If there is one thing that will be a constant from now until the end of time, it’ll be my endless adoration for Nightdive Studios’ seemingly irrepressible obsession with remastering titles from yesteryear that many folks, including myself, thought would never come to pass. After all, how many people would ever have put a remaster of 3D0 and PS1 micro-cult shooter PO’ed on their bingo cards of games that would get another bite at the figurative apple.
Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster PS5 Review
Undeterred on their apparent quest to re-release and remaster seemingly forgotten shooters from the 1990s, Nightdive Studios have turned their attention to Outlaws + Handful of Missions, a Wild West themed first-person shooter originally developed by LucasArts (they of Star Wars: Dark Forces and The Secret of Monkey Island fame, among others). Nearly a decade before Red Dead Revolver would blast its way onto PlayStation 2 and more than fifteen years before Red Dead Redemption would saddle up across its evocative open world which depicted the final dying days of the Wild West, there was Outlaws – a shooter that put players in control of a retired sheriff hellbent on gaining a measure of revenge for the murder of his wife and kidnapping of his daughter by a gang of vagrants.
Told through a series of decidedly old fashioned cutscenes – there’s something charming about the ol’ timey, 4:3 aspect ratio, hand drawn cutscenes that are nearly thirty years old now – Outlaws actually does a better job than many of the comparable shooters in terms of actually shooting for a story and stringing it together in a cohesive way from one level to the next. Sure these cutscenes might be a bit jerky and rough around the edges, but there is a 90s animation style charm here all the same that has carried pretty well across the years.
For the uninitiated, which could well be most of you considering that Outlaws is more than 30 years old at this point and a 1990s PC exclusive, the gameplay is similar to DOOM in that you have to collect colour coded (well, metal coded) keys which open up new rooms and areas. However this being a hard-bitten tale of vengeance, six-shooters and gruff old dudes, each level generally concludes when you kill a specific enemy, triggering a cut scene in which our hero seeks information for where to go and perhaps more importantly, who to kill next.
Beyond its basic structure, there are also some fiendishly laid out maps o that have a number of puzzles baked into them forcing you to track down items and use switches to unlock new routes. In particular, the Sawmill level comes to mind; a surprisingly vast interconnected facility of triggered waterways, secret lifts, underwater passages and more besides. This ain’t your basic DOOM clone and in fact, purely on a level design basis, Outlaws arguably has far more in common with the much more complex, multi-layered worlds seen in Duke Nukem 3D.
The downside of this approach though, is that you should expect to do backtracking, a whole heap of it in fact, as you unlock previously inaccessible areas and scout out loot-stuffed, secret crevices in every level. I was also pleasantly surprised at the sheer variety of levels on offer in Outlaws. From high cliffs with winds that can blow you off, to Mexican Saloons, moving trains and deep mines, Outlaws doesn’t just do a round trip of all the archetypal Wild West settings, it makes entertaining and well designed maps out of them as well.
Like any genre effort worth its gunpowder, Outlaws lives and dies by how good the gunplay feels and happily I can report that despite its greatly advanced age, Outlaws still has it where it counts with gunplay that is both snappy and satisfying for the most part. Whether you’re gunning down some fools with a six-shooter iron, blasting some fools off a bridge with a shotgun, or blowing up a bunch o’ goons with some dynamite, Outlaws provides no shortage of enjoyable ways to put your foes six feet into the ground, that’s for sure.
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Though the enemy AI isn’t especially impressive (they tend to just bumble about in and out of your line of sight, waiting to be shot, rather than taking any proactive or reactive actions), Outlaws does also complicate things a little thanks to the inclusion of a stamina bar. Perhaps a bigger deal than some might realise, Outlaws stamina essentially means that you can’t just run everywhere indefinitely as you would in DOOM, or similar shooter fare. Instead, pacing yourself is the order of the day here, lest a quick death follows in turn. This becomes especially true when you get stuck into the ‘Handful of Missions’ part of Outlaws‘ newly remastered outing which includes additional story missions which are a fair chunk more challenging than those seen in the main campaign.
Outlaws audiovisual presentation has both aged well, and err, not. First the good bits. Like most other Nightdive Studios remastering efforts, Outlaws is magnitudes better than the 1997 original, with a pin-sharp 4K resolution opening the door to super clean and detailed reworked sprites, not to mention higher detail environments to boot. The audio side of things is also pretty darn impressive, with a superbly varied soundtrack which settles on Wild West melodies that straddle the American southern frontier and Mexico in ways that are warmly evocative of classic westerns.
Elsewhere on the audio side of things, Outlaws also boasts a cast of enemies that just never shut up. By this, I mean that Outlaws nails that 1950s western vibe perfectly with enemies shouting goading proclamations like “don’t be a fool, marshal!”, over and over. I’ve never heard enemies talk so much smack in an FPS like this before and though it can grate after a while, and is pretty much constant throughout, I’m still totally here for it (though I appreciate your own mileage may vary).
Where Outlaws fares a little less well is in how its rather old and deep rooted technical origins haven’t aged so well, despite the A1 treatment that Nightdive Studios has generously afforded it. Not only does the sky essentially appear as a 2D texture that wraps around the map, but as you turn the entire sky texture can warp, which at 120 frames per second can prove to be somewhat nausea inducing – at least for me. Other technical limitations are clear too. For example, you can jump up and through the top of the map and the world essentially disappears for a split second thanks to a low world ceiling in some levels, while some outdoors levels can look exceptionally sparse with little in the way of flora, fauna or any kind of landmarks to support believability in the setting.
Much like its grizzled and long dormant protagonist, Outlaws + A Handful of Missions has been pulled out of the doldrums of retirement to lace up its boots, load up its guns and ride into the sunset. It’s old, gruff, unapologetic and certainly not for everyone. For me however, the opportunity to replay one of my favourite cult PC shooters of the 1990s in arguably its definitive form, easily makes Outlaws + A Handful of Missions worth the price on its head. For everyone else, a snappy and surprisingly clever Wild West retro shooter beckons.
Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster is out now on PS4 and PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.