XS GAMES Wanted: Dead Or Alive ( Windows )

Rating:
Summary: Wanted: Dead Or Alive ( Windows )
Review: Although not entirely a bad game, it is lacking in areas that modern day gamers have come to expect.

Pros: Gameplay is interesting, with a non-conventional combat system, but it only takes a few seconds to get used to it. Each mission in this game is completely different from the previous mission. It goes from a third person shooter, to a lead through shooter (like those games in the arcade that have the plastic guns), then there is a stealth phase (reminiscent of the Metal Gear series), and a racing mission (I'm sure there is more, but I have forgotten!).

Cons: Graphics are not too impressive. This game has a copyright for 2004, but I would expect to see these graphics in games from the mid to late 90's. I have tried the game on every resolution that the game supports, and every setting available to be changed within the game. Which brings me to my next point; there are very few options that the user can change. On the video options, you can change resolution, texture, and text quality, that's it! Another thing that the modern day gamer can't live without is cut-scene's! There are none in this game! You have to read three or four paragraphs between each mission to follow the story.

I have also discovered a bug that is highly frustrating. In the Mine level there are places that your character gets "hung-up." In one spot he got hung between a rock and a shaft support, and in another he got hung at the edge of a rock. At this point you have two options: you can restart the entire level, or you can blow yourself up with dynomite. At this point in the game you only have enough dynomite to kill yourself once, so if you get stuck the second time, I recommend you uninstall the game and put the cd in the microwave for a few seconds. If you choose to restart the level, you start over at the beginning of the level, not at the last checkpoint, the "microwave" trick fixes this problem too.

Conclusion: This game left me feeling that it was designed and coded somewhere around 1998, but not released until 2004. Gameplay is interesting, but not enough to make up for the mediocre graphics, a hive full of bugs, and lack of cut scenes.

Rating:
Summary: Wanted: Dead Or Alive ( Windows )
Review: Although not entirely a bad game, it is lacking in areas that modern day gamers have come to expect.

Pros: Gameplay is interesting, with a non-conventional combat system, but it only takes a few seconds to get used to it. Each mission in this game is completely different from the previous mission. It goes from a third person shooter, to a lead through shooter (like those games in the arcade that have the plastic guns), then there is a stealth phase (reminiscent of the Metal Gear series), and a racing mission (I'm sure there is more, but I have forgotten!).

Cons: Graphics are not too impressive. This game has a copyright for 2004, but I would expect to see these graphics in games from the mid to late 90's. I have tried the game on every resolution that the game supports, and every setting available to be changed within the game. Which brings me to my next point; there are very few options that the user can change. On the video options, you can change resolution, texture, and text quality, that's it! Another thing that the modern day gamer can't live without is cut-scene's! There are none in this game! You have to read three or four paragraphs between each mission to follow the story.

I have also discovered a bug that is highly frustrating. In the Mine level there are places that your character gets "hung-up." In one spot he got hung between a rock and a shaft support, and in another he got hung at the edge of a rock. At this point you have two options: you can restart the entire level, or you can blow yourself up with dynomite. At this point in the game you only have enough dynomite to kill yourself once, so if you get stuck the second time, I recommend you uninstall the game and put the cd in the microwave for a few seconds. If you choose to restart the level, you start over at the beginning of the level, not at the last checkpoint, the "microwave" trick fixes this problem too.

Conclusion: This game left me feeling that it was designed and coded somewhere around 1998, but not released until 2004. Gameplay is interesting, but not enough to make up for the mediocre graphics, a hive full of bugs, and lack of cut scenes.

Rating:
Summary: @#$&!
Review: I've not yet had it one full day, and it's already used all my patience. From cursing loudly to NEARLY throwing my laptop through the window, I don't think I've ever played a game that's this cheap (and no, I don't mean price).

So far I've played two different gameplay modes, so I'll just cover them separately. The first is the isometric view (you know, the diagonal top-down perspective). This is painfully frustrating because, for one thing, the game designers don't seem to understand the concept of a lock-on function. While trudging through a canyon, you begin to take fire. But from where? There are no villains on the screen! That's usually annoying enough in its own right, "but aha!", you think. I'll just press mouse button two for the lock-on! Unfortunately, the lock-on feature does absolutely nothing if your foe isn't A.) on the screen, and B.) directly in front of you. This leads to the aformentioned frustrations of having to run around blindly until you find the enemy who's shooting you, but also, having to slowly turn around and face a foe to engage him if he's snuck up from behind. For example, in a gun battle with one enemy, often another will come up behind, and ideally you'd tap the lock-on function and your character would spin around to face the enemy, but no, as I said, lock-on doesn't work until you're already aiming directly at him anyway. What this means is lots and lots (and lots) of cheap hits that you receive only because you can't turn around fast enough (or find the enemy who's shooting you from off-screen).

Another fatal flaw in the isometric combat is the total lack of strategy. When attacking an enemy, you simply face him, click lock on, and fire until he's dead (usually around six shots with the revolvers). While you're slowly killing him, he, too, is shooting at you. So what you end up with is a pitiful exchange with you and an AI bandit running circles around one another until one of you falls. It sounds pretty boring, doesn't it?

The first-person "rail shooter" portion of the game is what compelled me to write this review. Apparently the only way the developer knew of making this part of the game challenging was to throw ten enemies on the screen at once, and have every shot they fire hit you. This wouldn't be a huge problem if it weren't for the atrocious controls (and that's saying something, considering the only "control" you have over these levels is over the mouse-guided crosshairs which unfortunately crawl across the screen at a geriatric pace). Concievably I should be able to adjust my mouse sensitivity so I can shoot them down more quickly, but alas, there is no option to adjust mouse sensitivity on the game's control panel. To add a little more furstration to the mix, your enemies fire twice (hitting you each time, mind you) before they're even entirely in view, and certainly before you can return fire. And did I mention that the game only registers shots you put directly in the middle of your enemies' abdomens? Even while you're involved in a frantic gunfight being fired upon by seven or eight flawless gunmen, you have to painstakingly line up your crosshairs in just the right spot or else the shot will register a hit into the adobe that's a half an inch below where your crosshairs are. And finally, the game tries to get cute (the blurb calls this cuteness "cinematic") and have you walk between engagements as though you're surreptisiously sneaking through the village, peeking around corners and double checking for bandits behind you and so on. The last thing you want to do when you have to retry a level for the fifteenth time (because the ten bandits with excellent accuracy kill you from behind cover repeatedly) is to have to wait twenty seconds between EVERY FIGHT while the game tries to impress you by sneaking around a stable that you know is empty. This is obviously a cause for impatience, because you just want to get to the (insanely cheap) combat scene.

So cheap enemies and roundabout, redundant intervals where the computer forces you to wander around a level aimlessly have killed this game for me two levels into it. And don't think there could be redemption later on, either, what with the terrible collision detection, disappearing textures, unresponsive controls and 1996-quality graphics. The only redeeming quality might be the rousing music, but that's a given, seeing as they simply ripped off Ennio Morricone's more well-known scores. If I had downloaded this game as freeware I might not complain, but the idea that I paid for this torturous strain on my sanity just makes me all the more angry at it. Stick with Gunsmoke on the NES or wait for Red Dead Revolver, but don't buy this amateurish mess.

Rating:
Summary: @#$&!
Review: I've not yet had it one full day, and it's already used all my patience. From cursing loudly to NEARLY throwing my laptop through the window, I don't think I've ever played a game that's this cheap (and no, I don't mean price).

So far I've played two different gameplay modes, so I'll just cover them separately. The first is the isometric view (you know, the diagonal top-down perspective). This is painfully frustrating because, for one thing, the game designers don't seem to understand the concept of a lock-on function. While trudging through a canyon, you begin to take fire. But from where? There are no villains on the screen! That's usually annoying enough in its own right, "but aha!", you think. I'll just press mouse button two for the lock-on! Unfortunately, the lock-on feature does absolutely nothing if your foe isn't A.) on the screen, and B.) directly in front of you. This leads to the aformentioned frustrations of having to run around blindly until you find the enemy who's shooting you, but also, having to slowly turn around and face a foe to engage him if he's snuck up from behind. For example, in a gun battle with one enemy, often another will come up behind, and ideally you'd tap the lock-on function and your character would spin around to face the enemy, but no, as I said, lock-on doesn't work until you're already aiming directly at him anyway. What this means is lots and lots (and lots) of cheap hits that you receive only because you can't turn around fast enough (or find the enemy who's shooting you from off-screen).

Another fatal flaw in the isometric combat is the total lack of strategy. When attacking an enemy, you simply face him, click lock on, and fire until he's dead (usually around six shots with the revolvers). While you're slowly killing him, he, too, is shooting at you. So what you end up with is a pitiful exchange with you and an AI bandit running circles around one another until one of you falls. It sounds pretty boring, doesn't it?

The first-person "rail shooter" portion of the game is what compelled me to write this review. Apparently the only way the developer knew of making this part of the game challenging was to throw ten enemies on the screen at once, and have every shot they fire hit you. This wouldn't be a huge problem if it weren't for the atrocious controls (and that's saying something, considering the only "control" you have over these levels is over the mouse-guided crosshairs which unfortunately crawl across the screen at a geriatric pace). Concievably I should be able to adjust my mouse sensitivity so I can shoot them down more quickly, but alas, there is no option to adjust mouse sensitivity on the game's control panel. To add a little more furstration to the mix, your enemies fire twice (hitting you each time, mind you) before they're even entirely in view, and certainly before you can return fire. And did I mention that the game only registers shots you put directly in the middle of your enemies' abdomens? Even while you're involved in a frantic gunfight being fired upon by seven or eight flawless gunmen, you have to painstakingly line up your crosshairs in just the right spot or else the shot will register a hit into the adobe that's a half an inch below where your crosshairs are. And finally, the game tries to get cute (the blurb calls this cuteness "cinematic") and have you walk between engagements as though you're surreptisiously sneaking through the village, peeking around corners and double checking for bandits behind you and so on. The last thing you want to do when you have to retry a level for the fifteenth time (because the ten bandits with excellent accuracy kill you from behind cover repeatedly) is to have to wait twenty seconds between EVERY FIGHT while the game tries to impress you by sneaking around a stable that you know is empty. This is obviously a cause for impatience, because you just want to get to the (insanely cheap) combat scene.

So cheap enemies and roundabout, redundant intervals where the computer forces you to wander around a level aimlessly have killed this game for me two levels into it. And don't think there could be redemption later on, either, what with the terrible collision detection, disappearing textures, unresponsive controls and 1996-quality graphics. The only redeeming quality might be the rousing music, but that's a given, seeing as they simply ripped off Ennio Morricone's more well-known scores. If I had downloaded this game as freeware I might not complain, but the idea that I paid for this torturous strain on my sanity just makes me all the more angry at it. Stick with Gunsmoke on the NES or wait for Red Dead Revolver, but don't buy this amateurish mess.