Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.6 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Scott Osborne
• Reviewed on: 10/14/2004
• Updated on: 10/15/2004
• Released on: 10/03/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure (PC) Review

Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure boasts a certain quirky, ingratiating charm. It's a good thing, too, since the game suffers from some major problems--juvenile writing, a lame ending, a clunky camera and interface, some ill-conceived puzzles and action sequences, and major bugs, among other things. Still, fans of old-school adventures who can put up with a lot of problems should find the game reasonably entertaining.

Don't worry if you feel a striking sense of déjà vu when playing Wanted. The story is one you've heard a million times before. A rich, evil rancher named Starek has the local town under his thumb. He's paid off the sheriff and bought up most of the local farmsteads, and only a couple of farmers still oppose him. In rides our hero, Fenimore Fillmore, a bumbling, well-meaning cowboy who helps the poor, freedom-loving farmers hold on to their land. Of course, Starek also has a feisty, red-headed niece who's looking for her Prince Charming. Naturally, that would be Fenimore.

Not only is the story one giant cliché, but the characters are also one-dimensional and the dialogue is simple. Most of the time this E-rated game literally seems geared toward 8- to 10-year-olds. You can see that juvenile quality in many of the game's stabs at humor. Much of it consists of predictable pratfalls or a guard at Starek's mansion being mentally slow on the draw.

Fortunately, there's some humor for adults, too, though it's very much hit-and-miss. You'll see visual references to Hamlet and anachronisms like Fenimore swiping a credit card when he makes a purchase at the general store. Every time Fenimore leaves the Sheriff's office, he says, "I really need to go." The Sheriff keeps misinterpreting him and responds with lines like, "I'd get your prostate looked at if I were you." Hinting at Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger, an eccentric inventor lets our hero in on a secret: "Some say that the governor of California is a robot, one that looks like a man." The Sheriff also gets in a thinly veiled and jarringly gratuitous dig at President Bush's invasion of Iraq, wondering aloud how a president could invade a country without evidence to support his actions.

Even if the writing has a lot of flaws, it's refreshing to play a game that tries to focus on plot and character. There's plenty of gameplay to go with the story, too, though it also has a lot of problems. Wanted calls to mind the classic Sierra graphic adventures of the '80s, like the King's Quest series. You wander across cheery, sunny, cartoony landscapes in search of dozens of inventory items that you use to solve straightforward story-based puzzles. There are no Myst-style mind-benders here. For instance, you need to impersonate a drunken doctor to visit Starek's niece, but first you need to clean and dry out a messy coat that will form part of your disguise. So, you'll need to find someone to wash the coat and then gather fuel for a fire, figure out how and where to chop the wood up, and find a way to get the fire started. Later you need to rescue an innocent farmer from jail, which is no easy task when the Sheriff sits right next to the cell, lazing about and eating a burger. Maybe an urgent telegram would get him off his duff and out the door, and maybe the ornery bull out behind the jail could be of use in getting past those thick prison walls.

The puzzles tend to be fairly easy, and they're mostly logical and tie into the gameworld smoothly. Unfortunately, one of the central puzzles of the game is an extended series of "Spicy Sarsaparilla drinking duels" with Starek's henchmen. These enormously tedious rhyming contests make little sense at first and actually require you to lose a number of times to eventually win. An added problem is that you have to pay to play, and there's only so much money to be found in the game. (Our "hero" casually steals cash from people's closets and desks.)

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