THE WESTERNER Hands-On Preview- Preview

It took me a mere thirty minutes to find Revistronic at the E3 as I walked right past them at least four times until, finally, I stopped and asked someone the location of the Revistronic booth and was pointed to an area not six feet from where I was standing (most likely the reason I dislike mazes in games so much is because in real life I have absolutely no sense of direction).

If I could pinpoint a specific time that the E3 turned from work to fun for me this year, it would be my meeting with Revistronic as they were truly some ‘wild and crazy guys’ and their approach translates nicely to The Westerner.

I met with the Madrid team of Pablo Martin (Revistronic Chief of Operations), Oliver Mendez (Planeta Deagostini Press Communication) and Hernan Castillo the talented creator of The Westerner. Hernan understood very little English and I understood very little Spanish, but you never would have known from the way we were both laughing and enjoying each other’s company.

These are people with long memories (Yes, Randy, we remember you, you are the one who gave 3 Skulls of the Toltecs a grade of C- and complained of ‘slipshod writing’ and ‘flat jokes’).

3 Skulls of the Toltecs (the prequel to The Westerner) was never released in North America as numerous publishers believed that American gamers would be offended by video game images of drunken Indians (It’s nice to know that these publishers are doing such a wonderful job of protecting our morals; its now more socially acceptable to blow someone’s head to smithereens in a fragfest than it is to face the dilemma of mistakenly judging an entire nationality by an exaggerated cartoon game image).

The Westerner is a sequel to 3 Skulls of the Toltecs a 2D cartoon, Western adventure released in 1996. It starred Fenimore Fillmore, a fumbling, happy-go-lucky cowboy whose aim with a six-shooter leaves observers ducking for cover. When I asked Hernan why after seven years he had finally created a sequel to 3 Skulls of the Toltecs – instead of feeding me a bunch of artistic integrity hoo-ha – he instead slowly rubbed his fingers together indicating the universal sign for money. You gotta love his honesty!

Hernan must be planning on keeping his coffers bursting, as he was kind enough to provide Just Adventure with the exclusive information that a sequel to The Westerner is already in development and will be titled Wanted: Fenimore Fillmore. He also informed us that he is well aware of the astronomical rates that a boxed copy of the original 3 Skulls of the Toltecs fetches on Ebay and he has been known to sell a few from his private stash to raise some capital.

In our review of the Spanish version of The Westerner, we complained that the game’s biggest obstacle was not the puzzles but the ‘bugs’ and we are glad to report that Revistronic claims that the ‘bug’ problem has been cleaned-up. We are also glad to report that over 100,000 copies of The Westerner have already been sold in Europe.

The English demo we have of the game is not the full version, but is more than enough to get a taste of what to expect. The 3D graphics are very reminiscent of Lucas Arts, sort of a Monkey Island in the Old West. The colors seem to burst from the screen and there are some wonderful shading and sun effects present. The mouse-controlled interface is the basic ‘walk’, ‘speak’, ‘look’, ‘use’, etc., but you will also be able to ride a horse, draw your six-shooter and even drink a sarsaparilla. The game is played from a 3rd-person perspective, but you always have the option to allow Fenimore to examine his surroundings from a first-person point-of-view.

While many of the locations are stereotypical of the old West, the situations Fenimore often finds himself in are not as he will not only compete with a crazy gunfighter robot, but will also need to break into a nursery school to get his stolen six-shooter back from an underage thief. In the interim, Fenimore is faced with the daunting task of sauntering through a rough-and-tumble town armed only with two toy guns. If there is one thing that The Westerner has plenty of its enough humor to fill a ten-gallon hat.

Revistronic has taken great care to ensure that The Westerner can be enjoyed by all adventure gamers regardless of the age of their system thanks to a process named PICTuRE. PICTuRE can simultaneously draw more than 150,000 polygons on the screen and reproduces facial expressions identical to the ones in 3D cartoons. What this means to the average consumer is that The Westerner can be played on a Pentium II 500Mhz system with only a 16 MB accelerated graphics card. Pretty impressive!

There is though still one obstacle to your playing The Westerner; thanks to the cancellation of Sam n Max 2 combined with the low sales figures of ‘cartoony’ games like Runaway and Tony Tough and the Night of the Roasted Moths, many North American publishers are now hesitant to take a chance on this wonderful game. Still, I have no doubts that eventually we will see this game in North America and when that day arrives, then kiss your horse goodbye and load your revolver with blanks because The Westerner will be riding into town and he’ll be aiming for your funny bone.