Back in the days of the Old West, when men were men, women were beautiful and in need of rescuing, and evil ranchers tried to kill off all independent farmers, a lone cowboy with the name Feinmore Fillmore rode onto the scene and sorted everything out. He pulled teeth and jail windows, he split logs and grew carrots, he fed pigs and showed off, and at the end he chased the evil rancher out of the town, won the heart of the local beauty and saved the farmers.
Game mechanics
Wanted is a third person adventure game, taking place in the Wild West. An evil rancher is preparing an all-out attack on the remaining free farmers, and you promised to take care of everything. It’s up to you to get the manpower, weapons and intelligence to fight off the greedy Stark. Throughout your quest, you’ll be collecting items, combining them and occasionally splitting them into smaller pieces.
The game takes place in seven major locations, between which you’ll be able to travel by a horse or a small rail cart. Due to the fact that you can access all of them from the beginning and many inventory items are easily accessible, the story is not too linear, and you’ll be able to perform some actions before you even understand what you are doing. This is not a disadvantage, though; as the script has been very tightly written, and you’ll rarely find out anything about the story too soon or too late. Whenever you are ready, a short cutscene will assure you stay in the picture.
Most of the puzzles are sound and on the easy side, thanks to a lot of feedback from various sources. Even though you’ll end up talking to most people several times, the conversations are always quite enlightening, and never too long for my taste. Unfortunately, two puzzles get extremely repetitive and tedious.
The first task is to grow enough carrots for your horse to keep fueled and take you to the next location. The horse eats anywhere between one and three carrots, depending on the location, and can hold only five carrots at a time. One “full tank” will cost you a lot of dropping the bucket, getting water, picking up the bucket and spilling the water on the garden, and then waiting for a minute for the carrots to be ready. If you know what you are doing, you’ll spend about two hours of the game time growing the 40+ carrots you’ll need.
The second task is much simpler, but not any more entertaining. You’ll need to purchase a lot of the inventory items in the local store, and you’ll need some more money to play some of the required games. The most obvious way to “earn” the money will be to open every drawer and cupboard in the game and collect dollar bills that are in some. Altogether, there are around twenty such bills and twice as many potential locations, forcing you to explore every screen for another hour or so.
Those two tasks pale in comparison with the third one: arcade sequences. There are three of them, two relatively easy, albeit tedious, and one so frustrating that it took me about a month of occasional play (more sporadic after every attempt that resulted into an enraged shutdown of the game) to finish it. This task requires you to shoot targets in a shooting arcade. Each stage gets progressively tougher, and even though you can avoid the fifth and final stage, I found completing the other four nearly impossible.
Technical considerations
The game has relatively low hardware requirements and has no copy protection other than a CD check. I welcomed both facts, as installing and running it even on the highest setting was a pleasure. The only problem I encountered was a crash without an error message every time I Alt-Tabbed out of the game and back, but that wasn’t such big a deal.
Gameplay - 6
The story is superbly written, and even though the gameplay is quite non-linear, it flows very nicely. Most of the puzzles are sound and the humor is excellent. However, all this great potential is tarnished by one of the most frustrating arcade sequences I’ve ever seen in an adventure game and two very tedious tasks. While many repetitive actions for little gain may have become the norm in MMORPGs, I won’t tolerate them in adventure games. If nearly half of the gameplay time consists of frustrating and/or repetitive actions, the game doesn’t deserve more than a six out of ten.
Graphics – 8
The graphics in this game are beautiful; much better than I’d ever expect from a 3D adventure title. All characters are very well designed, while remaining quite cartoonish and likeable, and the environments are all top notch, despite the generous usage of the lens flare effect. The only two gripes I have are some clipping problems and a few awkward camera angles.
Sound – 9
This title is the rare exception when an American version was released after the European version, and yet the voiceovers are professional. Nearly every character is unique, and the voiceovers could hardly be better. The soundtrack is as good, never too loud or too obnoxious, and never repetitive enough to get tiresome. The inability to skip dialogues hardly detracts from the sound quality at all.
Replay value – 5
Despite the problems with repetitive tasks and arcade quests, the game is still long enough to warrant its price. However, I can hardly imagine anyone to replay this game ever again.
Overall – 6.7
Wanted had the potential to be one of the best adventure games in 2004. It had the story, humor and graphics worthy of a Monkey Island sequel. Unfortunately, the game included several tedious and repetitive tasks, as well as a very frustrating arcade sequence, all of which managed to destroy the joy of playing and negated all good that the game offered. Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure is recommended only to the most resilient adventure gamers and those who don’t mind leaving their games unfinished.
