Now don't get me wrong; in real knife- er... LIFE I don't like knives. They scare me. Ever since I cut myself closing my pocket knife as a kid I've avoided playin' with knives. Someone as clumsy and featherbrained as me just shouldn't even try messin' with knives 'cause I'm liable to go to scratch my forehead and forget about that big steak knife I'm holdin'...

But let us not forget,

gentle reader, that Outlaws is a GAME, and as such it lets us do things that we would never ever even think of doing in real life. So I can play with knives in Outlaws, can throw them at people and run with them because I don't have to worry about cuttin' my own stupid butt or anyone else's.

I enjoy using knives in Outlaws for a number of reasons. They let you get up close and personal with people. It's a bonding experience as you run up to some poor sap, dodge to the side right as you get to him to avoid his volley of bullets and ram that big 'ol blade three times into spleen. Whee!

Never you fear, Outlaws ain't that gory. There really isn't any blood, and in fact stabbing is pretty abstract: it sounds more like tearing cloth, and yer victim just grunts a bit. But if you have a good imagination...

I also like usin' knives because they piss people off. Folks seem 'ta get ticked when I kill them with my little knife while they were tryin' ta shoot me with their big 'ol gun. I've got a theory that they suddenly realize that their gun isn't ALL THAT, causing confusion, fear and anger. Heh heh. And if you can get someone a couple times in a row with your knife they learn to fear you and will run when they see you. Ahh, there's nothin' like inspirin' some fear to give you that warm and toasty feelin'.

My very favorite thing ta do

is to go after gatling gunners with a knife. Sure they may get me once or twice, especially if they catch me by surprise the first time, but the wonderful thing about people who rely on the gatling gun is that they don't move! Even after they kill you they'll stay there, thinkin' they're indestructible behind their big machine gun. Well guess what? Big guns don't make you harder to kill! In fact, "gatlers" tend to rely too much on the stoppin' power of their bullets. If you can rush in past their first volley then you've got 'em--just stay in close and dodge around 'em. They can't move and they'll have a hard time trackin' ya, and chances are good that they aren't even movin' as fast as they possibly could because they're thinkin' "hah look at this sucker I've got him right where I want him." Then you get that knife in 'em a couple times and they learn the folly of their ways. Thus endeth the lesson.

The final reason why I love knives

is fer their sheer elegant simplicity. There's no reloadin' with knives. You don't hafta worry about runnin' about pickin' up more weapons and ammo, or strafe shootin' side ta side. Just get that knife in hand and run after people. Yee-haw! Actually you should learn to dodge side ta side while running up to people 'cause the smarter one's will be shootin' at ya, but that's a tactic I've yet to master. 'Cause frankly when I get a knife in my hand this dark red mist swims up before my eyes, and all I kin think about is runnin' and stabbin'. Dodgin', useful as it may be for purposes of self-preservation, just gets in the way.

In the right hands the humble knife can do some really brutal damage. Some people have said that the extreme amount of damage the blade can inflict is unfair, but these people are forgetting that the range of the knife is hand to hand, less even than the sawed-off shotgun. Sure you can throw knives a good distance, but as far as I kin tell a thrown knife does less damage than a pistol round while bein' much harder to score a hit with.

Actually thrown knives are kinda funny. Fer one thing, since they're visible in flight, if yer target is laggin' a knife could look to him like it missed him completely when it really hit him. Thrown knives don't do much damage, but because they tend to turn your victim slightly a steady stream of knife hits can keep them off balance. But th' REALLY odd thing is that people who die from a thrown knife hit don't count as a kill. In fact, they don't even make a sound when they get hit OR when they die, they just silently keep over. There's no text notification of any sort, and the death doesn't change th' kill statistics. Pretty strange.