Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin is a remarkably likable experience considering its many weaknesses as a game. Most movie-licensed games are cynical, halfhearted attempts to cash in on a successful film property. Luckily for Southpeak Interactive, the bar has been set even lower by last summer's mediocre Hollywood rehash of the much-better TV series. But the designers actually made an honest try at a fair game.
The story, which involves a death threat to President Grant by someone claiming to be Abe Lincoln's true assassin, is a more interesting premise than that of the film. And because it mixes up the gameplay with everything from Myst-like logic puzzles to point-and-click gunfights, the game actually provides a refreshing range of challenges, especially for the intended novice and casual-gamer audience. But in the end, the game doesn't hang together very well, so hard-core players will probably snub it. However, there are enough good ideas at work in Wild Wild West to suggest that some designers are thinking harder about how sprocket-and-celluloid old media can be refitted for use in games.
A few sound, basic design premises are at the heart of Wild Wild West. It's essentially a puzzle-oriented detective adventure livened up with numerous action sequences. Starting from Jim West and Artemus Gordon's personal railway car, the hunt for the purported assassin takes two parallel paths through eight scenarios, leading to a grand finale at Ford's Theater. As in Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight series, the gameplay in Wild Wild West alternates between Jim and Artie, which is a good idea that mixes up the pace and puzzle variety. The endorphin-addled Jim West pursues the old trail of John Wilkes Booth, revisits the inn he visited during his getaway, and, of course, handles all the game's gunplay. Artie refuses to pack a gun when he stocks up his inventory at the train and instead carries along an array of Victorian hi-tech equipment such as acid-laced string and a 19th-century water scooter, all to puzzle his way into the secrets of the mysterious deaths surrounding Ford's Theater.
The game's two voice actors do credible mimicry of Will Smith and Kevin Kline. Likewise, the graphics depict the main settings - Artie at the wharf and theater and Jim on the farm - well enough. Since some of these puzzles require obscure solutions, it is good to see difficulty sliders available for novices who want to adjust the challenge of adventure or action elements. Both characters move through the screens in standard adventure-game style, but the activity can vary from scene to scene. The gunfighting engine is simplistic but well done: When an armed threat enters a scene, your mouse aims with a red target circle. It tightens on the foes until your aim is true. Both characters can take five hit points of damage before buying the farm, but bandages you pilfer from downed bad guys patch you back into fighting shape. The arcade shooting scenes are neither intrusive nor overly long, and Jim sometimes can avoid gunplay altogether with a smart tactical move, like shooting the beehive beside a hidden target.
The same compliments can't be said for the adventure elements, which will bog you down with poor pacing and unrewarding puzzles. Jim and Artie both have to make the usual creative uses of their inventory to overcome a series of obstacles, but in most instances, the solutions are just too obscure or the puzzles are pointless busywork that don't advance the mystery story at all. In one scenario the simple act of grabbing and lighting a lantern requires almost a dozen steps, but the only payoff is a lit room. While all puzzle-oriented adventures are arguably inane at heart in this regard, better-executed games like the Tex Murphy series at least use the conundrum to unravel the story, while Grim Fandango makes the silliness of certain solutions part of the fun of the game.However, in Wild Wild West Artie often falls on important plot elements easily, whereas simply leaving an area or figuring out how to elude pursuers takes hours of experimenting, dying, and reloading - all just to end the damned sequence. An inordinate amount of game time is consumed while he's on a wharf, dodging henchmen and breaking in and out of a single hut that contains two game clues. The jerky pacing detracts from what should be the focus of the game - finding the assassin - and all of the aimless busyness makes it too easy to lose track of the bigger, better picture. And while the basic two-path premise should let you enjoy the unlikely duo and their different styles, whether it be Artie and his gadgetry or Jim and his guns and women, the designers make nothing of the opportunity. The cutscenes almost never develop the characters or add plot elements. Most of them illustrate the heroes merely coming in and out of new settings.
In fact, the bad timing persists until the final stages of the game, in which you finally meet the villains, Pratt and Electra, the latter being the game's femme fatale and token babe. Imagine a Wild Wild West game that lets Jim go three-quarters of the way through without even a single line of double-entendre dialogue. That's like depriving James T. Kirk of buxom aliens. In fact, Kirk and West were the spunky roosters of '60s pop culture, a pair of overcompensating Napoleons who were quick with a fist and a kiss, and sometimes both. Didn't anyone on the design team watch the show, let alone the opening of the movie? It's also unfortunate that another of Wild Wild West's conventions, an interesting foe, is absent until much of the gameplay is over. Too much of the game involves fighting or eluding faceless, nameless thugs rather than being goaded by an enemy who's intriguing enough to motivate you to carry on.
Actually, the game misses its general audience target in several respects. Licensed properties, which rely on our affection for the original product, really need to extend that experience with whatever qualities made it enjoyable in the first place. Unfortunately, few of these qualities are present in the game, such as Salma Hayek's character, who seems to drop in and out of focus throughout. The game also has some technical problems; Artie and Jim are polygonal characters who move through hand-drawn sets, but graphics glitches often make their movements jerky, even on a midrange system. And on a P2-266 without 3D acceleration, the graphics performance is terrible. Such a straightforward game that targets a general audience should be more playable on a broader range of hardware.
It seems almost too easy to dump on movie-licensed games like Wild Wild West. Most movie-based games are poor attempts to shoehorn a narrative film experience into a very different medium. Publishers usually farm these projects out to their third-string development staffs or untried software houses. The results are legendary - ever play Johnny Mnemonic? Still, those who are quick to dismiss licensed games miss the larger role such games play in reaching out to new nongaming audiences. Wild Wild West is halfway there; it's polished, diverse, and it at least tries to extend the basic historical atmosphere and premodern gadgetry of the film's premise in more ways than the movie. While saying so may be to damn the game with faint praise, considering how bad movie-licensed games have been in the past, Wild Wild West could have been a lot worse. For seasoned adventure gamers, it turns out to be an honest effort that fails because no single gameplay element is developed enough to be satisfying. However, for casual players who just like the idea of the series, it amounts to a decent diversion.
