Gun

Moby ID: 20193
Windows Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/28 5:13 AM )

Description official descriptions

The Wild Wild West meets Grand Theft Auto in this free-roaming action game. Set in 1870, you are Colton White, a young gunslinger whose father is killed by an Indian tribe led by Reverend Reed. Just before passing away, your father hands you a token and reveals you are not his son. Sworn to avenge his death, you pursue the killers and unravel the secrets surrounding the item. Although you are on your own, temporary alliances can be formed with townspeople, Apaches, and posse members, but watch your back as they can turn against you.

The main storyline, written by Hollywood screenwriter Randall Jahnson (The Mask of Zorro, 1998,) is linear. You will have to fight duels, defend towns against bandits, help build railway tracks, intervene in various conflicts, and kill heavily-armed bossed. There are also many side missions or alternative ways to earn money. You can play poker in the casino, help out farmers with their livestock, assist the local sheriff, or deliver items with the pony express. Other possibilities include bounty hunting, regular hunting for rare animals, mining for gold, and various rescue missions.

The RPG elements involve acquiring and improving skills, such as QuickDraw (shown in Bullet Time,) Zoom Firing, Melee Combat, improved accuracy, the ability to throw axes, and strategically equipping and upgrading different weapons. There are hand weapons (knives, tomahawks, bayonets), archery arms, explosive throwable items, and regular guns, such as sharpshooter rifles, colts, and Winchesters. Some are earned during the missions, others can be bought and sold for cash in the towns.

The GTA reference is reflected in the main means of transportation: horses. There are different animals to find with extensive movement options. Go on wild chases, spurt, gallop, do skid attacks, or trample your enemies. Give them some rest from time to time, or you will wear them down to death. In the melee combat, you can do roll maneuvers, use objects to provide cover, grab your opponents, and even scalp them. You are free to steer away from the main storyline and explore the giant landscape, with towns, deserts, mountains, wilderness, and caves.

Spellings

  • 枪 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

290 People (251 developers, 39 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 74 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 81 ratings with 4 reviews)

Good story, easy to play, fails to live up to full potential and too console-like

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.

Windows · by Marko Poutiainen (1151) · 2006

Brilliant, but short.

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.

PlayStation 2 · by aiolos (4) · 2006

Have Gun, Will Hose Hundreds

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.

Xbox · by Richard Cramden (6) · 2006

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Controversy

The Association for American Indian Development made a petition to have Activision remove all "derogatory, harmful, and inaccurate depictions of American Indians" as they were outraged that Apaches were shown slaughtering renegade members of their own tribe, the killing and scalping of Apaches is a game requisite, and the killing of sacred white animals was shown as part of their culture (which it isn't). If these were not removed and the game re-issued then a total recall was wanted.

Activision's response was this statement:

"Activision does not condone or advocate any of the atrocities that occurred in the American West during the 1800s. Gun was designed to reflect the harshness of life on the American frontier at that time. It was not Activision's intention to offend any race or ethnic group with Gun, and we apologize to any who might have been offended by the game's depiction of historical events which have been conveyed not only through video games but through films, television programming, books and other media."

German version

There are several changes in the German version: * All blood and gore effects were removed * The German translation calls headshots "Volltreffer" (Direct hit) * Death animations were removed * When taking a hostage, the player can either release or execute it in the end. In the German version, the execution was replaced with a knockout. * It is not possible to scalp enemies * Enemies which come into contact with the molotov weapon don't burn to death. They still run around in panic and cry, but there are no flames. * The intro was deleted without substitution * In another cutscene between level nine and ten, a decapitation was removed

A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2005 – Xbox 360 Action Game of the Year

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Arcade Hunter: Sword and Gun
Released 2020 on Android, iPhone, iPad
Pirates Outlaws
Released 2019 on iPhone, Windows, Nintendo Switch...
Girl Gunner
Released 2023 on Windows
Greedy Guns
Released 2017 on Windows, Linux, Macintosh
Duel on Board
Released 2021 on Windows, Macintosh, Nintendo Switch
GunSoul Girl 2
Released 2023 on Windows
Starlancer
Released 2000 on Windows, Dreamcast
Gun Gun Pixies
Released 2019 on Nintendo Switch
Gunfire Reborn
Released 2020 on Windows, 2022 on Android, iPhone...

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 20193
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Scaryfun, DreinIX, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third.

Game added November 26, 2005. Last modified March 12, 2024.