Outlaws (1997) (Computer game)

Where are you Marshall?

Retired Marshall James Anderson has is away on a shopping trip when his wife is killed and his daughter kidnapped by an evil railroad baron who wants to turf him off his land. He then goes and shoots his way through about 9 levels until he's killed the railroad baron and recovered his daughter. There are also some extras reliving his days of Marshalling.

Objectively, this probably isn't a particularly good game. The graphics were pretty dated in 1997 when it was released, and have the tendency to stretch when looking up and down. The levels are largely a straightforward, run around in a set order shooting stuff affair, with the exception of "Sanctuary", my favourite, where the Marshall has free reign of a town. Multiplayer for a 15+ year-old game has largely vanished, however at the time it was quite innovative for a first-person shooter, in that it had a choice of different characters with unique—if not entirely balanced—attributes.

However, it remains one of my favourite games. The gameplay is fun, although simplistic. The music is fantastic, although fairly blatently "inspired" by Morricone. The cutscenes between levels are generally good (this is my personal favourite). What's not to like?

It should also be noted that on the hardest difficultly level the game genuinely is quite challenging, with little room for mistakes since the player can sustain so little damage. That said, it mostly requires fast reactions to shoot enemies before they shoot you; steath doesn't really feature in it.

A few small bugs:

• The "delete" key doesn't work on modern versions of Windows, making it hard to correct typos.
• The UK version seems to be missing about half of the opening cutscene, available to view here. This was obviously more frustrating in the days before Youtube.