Gun Review

With all of the Sci-Fi and World War 2 based shooters it's nice break to try out a game with a storyline that doesn't involve aliens trying to conquer the universe or another recreation of the D-Day invasion. The western theme in video games is one of the least used themes as well as one of the most difficult to recreate accurately. With Gun, Neversoft has done an admirable job in recreating some of the bloodthirsty action from the Old West.

Storyline

Set in Montana during the late 1800s, Gun tells the story of Colton White and his quest to avenge his father's death and solve the mystery of surrounding it. In Gun, you are not going to find zombies, vampires or monsters, as is seen in many other western theme games. Instead it provides all the villains one would expect from the real old west with outlaws, murderous preachers, bandits, warring American Indian tribes and more.

The storyline for Gun is one of it's best features. The game opens with you and your father, Ned, hunting elk in the Montana countryside. This mission is basically a tutorial that shows you how to use some of the game's basic features. The story then turns with your father's death and a mysterious artifact that may be the cause of his murder. After escaping death himself, Colton travels through vast territories of the American West; mountain wilderness, western towns, and more. During this journey you will take on side missions that eventually pit you against an evil railroad tycoon and his henchmen.

As engaging as the story is, there are times when it is forced along by long, drawn out cut scenes. This counteracts the purpose of having such large open environments where objectives and encounters can be completed in any specific order. The scripted nature of story telling does hold it back and takes a little away from the overall flow of the game.

The environments in Gun are quite large but, like the real old west, are mostly empty. From a gaming point of view they are not used to their full potential. Besides the fact that there could be more, side missions and encounters are short in duration and not very challenging even at the harder difficulty settings. These side missions are important however, as they allow you to earn money and upgrade your skills by helping out farmers, local towns, bounty hunting, poker games, etc. The overall storyline is quite short taking less than 12 hours to finish.

Life in the west during the 1800s must have been both brutal and difficult, the level of violence and gore in Gun is fun but can be over the top at certain times, especially in pointless sequences when you're given the opportunity to finish off dying enemies with a scalping knife. making Gun well deserving of it's Mature rating.

Game Play

Gun is a third person shooter so all the action will be taking place from the point of view above and behind Colton. There are instances during game play, more specifically during Quick Draw mode, when aiming rifles, and firing cannons, when it will turn to a first person perspective.

As mentioned previously the first mission is a tutorial that gets you acquainted with the game's main features including firing your rifle, melee combat with a knife, and QuickDraw. QuickDraw is an interesting feature that's very similar to BulletTime found in F.E.A.R. Pressing the C key starts QuickDraw mode which takes advantage of Colton's reflexes by slowing down time allowing you to react to enemy movements. This allows for more precise aiming and is made even more useful by allowing you to toggle through enemies on the screen.

QuickDraw is vital when there's an overwhelming number of enemies especially since automatic rifles were not around in the old west. With that said there's not a whole lot of skill involved when it comes to aiming your weapons and taking down enemies. There is a helpful aiming box that turns red when you have someone in your sights, but even with out that gunfire in the vicinity of a target hits more than it misses. The right mouse button actives a slash from your hunting knife and is used in melee combat when enemies are at close range.

The game play of melee combat very realistic at all, Colton magically spins and hits an enemy when they are not directly in front of him. The large sweep with the knife appears to catch everything within it's path, even if you can't see them. This actually turns out to be helpful since the overall game controls are extremely sensitive. After altering the mouse sensitivity options, a small twitch in your hand will have Colton spinning 180 degrees in the wrong direction!