Instead of following the same plot line as the movie (which I never particularly understood, since then the player already knows the ending most of the time), SouthPeak Interactive picks up after the story from the movie has taken place. It's been five years since the unfortunate tragedy of Abraham Lincoln, and the feuding between the North and the South is beginning to draw to a close. It was thought that the killer of Lincoln has been caught and there was nothing further to worry about, but one night President Grant receives a letter signed by "The True Executioner of Abraham Lincoln." Fearing for his life, President Grant enlists the help of Jim West and Artemus Gorden to find out what's actually going on and to see if the person who wrote the letter truly is who killed Lincoln.

Wild Wild West allows you to choose between either Jim West or Artemus Gorden in at the start of the game. You will eventually have to play as both characters, but the ability to pick either one is a nice addition. Jim's missions are usually more action-oriented and will require less puzzle solving, while Artemus' require the player to use their brain to make it through. I was looking for a use of my quick reflexes, and I ended up choosing Jim to start off with. I was expecting to have a single gun that included an infinite amount of ammunition, but it was pleasant to see that I was given the choice of picking what guns I wanted to bring along with me. Most of them are not the norm of what you'd expect (i.e. rocket launcher or machine gun), but rather odd ball firearms that make Wild Wild West stand out, at the very least.

Whoever you choose, the basic gameplay concept behind Wild Wild West is your standard point and click adventure. All the characters in the game are rendered through the use of polygons, with the surrounding environments being done in the usual pre-rendered fashion. The pre-rendered backgrounds are done very well and have a decent amount of detail to them, even if they do seem fairly static most of the time. The characters are modeled nicely, as well, though there is nothing exceptionally special about them. Occasionally there are some full motion video sequences that are thrown into the mix, but I was a bit puzzled as to why they were even implemented. They hardly look better than the actual game, and at times looked even worse at times. Using the real-time game engine for the segments depicted in the FMV sections would likely have done a better job than what was accomplished.

I found that there was a decent attempt at creating action scenes that are seamlessly integrated into the normal gameplay, but the execution of it all came crashing down. In a nutshell, you use your mouse cursor to move the character around the viewable area and when you find an enemy you place the cursor over him, wait for the cursor to shrink and red and then fire. The problem is, I would have the cursor turn red and I would fire and nothing would happen. And while you can fire without the red cursor, chances are the bullet will go zooming off target, even if you are less than a foot away. Factor in, that at times, there can be some two or three baddies taking pot shots at you, and get ready to die and reload your last saved game multiple times before succeeding.

With all the bad, there was some good, however. If you don't feel like taking out the enemy with conventional weapons, you can do it by shooting at the various things around them. In just the first action section I was able to find that I could shoot a bee's nest that would distract a guy enough so I could take him out easily, or fire a round or two at some logs and have them go crashing down on someone who was pestering me. There were numerous occasions where by searching around what was near me I was able to discover an easier way to dispose of my foes than by the use of a bullet to their body.

Many of the puzzles in Wild Wild West were a bit abstract, and had me scratching my head a couple of times to see what relevance they actually had to advancing the story. But for every half a dozen of those, I found a puzzle that was just plain cool. For example, Jim has one where a man is trying to figure out a crossword puzzle and is having trouble with a few of the questions. If you are able to figure them out (none of them were all that hard) then the man will be kind enough to hand over a couple of useful items that can be used later in the journey. I wished there had been more clever puzzles like the aforementioned crossword one, but quite a few times I was dumbfounded on how to pass a certain area and had to eventually resort to a walkthrough once or twice because I was becoming frustrated.

Something I must commend SouthPeak Interactive for, however, is the great voice actors they picked up to do the voice overs for Jim West (Will Smith) and Artemus Gorden (Kevin Kline). At times I was having a hard time making the distinction if they were actually the real actors doing the voices or if there were hired help. Even though it does not really help the game as a whole, it's little things like that make a game a head above the rest in the genre.