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WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure

Score: 90%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: The Adventure Company
Developer: Revistronic
Media: CD/1
Players: 1
Genre: Adventure

Graphics & Sound:

WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure is an adventure game that stands out. The cartoony graphics (for both the characters and the environments) are a major element to the feel and style of WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure. The four-fingered, big-eyed models remind me a lot of the more classic adventure games like Sam & Max Hit the Road. Though the graphics were good and helped set the mood for the entire game, there were a lot of things early on that made me cringe.

For instance, the lip-syncing is horrible. Most of the time, the lips just sort of open and close, making it look like words come out of their mouths. At times it seems to almost fit, but in general, the lips just don’t match up.

There were also several horrid clipping errors (like a frying pan going through a woman’s face while she is talking). But those were fixed after I found and downloaded the patch.

The music had a very classical western feel to it with the heavy use of fiddles and pianos. It definitely helped keep me in the time and tone of the game. The voice acting was fairly good. Each conversation had a nice assortment of questions to ask -- but it was hard to focus on what was said at times because of the lip-syncing problems.


Gameplay:

WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure puts you in the cowboy boots of quick-draw Fenimore Fillmore. Fillmore’s mission is to start a revolution in a small dusty western town, and to help the local farmers defend their land against a big-rancher by the name of Starek. Starek has forced most of the farmers out of work and is essentially in control of the town. But when Fillmore trips his way into a squabble between some goons and one of the few remaining farmers, he is chosen to lead the uprising and bring down the villain.

This is where you say déjà vu right? Yes, the story is just as cliché and stereotypical as the characters that are found in it. But that is a bit of the charm of this game. You will interact with more than 30 different characters from the local Sheriff, to the female interest school teacher, and of course Starek and his men.

The puzzles of WANTED are unique and a refreshing change to the standards seen in most adventure games of today. On top of that, the puzzles are typically non-linear, so you don’t necessarily need to win at the “Spicy Sarsaparilla drinking duels” in order to start collecting the tools and weapons to defend the town. This is also a nice change from other adventure games, because if you get stuck in one part of A Wild Western Adventure, instead of not making any progress in the game whatsoever, you can go and take care of another task -- though eventually you will have to come back to that troublesome spot.

Another interesting (though at times annoying) dynamic that has been added to this adventure game is the need for money and carrots. You need money in order to pay for the tools and farm-protecting equipment, and you need carrots to feed your Horse in order to move between major locations. As you explore, you will find dollars of varying denominations in drawers and cabinets throughout the game. You will also find tilled land where a few buckets of water from the local well or pump will sprout five or six carrots. Thankfully, if you feel like it that is, you can stock-pile these necessities as you go. If you are in a place with a garden and you have a couple of empty buckets, it might do you well to fill them up a few times to build up your carrot supply.

Like I said, this was an interesting change in the standard adventure model, but at times the task of having to find carrots or money made WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure a tedious game.


Difficulty:

WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure has a nice range of puzzles. There were many that had obvious solutions, while others kept me thinking for a while. In general, you should be able to make constant headway. And since Fillmore has plenty of tasks to perform in WANTED, if you get stuck on one puzzle, just go and work on another. Hopefully by the time you get back to the problem area -- your head will be relaxed a bit and the solution will come to you.

Overall, I’d say that A Wild Western Adventure’s puzzles are well balanced and provide just the right assortment of easy, mildly difficult and tough problems for you to deal with.


Game Mechanics:

WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure will let you pick up and use more than 80 objects. There are many occasions when you will have duplicate objects in your inventory as well. One failing feature of a lot of point-and-click adventures is that when you want to grab something, even though your mouse is over the object, you can’t get it (until you find that magic area at least). Thankfully, such is not the case in this game -- and that is great since you have to get and interact with so many objects.

WANTED: A Wild Western Adventure is a good solid adventure game, just make sure you get the patch for those horrid clipping errors I mentioned earlier.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 850 MHz Pentium III (or equivalent), 128 MB RAM (256 MB Recommended), 24x CD-ROM Drive (or PC DVD Drive), 64 MB Graphics Card, DirectX 8.1 Compatible Sound Card, Mouse, Keyboard and speakers.
 

Test System:



Windows XP Professional Ed., AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2GHz, 2 GB RAM, DVD-RW, Radeon 9800 Pro, DirectX 9.0b.

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