It is not that often an indie game comes to my desk and says play me please, so here we have a somewhat GTA style game in the old school fashion with new age graphics, but the question is, is it any good?
You play as William Riley, a poor sap, that on one fateful night heads to his dads home, finds a strange car parked out front, has a look through the windows of his dads home, hears a noise, goes hunting around to find some way to break in, I found a brick, throws it through a window and finds his dad, dead in the floor. As by some miracle, the police arrive, a much better response time than anything in the UK, and William never even called them, WOW, however, it was not to be, he was framed and sent to prison.
Now you would think prisons would be secure, this one is not, after a brawl with an inmate over a telephone, nothing new from what I have seen in movies, he is sent to the infirmary to recover. Once there, maybe a day or so, he breaks a window and makes his escape along a field with to no guards, lights or anything to stop him. Along the way, you find a drain pipe, in which you make your escape after finding a crowbar to open the gate to the pipe.
Welcome to Redrock County a western style town which the game offers you a map but no minimap? OMG for this type of game you would have thought this would be one of the core mechanics in the game to have tut tut., a rookie mistake there.
Redrock County looks stunning for a Nintendo Switch version, and the game still looks great when using the Switch in handheld mode. The best thing about the game would have to be the physics as almost everything has some sort of physics applied to it. Run through Grass, breakthrough fences, smash down trees and light posts, just to name a few things all react to real in-game physics, its impressive. While I was cruising around the town, I had in the background the new Dukes of Hazard, the one starring Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, and Jessica Simpson, damn shes fine, and I thought, would it not be awesome to have the 1969 Dodge Charger driven by Joe and Luke, in this game, now that would be amazing. I simply say this due to the fact, at the time of writing I was bashing down everything which included loads of fencing and on the TV Screen they were doing the same, then I was being chased the police and so were they, the only thing missing from the game were those amazing stunts.
The sounds in the game are also spot on, driving around in different vehicles to listening to the radio, though you can not choose the radio stations like in GTA or make your own playlist, something they might want to consider if they update the game or create American Fugitive 2. Not to mention the police chatting over the walky-talkies, wildlife and general living, its all on key and sounds great.
There is plenty to do in the game from general missions, car racing, maybe you want a new weapon head to the weapon dealership or paint your new ride head to the car paint shop or you could do what I did, mess around and outrun the police, oh yeah just be warned if you die you get WASTED. This is one HUGE bloody annoyance as you lose everything, apart from the money you have looted, experienced gained and perks unlocked. Not quite as bad as permadeath and start all over again, but is it really needed? I don’t think so.
You could become to the ultimate thief and climb the most wanted ladder, maybe, rob, finder bend, kill, it is totally down to you. Now, robbing houses are not all that fun, as all you get is a top-down view of the home after you enter and you click on each room to search for stash. Now there is one issue here, which is just dumb, the police are already on there a way to the home, as a count down times if initiated as soon as you enter, this offer tension, but where is the sneaky sneaky and not being seen, it sucks.
This game offers the mechanics of a Twin-Stick Shooter, it is a hit and miss mess, with you being outgunned the majority of the time. I also found it on times rather hard to hit my target, so I was wasting more bullets than actually taking down my target. Maybe that was me and I suck at it, but my partner also struggled so either we both suck or the shooting aspect needs some refinement. What I found easier is forgetting about the gunplay mechanics and just finding a car, getting in and driving down the enemies instead, more satisfying and fun I would say.
The story in the game is just OK, offers nothing special, even when it comes to choices through player dialogue as the ending is always the same regardless of the choices you make, odd but I guess this is how it is. The developers have chucked so much into the game to make it a playground of fun, I guess the story in its entirety works and in some way is not even needed, could have just chucked on a load of missions dotted around the place and made it a pure outlaw game and nothing else.
So after sinking a number of hours into the game, completing it twice what did I think of it? it is fun but lacks refinement, but come on I completed it twice so it certainly has come back value and the playground aspect of the game, well that crazy fun. If you are looking for an old school GTA style game with great sound, fun physics, OK graphics then you can not go far wrong with this title. As this game was played on the Nintendo Switch, you might also be wondering how does it perform, after its latest patch its perform just about right, there is still some lag spikes, but nothing to shout home about.
