"More like Mad Dog McCrap"

Mad Dog McCree is one of those games that attempted to use Full Motion Video for the game play. Typically, these games suffer from poor video quality, bad acting and a lack of fun. The basic premise of Mad Dog McCree is that Mad Dog and his gang of rebels have taken over an old west town and kidnapped the mayor and his daughter and locked the sheriff up in his own jail. You wander into town and get propositioned by an old guy to save everyone. He tells you that the Mayor's daughter is a sight to see and will make it worth your time. I couldn't disagree more.

Game Play
The game is basically one giant movie with your actions determining what happens next. The view is a first person shooter and you can use a light gun or the controller to shoot different things. As things go a long, you will find quickly that the game is pretty cheep but repetitive. In almost every screen, a guy will pop up form one of a few set locations and try and shoot you. If you shoot first, you kill him and if he shoots first, he kills you. There is no moving around to dodge bullets and you can't change your view until after everyone is dead. The game will then move you along to the next screen. Every now and then the game will show you a small video of someone giving you some helpful advice, assuming that he or she wasn't killed in the latest gun battle.

Everyone calls you stranger, as you are just some guy who wandered into a new town. For some reason, the townspeople expect you to kill all of Mad Dogs men and you agree. I'm not too sure how these people know you are such an expert marksmen or how Mad Dog's men suddenly know you are out to get them.

The difficulty level can be changed by sticking a knife into one of three pieces of paper at the options screen. I don't think the difficulty level should be changed though, as some glitches make the game very easy to win.

I suppose the game wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for loading times. Every time a bad guy is about to jump out and shoot you, the game freezes for about a second which is a dead give away that you are about to be shot at. They pop up from somewhere and the game freezes again for another second or two, giving you ample time to move the cursor over to the guy and shoot him. If you miss and get shot, don't worry. All you have to do is pause the game before the next screen loads. Then select continue and you go back to just before you were shot. This makes the game terribly easy since all you have to do is memorize were the guys pop up.

There are some interesting stunts that are done by people in the game (or is it a movie). They jump off of roofs and out of hay lofts and the like. The fight scenes are choreographed decently, but certainly could be better. The game moves along at a decent speed, but unless you use the pause trick, you will be repeating the same scenes over and over again because you get shot often.

You reload your gun by putting it back in your holster which actually means shooting the bottom right corner of the screen. I'm no gun expert, but I don't think guns actually reload that way. I am fairly certain bullets have to be put in by hand. There are also random cow skulls and spittoons laying about that if shot, give you the ability to hold additional ammunition. I don't under stand why shooting a cow skull gives your six-shooter more than six bullets, but, a lot like the rest of the game, it doesn't make sense.

Score 2

Controls
The game can be controlled with either a controller or a light gun. I assume that using the light gun would be a lot better because the controller just plain sucks. You have to move the cursor around on the screen to each of the bad guys and press the shoot button before they shoot you. This is nearly impossible to do in one shot. While you may get the first guy, you'll have to go all the way across the screen and shoot another guy and the cursor doesn't move that fast. There are buttons to make the cursor go faster, but it goes too fast and you loose accuracy because you'll go right by the guy you were intending to shoot.

You can't actually control your guy. The best you can do is “shoot in the direction you are heading.” You shoot in the direction you want to go, but only when there is a fork in the road. You can't go off and explore.

Score 1 with controller, 6 with light gun.

Graphics
The graphics are surprisingly decent, given the overall crappiness of the game. All the videos are presented in full screen and look fairly good. There is a small bit of graininess when the action is moving fast but it is minimal. With the exception of the menu and credits screen, everything is in full motion video. The set looks like an old west town, or at least what Hollywood wants us to think they look like. At times you can see some aluminum siding, which I am sure they didn't have in the 1800's. At least they tried.

At times, it is difficult to tell who you should shoot and who not to because you are so far away from the action. There is a woman lurking around the sheriff's office that looks like she is part of Mad Dog McCree's men but you can't tell until you get close enough. This happens all too often; you can't differentiate between who is a good guy and who is a bad guy until a gun is drawn. Quite often you will be shot by someone who you can barely see or can't see at all.

The cursor sits there on the screen, no matter what is going on, even if you can't shoot anything in the current scene. It gets in the way of things quite often and looks pretty bad. It is supposed to be a hand holding a gun but looks like a brown blob with a gray dot on top.

Score 5

Sounds and Music
As with most FMV games of the early 1990's, this game has some terrible acting. The one eyed guy and the mayor's daughter are the worst (not to mention that she is ugly as sin). Her laugh is forced and she says she is scared, but immediately giggles and says she will see you later. The one eyed guy just suddenly looks at you and decided you are looking at him funny and thinks he should shoot you. The old guy in the beginning is not that bad of an actor. He actually is believable. The Bar tend ender is also alright.

Every gun sounds the same. The guys who have shot guns make the same noises as those with pistols. There is some bad grunting and groaning when people are shot. It feels as if the same few sound effects are used over and over again.

There is very little music in the game, but that music fits. It is sort of a John Wayne riding into the sunset sort of thing. It fits but isn't used outside of the intro. There is no music playing in the menu and the sound effect for selecting an option is obnoxious. I would recommend listing to something else but you can't get the story and clues with the sound turned off. The game lacks captions so you need to listen to the bad acting if you want to actually finish the game.

Score 3

Overall, Mad Dog McCree is a poor game. With terrible controls and game play that is fundamentally flawed by the 3DO system's load times, it certainly isn't a game anyone should desire to own. Unless you have the rather expensive and hard to find light gun for the 3DO, the game isn't much fun. The game is available for a wide array of other systems including the Sega CD and can be owned for a DVD player. Unless you are a serious collector of 3DO games or enjoy B movies turned into games, this isn't a game you want to own. This game is also included in the Gun Slinger's collection that is available for the 3DO. That collection may be slightly less of a waste of your money if you really want this game.

One last thing I have to mention is the improper use of the word ‘your' in the instructions. They should have used the form you're for ‘you are.' While this may be just a minor thing, I find it to be annoying. The game had to have a big budget for the huge set the built for filming, so why couldn't they hire someone to proofread?

Pros:
1. Video looks pretty good.

Cons:
1. Glitches and load times make the game loose all challenge
2. Bad voice acting
3. Cursor move is either too slow or too fast
4. Mayor's daughter is ugly

Final Score 3

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/07