Gun

The Good
From the get-go it seems like this is going to be a good game - one seamless and well paced tutorial later and you're dropped right in the thick of it and handed a bag-full of questions. If you follow the story the game never lets off and takes you on a wild ride through the compact old west. The story is not in any way sophisticated with it's predictable or unsurprising plot twists but it is addictive, drowned as it is in western cliche. The voice-work is mostly high quality too. The villains look, act and sound villainous enough and there's plenty of them on offer for you to blast away.

The weapons are great, improving in quality and calibre the further in the story you get. All the western favourites are here and eventually you even get the obligatory RPG style dynamite crossbow, though I'm happy to say it fits in well in the game as it doesn't explode on impact or even fly that straight. Also, since this is a console port you do get yer lock-on option, but shooting with a mouse works well even if it's as precision demanding as PC oriented shooters. If your cursor turns red you'll be able to hit the enemy even if it looks like something is in the way.

The storyline missions are great. One memorable mission involved packing barrels of TNT near a weak part of a mountain then shooting them at the right time to cause a landslide and cause a train to crash. The tension crept on when you could hear the train puffin' away nearby and a friendly NPC calling out excitedly "Hold it... not yet... hooold it..." when you just wanna blow that boom and be done with it. Or in one of the optional missions, escorting a gang snitch to jail; just as you get there you see five or so gangsters walking towards you from the far and dusty end of town in a line, reminiscent of the famous bad-ass walk from the movie "Tombstone" that the main characters did. These missions have the potential to get under your skin and even if you fail a mission you have the option of restarting it straight away, sometimes halfway into it. This saves alot of needless travel but does make the game shorter at the expense of being more fun.

The things I liked the best about the game is the little details and nuances like npc's exclaiming how amazed they are at your lightning-fast gun-hand when you use the bullet-time styled quickfire feature, or getting trampled by your own horse spooked by gunshots - the unscripted bits and bobs. Up to a certain point the details and the setting combined with the woefully underused western theme really help lift the game out of mediocrity. And if you come in without many expectations then you'll certainly be surprised. There were quite a few things wrong with the game but I couldn't help myself but to finish it with the story driving me on.

The Bad
This game was compared to GTA for having the option to do sub missions and free roam in between the storyline. This doesn't work out as well by far. The world itself is a cracking veneer with nothing behind the sheen. Example: taken at face value a town looks great, just what you would expect a western town to look like. But enter a store, a saloon, any building and they're all empty! Not just of people, of anything!

There are a few story relevant buildings with more detail and should you choose to follow only the story and not stray an inch from the railroad tracks the story rolls on, you'll need never notice these problems. But this being a free-roaming game you will eventually try to explore the surroundings, and as someone else described it in a "the more you look, the less you find" paradox, it's disappointing. The world suddenly becomes very small as you get to know it well. Eventually I gave up exploring and just took what the game handed me on a platter.

The sub-missions! They are touted as being optional but unless you're playing on easy, you'll very soon be severely underpowered if you don't upgrade your weapons and stats. But how? The stats increase in fixed amount after every sub-mission you complete. And apart from trying to find hidden-package styled gold cache's (not as much of a chore as it sounds) that's also the only way to earn money, which in turn can be spend to buy upgrades. This necessity to upgrade really screws up some of the continuity in the game. For example: in one mission you have to escape from a jail by killing a deputy and running off violently into the night. Success! says the game, New Federal Marshall sub-mission available - in that exact town you just barely got out of.

It's as if the game can't decide if it wants to be story based, or arcade based and just throws everything it's got at you, in confusing chunks. Some missions even have a laughable stealth section, but somehow the game gets away with it, confused potpourri that it is.

There is one aspect which really annoyed me though and that is stuttering slowdown everytime you enter a loading area. The game is seamless as it has no loading screens, but when you enter a loading section it does something very funny, probably related to it's console connections. It loads into memory the area you've just entered while throwing out the area you've just left. That's fine if you're moving leisurely from point A to point B, but if you're protecting an NPC or racing against the extremely tight clock, the stuttering can get very annoying. Just imagine having a gunfight in the middle of the loading area, going back and forward as the game loads the area you've just been in again. I lowered all the settings and it didn't do a thing - something ain't right in Gun town.

After a while I've found out this game was made by Neversoft. Then it dawned on me - this game is actually very similar to Tony Hawk's Underground! But instead of skating (using the free roaming element to engage the scenery) you're shooting (which only has a point in missions)! Suddenly alot of things made sense - why you can instantly restart a mission, the pretty linear illusion of freedom, the way mission-givers stand for hours on end waiting for you to talk to them and even the movement of some NPC's.

Finally, to touch again on the free roaming subject, once you finish the story and all the sub-missions you want to do, you realise just how shallow the world is. There is literally nothing to do except roll around on your horse, shooting unwitting NPC's who congregate in towns and bounce around like headless chickens. And because the missions takes you to all the interesting sights, there is nothing left to see.

The Bottom Line
A fun shooter with a great western influence allows the player the freedom to travel where they want, when they want, but leaves them very little to find. A cliche'd but constantly moving story takes you all over the west in style, but it's not really that long and once it's done, that's it.

The Good
Gun's free-form missions in badlands and towns don't exactly make it Grand Theft Horsey, but they come pretty close. I had a lot of very bloody fun on horseback thanks to the great game mechanics, whether wasting desperadoes or racing across the gorgeous landscape on ranching duties or in timed "Pony Express" heats, all to a storyline that is more than serviceable. In fact, above-average writing and voice acting make this the rare game that won't have you skipping through cutscenes. Ditto for the music, appropriately grand. I also enjoyed the postmodern take on "good" and "bad" guys (always better to be plugging scummy right-wing barons and their seedy henchmen than committing genocide against Native Americans). There's solid game design here, several thrills, and a lot of cleverness. The best mark of this, as always, is that you won't mind having to redo challenging missions.

The Bad
While Gun's deficiencies aren't knockouts, there's room for a lot of improvement in a sequel. Unfortunately, the RPG model is lame, fostering the illusion of character development but offering almost none. You need never equip or unequip any items, for instance, and the rewards are fairly automatic rather than earned. Annoyingly, there isn't a great range in items to buy, purchased upgrades have only trivial effect on gameplay, and the meaningful ones (e.g., weapons) are simply given to you, anyway. Along with this comes the inevitable problem of balancing; the difficulty never really ramps up except during boss missions, enemy AI at all other times being predictable. As such, while some points in the game shine, the overall sense of peril that should go with a freelance life in spurs is, sadly, missing. Who knew that you were the only gun in the west who could shoot straight?

The Bottom Line
Gun's fun, showcasing a fine design sensibility and A-list production standards. It's not nearly as deep as it pretends to be, and even on the hardest level it's too easy and repetitive. But its superlative qualities allow it to outshine a lot of games; one of the best of 2005.

The Good
Story is quite good. It has as many cliches as you could possibly squeeze into it, but in this case it's forgivable. Some strong parts in the story and it's definitely R stuff with murder and sex (even with prostitutes). Some of the main quests are rather interesting and there is some variation. The early game in particular makes you feel this could be a really good game but game stays interesting only to about 1/2 - 3/4 through the game and after that looses a lot of the interest as you have seen everything except how the main story finishes.

The map works well. It feels huge, yet you can access almost any place on the map very quickly with a horse. Maybe less canyons and more open space would have been nice but no complaints if every game had a map this well designed.

Loading and saving times are exceptional. I wish more games were this fast, you just don't need to wait, not even when starting the game.

Voice acting is good, Kris Kristofferson especially (I didn't realise it was him until the ending credits) and music is nice if easily forgotten.

Easy game play is a two-edged sword. On the other it makes you less frustrated as you can easily retry a mission, on the other hand you can just try shooting your way through almost any situation.

The Bad
Ultimately the side quests are all the same within the same type of quest (bounty hunting, law enforcement, pony express etc). Once you have done a few, you pretty much know what to expect.

Thankfully most quests are short. RPG element (skills are boosted by completing these quests) is quite artificial because you always get the same reward (depending on type of side quest). It would have been nice if the way the quest was solved there would have been some difference in how the rewards were given.

The console-like dumbing down does not work so well in the PC. Ammo boxes and other items are lying around everywhere, and you can hit your target by pretty much pointing the gun in the general direction. Makes the hectic fights a lot easier, but also gives you the feeling that you didn't even have to aim. The fights are like a shooting gallery, and there's a lot of it. And usually shooting is the only solution.

Animation and graphics are not that special. Horses are like four moving legs and an inanimate block on top of them and people walk like they had a steel-bar spine. They also do nothing but walk around or stand still. There is no real purpose to them except as props. I would like to see some more when I enter a saloon than just some inanimate people standing. No-one is drinking, no-one is gambling, no brawls, no nothing. Feels like a church on a Monday morning. The world simply doesn't feel alive.

The PC version also suffers from some bugs. I had it crash a few times, the animation sometimes fails (legs do not move etc) and the game sometimes gets very jerky. The last problem was fixed by restarting the game. The worst happened when I got stuck inside a stairwell and hadn't saved for quite some time. I had to reload the game from way back.

Finally, the last part of the game is quite lame.

The Bottom Line
Interesting setting, good story and excellent world, but could have used some more enthusiasm from the developers. Or perhaps the need to make the same game work in (older) consoles have set too rigorous limitations.

Still worth playing, especially if you are into Westerns as there aren't too many games set into that period. The good story makes up for most of the shortcomings.

The Good
The setting, the setting, the setting. I rarely play a game that puts so much attention to detail on every level of the gameplay, and just feels so complete.

It's also great to see RPG style advancement used so gracefully in a game that relies on gameplay fueled by good controls. The music is atmospheric and rousing, and features some of the best transitions from "battle" to "wandering" music I've ever heard in a game. Like previously noted, the controls are absolutely incredible, for all aspects of the game, from running around on horseback and blowing away enemies with a shotgun to sneaking around with a bow and arrow, hunting game.

The story is great, but leads to the downside of this game:

The Bad
So, so short. My first run through took about 12 hours, and that included getting everything in the game, on normal difficulty.

And really, while that's fine for a lot of games, for something so polished, so beautiful and so awesome as GUN, I just wanted more. Don't get me wrong, the story is great, it doesn't feel rushed, but damn, it's just so little, when I want to play it so much more.

The Bottom Line
A beautiful, well designed, well balanced, but short romp in the Wild West that exists only in the collective imagination of America.