It’s a shock that we don’t have more Western video games. I don’t mean ones made in Europe or America, I mean ones that star cowboys, are set in the wild west, and call back to a golden age for the genre in film. Next month, a re-release of Red Dead Redemption will arrive on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch 2. Before that, you’ll want to check out Nightdive Studios’ Outlaws + A Handful of Missions: Remaster. I know I'll be playing more of it than I will Red Dead Redemption's remaster.

Outlaws is a cult classic 1990s shooter from LucasArts, the studio best known for making classic Star Wars video games and point-and-click adventure games. As a Doom-like western FPS, Outlaws is a bit of an outlier in LucasArts’ catalog. Playing it for the first time via this remaster, I was reminded that Outlaws is quite the hidden gem. It helps that I got a great refurbishing job from one of the best remaster developers in the business.

Outlaws still holds up today

It reminds me that we still don’t have enough video game Westerns

Outlaws is your classic western revenge story. Players control James Anderson, a retired marshal who is trying to live a peaceful life with his family in the country. Unfortunately, some nefarious outlaws kill his wife and kidnap his daughter, so Anderson starts shooting his way around the wild west seeking answers about what happened to his daughter.

The fully animated cutscenes were quite impressive for 1997, a time when games were still mostly relying on text boxes and slideshow-like animations to deliver their narratives. It’s not exactly the most original story, but it’s enough to keep a player engaged as they go level to level. This stylized animation carries over to gameplay, and Anderson’s weapons and the enemies he faces are animated in much of the same way.

This is very much a shooter of the 1990s, with labyrinthine levels where the player has to explore to find keys that unlock doors. Along the way, I’d bob and weave between enemies, shooting back at them with the weapons I picked up while also keeping an eye out for health packs and ammo scattered around the environment to keep those resources fresh. If you’ve played Doom or Star Wars: Dark Forces, you’ll know what to expect.

The Wild West aesthetic helps the game stand out in a lot of ways. Mechanically, this was also one of the first shooters to really emphasize the need to reload your weapon, a needed consideration for a game where you primarily use a shotgun or pistol. Meanwhile, the game’s gold rush towns and sawmill levels stand out from the crowd a lot more than the levels from other shooters of the time. This is an underrated retro gem still worth trying out today.

Even this cult classic got an impressive remaster

Nightdive continues its streak as the premier FPS remaster developer

While you probably haven’t heard of Outlaws before, you may be more familiar with Nightdive’s work. This Atari-owned studio has remastered most of the iconic first-person shooters from the 1990s. Its most well-known remasters are those of iconic games like Doom, Quake, Heretic and System Shock 2, but Nightdive has remastered plenty of lesser-known titles, like Outlaws.

Thankfully, Outlaws gets the same treatment that the likes of Doom did. At a basic level, all of the content ever released for the game is here, hence the somewhat clunky A Handful of Missions part of the remaster’s title. The remaster also ups the resolution to 4K, enables smooth 60 FPS gameplay (up to 120 FPS with the right settings), and adds natural-feeling controller support.

While I didn’t get to test this out pre-release, Outlaws’ multiplayer is even intact here and supports crossplay. All of those refurbishments make me happy that this is the first version of Outlaws I've experienced, not the original PC release. When it comes to the 1990s FPS games, Nightdive hasn’t messed up a remaster yet.

On top of all that, there’s a museum players can delve into to see assets and development materials from the game in more detail. There’s even a pretty thorough section dedicated to Outlaws’ fantastic soundtrack featuring comments from its composer. While I had only heard of this game in passing just a few weeks ago, I now feel like an expert on it.

Don’t let Outlaws + A Handful of Missions Remaster fly under your radar

It’s a hidden gem and an educational remaster that will leave you wanting more

Playing through Outlaws demonstrated just how much potential Westerns have had in the video game medium and still have today. Whether it’s an immersive open-world adventure like Red Dead Redemption or an old-school FPS like Outlaws, there’s a lot of potential for Wild West video games that remains untapped to this day. Personally, I would be a day-one buyer of a full-fledged modern sequel were it to ever happen.

At the same time, Outlaws + A Handful of Missions: Remaster is yet another example of Nightdive setting the standard for video game re-releases. It’s more than a simple port with a resolution bump, like Red Dead Redemption is getting next month. This is a whole-on refurbishment of a cult classic that will give you a deeper appreciation of this oddity in LucasArts’ catalog.