GUN

No-one would have thought that the Wild West would become a landscape next generation consoles would handle. But sure enough, out of nowhere, Neversoft, the company of the famous Tony Hawk games, announces a game called GUN- a Wild West Adventure/Shooter set in the Wild West in the late 1800s, post Civil War. It's about Renegades, Cowboys, Indians, and those Chinese who did all the working in-between.

GUN Is about Colton White, a normal guy working with his father to make a normal meal in the old west when all of a sudden a steamboat he rides on is attacked by Indians. Slowly but surely, he delves into a story about Greed, Lust, Anger, and Hate- basically, it seems to revolve around gold. Go figure.

To explain GUN easily, just think of a combination between a third person shooter ala Max Payne or Enter the Matrix and base RPG elements somewhat along the lines of Vampire: The Masquerade. While the game almost entirely runs around the action engine (And thus can be theoretically beaten by a skilled player without the RPG elements), the skills attaining elements become integral to GUN to help the player progress. There are no experience points or a real levelling system- the whole game is run on missions, which can be gained from townspeople, wanted posters, or even ranchers looking for a ranch hand.

Gun was originally made to be an XBOX game, and this game makes it obvious in many ways that is unfortunate to generally anyone who isn't ON an XBOX (Or the XBOX 360). Firstly, this game is designed around a very simple interface, which is good for a console- but is extremely easy to abuse on the PC. For example,GUN has essentially an auto-aim system where as long as your reticle is CLOSE enough, it reads as a hit. If this was on the XBOX, it would make sense. But, as most PC gamers are used to the sharp targeting of a PC, this game ends up being very simplistic and easy. Regardless, the game is very basic for what it was presented as, take it however you want.


GUN itself is an interesting concept, which deserves at least some attention in this review. Obviously, I am going to be partial to GUN not because it's a GOOD game, but because someone has actually decided to make a game that isn't sci fi or Anime based that involves third person shooting, which is quite refreshing. The whole Wild West aspect is actually very well done here (At least experience-wise, as the game is extremely historically inaccurate) and you actually will get into GUN quickly. The ambiance and general presentation lead you to believe that this game is in a world of it's own, and actually somewhat allows you to ignore some things (Like how the game is gratuitously violent and sexual with no real reason) and focus on the ambiance.

The story progresses nicely, and as I found, is not very restrictive to normal gameplay. By that, I mean that GUN, while not exactly the free range game it toted itslef to be, gives the player a huge amount of leeway as to what to do and when to do it. Naturally, you will not get over a bridge until you do the mission to help protect the workers to build it, but beyond structural issues, you will find yourself very free to do what you like. GUN is fun in this respect, though I will note that the mission pool is actually so small compared to bigger games that it's like being free in a maze- you can go have fun and do whatever, but you still only have a limited number of choices as to where to go each time.

However, not all is right with GUN, and surprisingly, completely unlike Neversoft, this game has a huge amount of errors and glitches that frustrate the hell out of me. Firstly is the fact that this game is easy on the PC and generally hard anywhere else. The console shooter market tends to be leagues easier than the PC market because of accuracy issues (Which is why people who purchase a USB adapter for the XBOX and use keyboards and mice with HALO tend to rock) and simplifies the game. Because of this, even on normal difficulty, this game is easy to beat, and I was 50% or more into the game in an hour or two.


The second issue with GUN, and the biggest by far, is the graphics. Having been ported from the XBOX to the PC and 360 (As well as the Gamecube and PS2), GUN suffers from horrible issues, be they generally aesthetic or actually game hindering. For example, the game never has a loading screen, it is all dynamically generated- but the horses run faster than even my high powered Gaming PC can generate the game (Which is odd, because this game never actually taxed my PC). What ends up happening is Colton ends up riding a horse over the "Sky" for about two seconds before the game kicks in, and it's absolutely frustrating, because you can get killed.

The third and final technical issue with GUN I found was that for all the game is worth, the character models (And generally anything that moves) is completely off and unrealistic. This can range from horses not moving their legs as fast as they move to characters never opening their mouths or even moving in dialogue. Neversoft, much like a PS1 developer, set all the animations to move in preset motions no matter what they say, so it looks HORRIBLE and forced, and extremely cheap. While actual cutscenes do fix this, I found also that the cutscenes would sometimes randomly play the audio about a second off from the graphics generation time, generally meaning a frustrating lag time between mouth movement (And subtitles) and the audio that is played.

But GUN isn't all that bad. GUN is rather expansive and fun to play, and it's refreshing to be introduced to something that isn't just the same old Video Game experience. I frankly thought the story was lame and the action was easy, but it's still fun to play in the sense that it's never been seen before. In no way is this game absolutely amazing or a must buy, but I really did feel like GUN deserved to be on the XBOX 360 lineup, even as a simple up-port. If you can ignore the shallow story, obvious use of offensive language/sexuality/violence to supplicate actual depth and repetitive missions, you will find a great weekend rent, but not really anything beyond that.

3 star(s) out of 5

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