The early years of first person shooters were, largely, variations on a theme. From 1992 up to about 1999, you could generally expect first person shooters to be either science fiction, or some kind of present-day "tactical" game of cops and robbers (probably going back to Operation Body Count if not earlier.) You had a smattering of fantasy, World War II and even horror, but these were vanishingly rare in comparison to the more popular genres. But even among fringe genres, Outlaws, the cult classic cowboy shooter from LucasArts, was (almost) one of a kind.
Now, to be fair: this wasn't the very first Western-themed FPS game. As had happened with the Aliens franchise, the Doom community beat the commercial game industry to the punch with a freeware alternative, with not one but two mods released in 1995 (Boot Hill, a themed deathmatch mod, and the British-made A Fistful of Doom, a two-level singleplayer experience.) Nevertheless, Outlaws remains something of a singular experience, the only Western-themed commercial FPS title for a number of years. (Despite having an undead gunslinger as a protagonist, Blood, released the same year as Outlaws, doesn't really count.)
Pulp fiction eminence Frank Gruber once said that westerns almost all fall under seven basic plots: railroads, ranches, revenge, rags-to-riches, conquering the west (we used to call it "Cowboys and Indians," but in the post-colonial era there's more focus on the plight of indigenous people) and the double-sided coin of outlaw and lawman. Despite the name, Outlaws manages to have elements of five of these concepts and outlaw isn't one of them: the main character is a retired U.S. Marshal, out for revenge following the death of his wife, kidnapping of his daughter and burning of his farm by goons hired by a greedy rail baron with a shady past who wanted the land. Over the course of a shockingly brief nine missions, Marshal Anderson will carve a swathe of blood across the frontier as he searches for his daughter and enacts revenge on the men responsible for it all. The plot is told largely in lengthy animated cutscenes between missions, innovative for their time and bearing all the hallmarks of the LucasArts house style, mostly seen in adventure games like Monkey Island. It's a surprisingly plot-heavy game for a boomer shooter of the late 1990s, being something of a pioneer in the genre.
I mentioned Doom earlier; Outlaws runs on the Jedi engine, developed for Star Wars: Dark Forces and reverse-engineered from Doom's idtech1. Outlaws, in a way, brings things full-circle. At first blush the engine feels surprisingly familiar, but as you play it becomes clear that it's altogether more robust than idTech1 was at the time. It's arguably more akin to the Build engine, though much better put together, with sloped surfaces and excellent use of portals to simulate room-over-room. (Interestingly, level design was done in AutoCAD, which is otherwise used for architectural design.) Playing through it, I was struck by the sense that it was sort of a mid-point, in a way, between idTech1, and Goldsrc, the engine that powered Half-Life. More specifically I was thinking of Wanted!, the cult-favorite Half-Life mod that got a commercial publishing deal.
Similar to Wanted!, Outlaws is pretty unforgiving on higher difficulties. There are three: "Good," "Bad" and "Ugly." "Good" is closest to what you might expect from a boomer shooter of the era, allowing you to just skate around and shoot bad guys. "Bad," and especially "Ugly," take things in a different direction. "Ugly" transforms the game into a tactical shooter, one of the earliest of the genre. You'll have to make use of cover, leaning out from around corners (one of the first to ever do it!) and making use of your rifle scope (beating GoldenEye 64 to being the first FPS with sniper zoom.) Enemies hit hard and can kill you almost on sight; but, in return, it doesn't usually take much to bring them down either. The exceptions are the bosses, who sit at the end of each mission, and usually can facetank at least an entire magazine's worth of rifle shots. Since I'm a chump and assumed that Outlaws would play like any other boomer shooter of the era, I picked "Ugly." How bad could it be? But I really struggled early on, and nearly restarted on "Good." After the first couple of levels, though, I started to vibe with the game's quirky rhythm and managed to finish the main campaign.
The game as originally released came with the initial nine-map campaign as well as "historical missions," sort of bonus levels detailing Anderson's rise to fame as a U.S. Marshal. The main campaign is not long at all: despite the overall size and length of the nine missions, in aggregate it's a pretty short journey, taking me less than ten hours even with copious reloads. In a rare case, we actually have design credits for the main campaign: the official strategy guide stated outright who designed what. Mapping duties were split largely between Kevin Schmitt and Chris Klie, the latter of whom should be a familiar name. Unlike Klie, Schmitt didn't get his start in the amateur mapping scene; instead, it was his architect's degree and experience with AutoCAD that got him the job at LucasArts. For the main campaign, there was one more name in the credits, a guy named Doug Shannon; I could find very little about him, other than that before LucasArts, he worked briefly as a sound guy at Crystal Dynamics. I'm unable to access LinkedIn due to their demanding I show them my ID, which as a responsible adult I am not doing, so I guess Doug Shannon will remain a mystery.
Unfortunately, I have no information on the "Historical missions." Nor do I have anything on Handful of Missions, a very small expansion released for free by LucasArts as part of a patch. Handful of Missions adds four new historical missions with different themes, including one where you must track down a rogue Confederate officer through an active battlefield. Klie and Schmitt return in the credits, but in addition to them is Ryan Kaufman, who has since amassed an impressive resume working for LucasArts and Telltale. Nevertheless, who did what is unknown to me.
(As an aside, this review is only for the main campaign. I may come back and do the historical missions at a later date, but as a general rule I tend not to do bonus levels.)
Level design tends towards the realistic, at least by 1997 standards. Most of the maps follow along from the Build era design ethos, attempting to create realistic spaces. The naturalistic levels obviously lean more towards the abstract, with greater focus on linearity. But the various outposts and compounds of the frontier are arranged in a logical fashion. The only real exception is the infamous mill level, a lengthy, abstract industrial maze that seemed largely to exist to get players lost. Klie and Schmitt otherwise work well together, with their respective design sensibilities being quite similar to each other.
Your enemies are almost all variations on bandits, varmints and ne'er-do-wells. Some carry shotguns, some carry revolvers, some carry rifles; the difference between them all is probably more pronounced on lower difficulties, but on "Ugly" they're all pretty lethal. The only exception are the spiders, oversized tarantulas that can also shoot at you (this is either a bug, or they're throwing their hairs at you, a thing some tarantulas can actually do.) There's also the bosses, who as mentioned before can take quite a bruising before going down, automatically triggering the end of the level. You have a variety of weapons to fight back, though, from your classic revolver and repeating rifle (which you can add a sniper scope to) to two types of shotgun, TNT that's extremely difficult to use effectively, throwing knives, and even a gatling gun that puts out tremendous damage but you can't move with it out.
When Outlaws was new, it was kind of a mess. A lot of things straight up didn't work depending on your hardware, a common victim being the stellar soundtrack, being a beautifully composed homage to the work of Ennio Morricone and a high point of the game. It's also a little ugly, mostly in terms of the enemy and weapon design, being mostly 3D rendered models converted to 2D sprites. Outlaws spent years being borderline unplayable on modern hardware; no source port existed for it, unlike many other cult hit shooters of the era. The Force Engine, a source port designed to support Jedi Engine games, as of 2026 still only supports Dark Forces. But fret not, Night Dive have you covered once again, releasing a remaster of the game in late 2025 that brings higher resolutions, fixes a lot of issues and generally just makes the game much more playable. This is the version I played and it's the one I would recommend for most people. If you're so inclined, it also comes with upscaled textures and sprites that you can hot-swap on the fly with the press of a key. As a general rule, I think "HD textures" tend to be ugly as sin, or at the very least disruptive of the game's original aesthetic. While the new textures in the Outlaws remaster are high-quality (I'm going to hazard a guess that they used the original photo sources in some cases, assuming they just didn't use neural-net upscales as is common) they also completely change the look of the game, making some areas darker or brighter. I played with the original assets, not just because I dislike most HD textures in old shooters but also just because it was closer to the original experience.
I think I liked Outlaws. While the game is super difficult on higher difficulties, ultimately I found it kind of rewarding; it's an order of magnitude more fun to play than Wanted! ever was, despite the two games having somewhat similar philosophies in terms of difficulty design. I don't think I'd put it high on my list of favorite boomer shooters, but if you really like westerns and don't mind some tough difficulty and tactical shooting, Outlaws is well worth your fistful of dollars.
OLHIDEOUT: Slim's hideout
Kevin Schmitt
Your first destination is a run-down farm currently occupied by a gang of bandits. It's a compound of two separate houses with a barn and stable in between, and it's just crawling with bad guys, one of them even hiding in an attic. Slim has fortified himself in one of the houses, and getting in won't be as easy as just opening the front door. If you know where to look, you might find something that's out of this world...
OLTOWN: Sanctuary
Chris Klie
By 1997, Chris Klie's skills as a mapper had really shot up since his early Doom maps. "Sanctuary" is a quaint little desert town overtaken by bandits. They've thrown most of the survivors into the jail and lie in wait for you. It almost seems like a bandit lurks around every corner; if you're sneaky, you can sometimes catch them unawares, with the town wall being hoppable for more tactical maneuvers. You'll probably wind up breaking every single window in the place; there's also a lot of locked doors, but by the time the boss shows up, it's not clear on whether you'll need the keys. The good news is that you can find a scope for your rifle here, which you'll want, and plenty of spots to use it at.
OLTRAIN: The Train
Chris Klie
Another Chris Klie level, short and sweet. You'll fight your way from one end of a passenger train to the other, fighting bandits all the way. Most of the cars of one of three different styles: individual rooms, open bunks or flatcars for cargo. The side rooms are usually occupied with gun-happy bandits, so make sure you're prepared. Other than that, the biggest threat is the rather slippery movement, thanks to the realistic physics of what it's like to be on a moving train.
OLCANYON: River Basin
Kevin Schmitt & Chris Klie
While at first glance this is just one long, winding serpent of a map, almost entirely decked out in the same collection of brown rock textures, it nevertheless can surprise you here and there; Dead Man's Drop is honestly beautiful for 1997. With this kind of open space with long distances and little cover, the rifle scope will make this level trivial.
OLMILL: Sawmill
Kevin Schmitt
While the exterior is unassuming enough — a large wooden building with some lit windows — the interior is a sprawling, semi-abstract nightmare through what's supposed to be a mill but is really just a spaghetti maze of tunnels, some of which you'll have to swim through. Most of the water flows into a central room, and you'll need to open up some sluice gates before you can proceed. You'll later have to go on a fetch quest to find some gears to get a mechanism going and open up the next path. The boss at the end is a deadeye at any range, so watch out! I didn't like this level much and apparently most people don't. Schmitt has since admitted that this level's bullshit design was mandated from the higher-ups, who wanted a twisty puzzle level. I keep telling ya, executives are anti-art.
OLSIMMS: The Fort
Chris Klie
This one more than makes up for the last one. It's an old Spanish fort, crawling with bad guys. Getting up on the walls is tougher than it looks, but you're not looking to go up anyway: instead, you want to go down, into a series of caves that are host to a collection of old Native ruins. Interestingly enough, on lower difficulties, the level ends at the old Spanish dungeon; on Ugly, however, the level's boss is deeper into the caves, past an iron gate labeled "EXPERTS ONLY." Seeing a BF_THUD! reference on a crate made me laugh.
OLMINER: The Iron Mine
Doug Shannon & Chris Klie
Nice music. Much like "River Basin," this is a largely linear trek through a winding maze of tunnels and tracks that at times will loop back on itself. It's mostly a lot of the same texturing throughout, though you'll occasionally find mining facilities and even working conveyor belts. If you use the "runawaytrain" cheat on an inclined track you'll be locked into the track for a simulated minecart ride! It's not as exciting as it sounds, though.
OLCLIFFS: The Cliffs
Kevin Schmitt
Reminiscent of "The Abyss" from Duke Nukem 3D, this is a wilderness mission that has you traveling through ancient cliff dwellings. You'll have to do some light puzzle solving, Tomb Raider style, but as always with Outlaws, the bulk of the level is shooting dozens of heavily-armed bandits. It's split into three different sections, with one having you search some caves up in the cliffs for stone tablets, another sending you further down underground for another tablet that will lower a bridge. If you search thoroughly enough, you'll have some tablets left over; I'm sure you'll figure out what to do with these. The final part is the main cliff dwellings, and it's pretty much a room-by-room shootout.
OLRANCH: Bob Graham's Ranch
Kevin Schmitt
The final level of the Outlaws base game starts you off unarmed; fortunately, a few well-placed punches undetected will get you back in the fight. It's otherwise pretty straightforward: clear out the ranch — stables, barn and rancher's house — before heading up the hill to assault Bob Graham's manor. You have your pick of getting in the place, but some rooms are locked off, requiring you to secret-hunt to find back ways in. A mini-boss lurks in the basement, one of the rare boss-level enemies who don't trigger a cutscene upon death, but Graham himself triggers a cutscene before you fight him; for a final boss, however, he's surprisingly undramatic.
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