game that’s difficulty feels integral to the experience; only with the strength of the enemies hot lead will you engage with the cover and the environment, only when you feel the panic of knowing you only have one shot left in your revolvers chamber and there’s still three banditos sprite-walking their way towards you will you realize why they put reloading in the game, and the entire time those banditos are actively trying to trash talk you; “we’re comin’ for ya, marshal. Give it up, marshal!”
Your arsenal covers all the expected shooter tools, along with essential Western inclusions. You start the game with your eternally trusty six shot double-action revolver, capable of being fanned with alt-fire and best used for short to mid range encounters; it never stops being useful. You have your Henry lever-action rifle with its massive 12 round internal chamber, used for long range battles and later can even be upgraded with a scope, bringing us to another thing Outlaws did first; an actual sniper scope on a weapon. Not only that, but it’s the cool type of scope implementation where only the scope zooms in, and not the whole screen. You actually have to use it like you would a scope in real life. This game is ***ing sick. This was 1997.
Doggone it, LucasArts. There’s modern games that have worse scopes than this.
Rounding out the arsenal is not one, not two, but three different shotguns; the standard single shot break-action boomstick, a very stubby range short double barrel, and then the absolute unit of a long double barrel super killer, as befitting the post-Doom 2 world. I’d say that the long double barrel entirely replaces the shorty version and was briefly confused as to why there’s both, but then it clicked for me. More shotguns. It just makes sense. There’s also throwable dynamite sticks which are quite easily the most identifiable early 3D jank model in the game, and a throwing knife that instantly kills any enemy that I probably have used maybe three times across all my time with this game. You also have your bare fists, as James Anderson is a man of many talents.
Normally, this would be where I talk about something I either didn't think worked in the game, or where I'd air my very petty grievances against it; thank you for recognizing my article format.
Former marshal James Anderson doesn’t need a gun to be armed; he’s always got two hand cannons.
One major complaint I can think of is that the game's levels can sometimes get a little uncomfortable to look at as this game launched with native mouselook, a pretty uncommon occurrence for a sprite based 2D game at the time. It's obvious that the way the levels are rendered was not really built with that in mind, and you can really see the perspective warping when you're looking around. It didn't quite give me motion sickness, but it still had an effect on me all the same. I'd say it gave me like a third of a motion sickness response. If there were three Outlaws in front of me, that would probably do it enough for me to ink all over the place. I will also say that there are maybe two or three instances of some classic jank puzzles, introduced with no explanation or clear objective on what to even do; it’s not like this game has an objective marker, and sometimes key parts of said puzzles are environmental wall textures or something of the like that you may not even realize are important things you have to interact with. This was pretty par for the course for this era, but I feel I still need to mention it.
And, in direct relation to that last complaint, I have one more specific negative thing about Outlaws; **** level five, the goddamn saw mill. You’ll find out why.
Oh, you’ll find out why.
This game is something special, elevated above its simplistic nature. It’s the reloading, it’s the stellar soundtrack, it’s the enemies calling out and taunting you, it’s the difficulty and the emphasis on tactical strategy; the variables that all came together, the lighting strike that forms the whole shock and awe of it. It’s the authentic feel of the game, the concepts coming together to immerse you and make you feel like a grizzled gunslinger more than anything else in this era of boom shoots. I feel every shell I individually load into my double barrel, I tell ya’ what. So why didn’t it catch on?
I mean the game didn’t do badly by any stretch of the imagination when it was released, but it pretty quickly faded out of common dialogue and contemporary discussions. Why’s this? Well, it came out in 1997. What else came out in ‘97? So many other games, let alone specifically FPS’s. ‘97 was the year of such games as GoldenEye, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Harvest Moon, MDK, Diablo, Resident Evil, Blade Runner, Final Fantasy: Tactics, Riven, Age of Empires. Those aren’t even the PC shooters, as for those Outlaws’ competition included Blood, Postal, Hexen 2, uh, Redneck Rampage and mother****ing Quake 2.
Real cowboys play without a reticule for added immersion. You want to be a real cowboy, don’t you?
It simply got washed away in the tide of releases. And, like a few games I’ve covered already, Outlaws simply was not up to snuff visually which was a frequent point against it amongst reviewers. The game's cutscenes are great, but the in-game graphics were behind the years. It was built using the Jedi Engine, which LucasArts first used in 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces. It was great then, but its still sprite-based assets were so far behind in 1997 given how fast technology was jumping at that point. Look at its competition; it launched only a few months after Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, a game that had a fully 3D environment and models. I love sprites as much as the next boom shoot aficionado, and I’d play something like Outlaws over Turok any day of the week, but you just can’t compete against the technology power-creep like that in the popular consensus.
The game is beyond sick, but I cannot deny that it looks a little rough even for 1997.
It’s a shame, but the game has since become a cult classic so it's all worked out. It's the path of any spectacular game that’s truly ahead of its time in some aspect, and few shooters of Outlaws' panache fit that description to me like this does.
Basically, play Outlaws. This is a masterclass of smart shooter design combined with the level of production value that wouldn’t become vogue in FPS video games until at least the early 2000s with Doom 3 or maybe Quake 4 if you’re nasty. Playing it in the modern day isn’t a terribly hard ordeal, thankfully. It’s often on sale for very cheap on GOG, and per the storefronts usual deal that release is mostly playable on modern systems. You’ll likely encounter some resolution difficulties of course with the game changing aspect every time a cutscene loads, you open the settings menu and when you go back into the gameplay, but unless you’re trying to capture video from the game (like me) it may not be a dealbreaker and by playing around with nGlide settings and executables, you can iron that stuff out with a little bit of Google-fu to find some nerds who know what they’re talking about. There’s even a LucasArts specific emulator called DREAMM I stumbled onto that will run this game with no changing aspect ratio issues; it’s the work of Aaron Giles, who actually worked on Outlaws, along with a variety of other LucasArts games in his tenure there. It won’t be fullscreen, with it only being a max of 1280x960 (as you can see from the screenshots in here) with Direct3D rendering, and runs a little choppy for whatever reason, but there will be no misbehaving resolution so take what you will. At some point in the future, the ForceEngine fan source port project is stated to add support for this as well (it currently only runs Dark Forces), and when that day comes that will likely be the easiest and definitive way to play Outlaws in the modern year.
Like father, like precocious daughter.
Of all the games I’ve so far reviewed here on RGT, this is one of the ones I recommend the most; it’s in that prestigious a level for me, up there with the Dark Alliance games and the Capcom Dungeons and Dragons’ beat-em-ups.
Until next time.
Pros
- + Stellar gameplay, with a focus on tactical cover crawling.
- + Fantastic immersion.
- + Incredible production value.
- + Killer soundtrack.
Cons
- - Dated visuals.
- - Some very obtuse puzzles.
9
out of 10
Overall
LucasArts' Outlaws is an absolute standout, creating such an immersive and riveting wild west shooter. It's first-in-genre reloading, coupled with its smart game design and amazing cutscene direction, makes it a must-play for any fan of 90's boomer shooters. Also, it's one of John Romero's personal favourites; you'd trust Romero, right?
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