Tuco's smile was a mixture of annoyance and amusement. He was unaccustomed enough to hot baths to resent the intrusion of any member of the male sex into his private paradise, but it struck his sadistic sense of humour to think of the interloper's expression when he looked behind the screen and found the tub empty.
Tuco tensed his finger gently back on the trigger as the one-armed would-be assassin peered around the screen to find his target absent from the tub and a lead "No Trespassing" sign headed for his chest. A look of disbelief was permanently etched upon his visage as his form fell into the tub and his own blood turned the bathtub water into a rusty liquid cesspool of death.
Such is the opening encounter of one of the scenarios of Six-Gun Shootout (SG), one of the latest releases from SSI. SG is a game of man-to-man combat in the days of the "Wild West" with an appearance reminiscent of Galactic Gladiators. The game consists of ten scenarios based on the "Wild West" of Hollywood and popular legend with a modicum of history thrown in. The object of the game is to survive, not necessarily to use the historically correct weapon in the exact historical locale. For example, the "Gunfight at the 0. K. Corral" actually takes place in the corral for the scenario. However the local Tombstone newspaper published eyewitness reports that made it clear that the gunfight took place in the street outside the corral.
Nevertheless, the scenarios are challenging and worth playing. SG also offers a campaign game in which the player can create and arm a "personal character" and attempt to have him survive all ten scenarios (Hint: In order to accomplish this, the player should definitely be a "good guy", otherwise he will not likely survive the "Shootout at Stinking Spring" scenario where Pat Garrett parlayed a 12-5 advantage into the death of "Billy the Kid.").
Although the game mechanics are similar to those in Galactic Gladiators, Six Gun's mechanics are smoother. The capacity for hidden movement is an improvement that is quite useful and impressive. Each character is also able to use "cover" more effectively as the options of allowing the characters to be prone, kneel or stand affects line of sight differently than the line of sight in the earlier game.
The game also has a "View" command which allows each character to test the line of sight against the other characters prior to ordering a character to shoot at a target. Unlike the earlier game of man-to-man combat, SG isn't very flexible in creating one's own scenarios. The earlier game had a tremendous capacity for designing scenery and characters to fit fictional situations. In SG, there is no built in mechanism for creating such scenarios, only modifying the existing ten scenarios. It is to be hoped that if SG is a successful game in sales that such a "construction kit" might be available as an additional diskette. Otherwise, SG is a superior game.
Each scenario involves the movement and combat of two "teams": "The Good Guys" and "The Bad Guys." The scenarios include: "The Gunfight at the 0. K. Corral,"; "The Good, Bad, The Ugly"; "Rio Bravo"; "Shootout at Stinking Spring"; "The Battle of Ingalls"; "The Dalton's Demise"; "El Siette Magnifico"; "North field Nightmare"; "The Treeing of Placid"; and "Indian Raid." The first, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth listed scenarios are based on historical situations. The second, third and seventh are based on recognizable movie situations. The final two are generic "might have happened" scenarios.
Depending on preference, the player could end up controlling Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jessie James, Doc Holliday, Pat Garrett, or The Man with No Name (Blondie). The commands are simple. Each character may: ready a weapon; load a weapon: fire; move according to an 8 position grid; stand; become prone; kneel; use dynamite; and/or view potential lines of sight. Each character phases by move segments according to a formula for character movement rate combined with weapon movement rate. The character movement rate is not static, being modified by such things as health condition and body position. SG is a relatively simple, fast-moving and enjoyable game. It is satisfying and clear-cut in its determination of victory points and victory. One only wonders if the allowable adjustments to the ten scenarios will allow it to have as long a shelf life as previous SSI games.
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