Sure, Russian developer Litera is of course satirising the movie title "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", which has already become a saying; the classic spaghetti-western by Sergio Leone that is macabre, exciting and full of twists and turns. For me too the third part of the Dollars Trilogy belongs to the most worth watching western movies, very different from predictable good-versus-bad epics, with a cool Clint Eastwood (the Good), a brutal Lee van Cleef (the Bad) and a cunning Eli Wallach (the Ugly).

Story

As one can justifiably make a question mark at Clint Eastwood's grading as the "Good", so doubtful is the background and morality of our hero Jack. During the intro, while trying to get mindlessly drunk, the farmer Jack saves an Indian from some Mexican bandits, who finally burn down his modest little cottage to the ground. So we've already found "the Sober" (Jack) and "the Bad" (bandit). The mysterious Indian, who has observed everything and beats a hasty retreat, will play a vital part later on. The role of the "Ugly" seems to be intended for him.

The fact that Jack is now completely ruined, forces him to get under way to the next western town, where a kind of tournament takes place between the most notorious gunslingers of the west. Jack has set his mind on competing with those rogues for the prize money. Somehow he must get some money at all. Without horse, gun or any other tools, only equipped with unbelievable self-confidence not noticed about the drunkard before, he beats his way to town. In Westtown might is right. The Sheriff, whom Jack could release from an unpleasant situation, cares at least so far for Jack that he is willing to let him participate in the tournament, if he can prove to be a notorious killer, owns a gun and a burial place. As a matter of fact only the last survivor of the duels wins the price. And Jack is working hard to approach his goal.

He meets villains, killers, desperados and other obscure guys. Only the fittest survives in this world beyond the law! And Jack wants to be one of those, who make it! In a traditional western adventure a John Wayne-style hero would do the right thing and for example tries to prevent a potential suicide from executing. Not so in an adventure based on the anti-heroes of Leone. But even if it looks at first sight as if our hero is no better than the guys he's dealing with, moral thoughts are not alien to him. After all Clint Eastwood is not called "The Good" for nothing!

Sometimes story and dialogues are funny, sometimes however ludicrous. Sometimes our hero rightfully asks himself whether he watches the wrong film, while for example encountering a ship in the middle of the desert! On the other hand such things do happen in rather serious Hollywood movies á la "Sahara" too. Jack is set more than once on track of a treasure, which he would gladly get into his hands. How far his efforts are crowned with success won't be betrayed of course, only this much: the end of the story offers both, expected and unexpected elements, which let it close in a plausible way. "The Bad, the Ugly and the Sober" doesn't take itself deadly serious in a reduced way, not continuously cracking jokes like comic adventures do. For example you can hear the just today wonderfully relevant and apt quotation from the Threepenny Opera by a 'retrained' banker, comparing the benefit of a bank robbery against the founding of a bank!

Handling

This 3rd-person adventure is totally mouse-controlled, i.e. that character-navigation, menues, inventory handling and also the few mini games are done by point&click or click&drag. Quite a nice feature is that Jack doesn't always has to move towards a hotspot before we get a comment or a negative answer about it. In all other cases we can let him run fast by doubleclick to scene exits or hotspots. The cursor changes context sensitive above interactive areas and indicates by eyeglass icon, if a spoken or written comment is available. Sub-titles cannot be disabled in the settings menu, but you can speed up acoustic and visual outputs by mouse-clicks to hence ignore repetitions. Usually we get 3 to 4 different comments for one hotspot before they start to repeat. An animated mouth-icon starts multiple choice dialogues and rotating red arrows show us the scene exits. So far, so good. You should however keep your hand under control at hotspots, which expect interaction. Then the standard hand cursor transforms into a pointing hand cursor, what it does a little retarded, so that we can overlook such hotspots easily. Very slow mouse movements in opulent decorated backgrounds are therefore a precondition for successful completing the finding-objects-puzzles.

At the top of the screen there are two buttons, one for inventory and one for the map. The map serves only as overview of the game world and is not interactive. The inventory opens by clicking the screen-button or directly right-clicking your mouse. Then it unfolds as inventory bar. if there are more than 6 objects you must use the arrows to scroll. The inventory items are described during mouse contact only in written form. Every time we receive a new object, the inventory button is blinking until we look at this object. Inventory items can be combined. After we have used an inventory object in the wrong way, the inventory closes each time. If you would like to try objects one after the other on hotspots, then you must at least execute an additional right-click each time, which is a little annoying in the long run. One should have left it to the player, when to open and close the inventory.

The button for the main menu becomes visible together with the inventory. There we find the usual functions such as save, load, exit and the option menu for sound and graphic settings. The number of the save slots is not exactly sufficient with 10. We cannot die and there are no GameOvers, but another unpleasant thing can happen to us: during mini games we cannot save. Sometimes we get roped in one without preliminary warning and couldn't make it in the first go. Of course we can pause or stop during mini games, but if we exit the game in this situation, we must restart with the last savegame. This may mean that we must repeat a longer part of the game.

The controls used during mini games are described in each case before starting. The mini games always automatically start again within a loop, as long as we can't win them. An autosave fuction just before the start of a mini game would have been optimal, even if repeating some game parts after leaving and restarting do not demand unreasonable time and effort. Altogether controls and handling are easy to use. Besides the metioned points of criticism handling is comfortable in classic point&click style.

Sound/localization

The preview version contains Russian voice overs with English sub-titles. Some cheering up country music themes repeat in infinite loops, can however be throttled to a tolerable level, so that one can hear the sound effects such as foot steps, crow calls, knocking, etc. at a convenient volume. Even to me as not native speaker, the English text translation already appeared somewhat strange and faulty, so that one can only hope that a conversion to other languages is done via professional native speakers. Both translation and synchronisation could still change impression and effect of the story on a big scale and decide on the game's success, which so far leaves a nice impression.

Puzzles

There are mainly object/inventory puzzles, dialogue puzzles and puzzles to search&find things and interlocutors. "The Bad, the Ugly and the Sober" isn't totally linear concerning the sequence of puzzle solving, however does not actually offer a great freedom for the gamers. The degree of difficulty is not very high, so that this linearity does not result in frustrating game stops. Only the mini games (bull rides, fist fights and pistol duels) could trouble adventure purists, since they require fast and exact reactions. Personally I had a problem to understand the bull riding rules, since the description was only available in Russian at that time. The fist fights and shootings were feasible for me after a few approaches. The mini games were easier than those of The Westerner for example. However for the last fist-fight I had to consult my pillow once. So also for beginners the game should be finished without outside assistance or solution in approximately 12-14 hours depending upon skills. Some few other puzzle types provide interesting surprises and challenges beyond the otherwise simple degree of difficulty.

Graphics

The handdrawn 2D-backgrounds of Westtown and environment are fine and detailed. The style is realistic with a light cartoon touch. Animations of mice, birds or even a small chamaeleon, sandstorm-blown tumbleweeds or passing clouds and many more animations enliven the scenes beside many non-play-relevant hotspots, which tempt to explore and examine the area. In addition some 22 3D-characters are likable and realistically drawn with a certain comic touch. They are accompanied by realistic shades and dovetail well with the scenes. There are no performance problems even while sometimes simultanously five 3D-characters plus one parrot move around a scene, in contrast to adventures like "The Art of Murder" likewise produced with the Wintermute engine, and which already prostrate with 3 characters.

Loading times between scenes keep within limits too. The few but longer cutscenes are a little more blurred than the ingame graphics, they are however excellently succeeded and hardly deviate from their ingame character look. Especially during the video close-ups it's noticeable that the graphic artists probably selected not old master Eastwood but rather Matthew Fox alias "Jack" from "Lost" as design model for look and movements of our hero.

Result

I had fun with the preview version already, even if the partly missing translations did not make it easy for me sometimes. Control interface is o.k., story entertaining, the puzzles are easy and fair and I liked graphics and characters. The few mini games fit the Western theme well and are feasible even for pure adventure gamers. The game has no big depth of story and belongs to the shorter titles similar to Nibiru. A good localization and a price, which would be appropriate around 25 Euros, would make this relaxing Western adventure recommendable and would make forget about the last Wintermute title "The Art of Murder".

Played on:

• Windows XP
• Pentium IV 3,6 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• 48x DVD-ROM
• NVidia GeForce 7600GS 256 MB
• Sound card DirectX-compatible