Reviewed: November 11, 2005
Reviewed by: Roger Cox

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Neversoft Entertainment

Released: November 8, 2005
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

10
6
10
7
8.5

Supported Features:

GUN starts with you (Colton White) reuniting with your father (Ned). Ned familiarizes you with the landscape (which serves as the tutorial) by teaching you how to hunt birds and deer. You’ll even have to save him from a ferocious grizzly bear. After that, the beginning of the story starts to take shape.

You and Ned end up on a steamboat (looks like a ferry) going down the Missouri when all of a sudden you’re attacked by Indians lead by a dishonest preacher named Reid. They overturn the boat looking for a safe that they believe to contain treasure. Just as the boat is about the explode, Ned tells you that he’s not your father, and to go look for a prostitute named Jenny in Dodge City right before throwing you off the boat into the water. Ned goes down with the boat, and it is here that you (Colton) begin your journey for revenge and to discover who you really are.

As Colton you will travel through many parts of Nevada and New Mexico and go from city to city. Railroad tracks go through each town, which make them ideal to follow to the next one. Unfortunately, trains don’t travel them when you’re free-roaming during the game. The only time you’ll see one is during cut-scenes.

Trains are cool, but weapons are better. Throughout the game you’ll be firing a pistol/dual pistols (your main gun with a seemingly endless amount of ammunition), rifles, shotguns, and sharpshooters. Guns aren’t your only weapons. You’ll also be slashing (scalping or hacking) enemies with knifes, a tomahawk, or a sword, throwing TNT/Molotov cocktails, or silently firing a (regular or) dynamite strapped arrow into a bandit’s chest.

Much like Max Payne, GUN has a slow motion killing system called “Quickdraw” which switches you from third person to first person mid-battle. At this point you’re in slow motion and can auto-aim at any enemy (within range) by flicking the C-stick in their direction. This allows you to take down multiple enemies extremely quickly and is amazingly fun to perform. However, there is a limit to this fun.

A meter bar will appear, quickly depleting as long as you are in Quickdraw mode. The way you build up the meter (or stay in Quickdraw mode) is to make accurate shots. After beating the game I found that I used Quickdraw to kill nearly a fourth of my enemies. So, needless to say, you will be using this mode a lot.

This isn’t the only cool move you can perform. Other ones include scalping enemies after they are shot down and before they actually die. It’s brutal, but devilishly rewarding to watch. Another is your ability to stampede enemies with a horse. While you are riding, you can run over enemies to kill or knock them off their horses. It, in a sense, makes the horse a weapon as well.

Upgrading weapons is common in a lot of video games and it has been implemented here as well. GUN’s RPG system allows you to gain experience, improve your skills in melee attacks, horseback riding, and Quickdraw, and to increase your health. You can also earn experience by doing side missions.

Side missions include helping the local sheriff keep peace in the town (called Keeping the Peace). If you undertake this position, expect a fight. There are bad people polluting the town, and it’s your job to dispose of them and also do other various tasks. Other missions include working for the Pony Express, Ranching, Mining (finding gold throughout the West), Bounty Hunting, and Playing Poker.

The side missions are a lot of fun and a good relief from the story mode. I found myself going back to them after a hard battle or boss fight. They increase your stats and earn you spending money as well. One thing I didn’t do was purchase a health bar increase from the local merchant. It caused me a lot of undue difficulty and I ended up beating the game before I increased my health bar. For your information, the game can be beaten on normal difficulty if you don’t purchase the upgrades.

To further reinforce my point, textures in the game weren’t always solid, they would sometimes flicker. Most of us saw that a lot during the original Playstation era, but not with current generation systems. This might have been acceptable when the GameCube launched back in 2001. But four years have passed since that time and the gamer’s expectations are higher given the developers time to understand the system.

The graphics may be poor, but the gameplay never falters. Luckily, there are no framerate hiccups like Neversoft’s recently released Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland.

On a more positive note, there are more than 75 fully motion-captured cutscenes which look very believable. The characters come to life in their expressions and body language. However, no cutscene is complete without great voice acting to bring it all together.

The orchestrated background music is also professionally done and presented in Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound. The theme music repeats when you are free-roaming, but changes to match the action during the story portion of the game. It all fits well into place, never gets old, and suits the Wild West perfectly.

For one, you can play poker, located in the saloon. You can choose to cheat at the card table, but the longer you play, the more likely your opponents are to find out. I found the Texas Hold ’Em style of card play to be a lot of fun and cheating definitely helps tilt the odds in your favor. It’s a quick and fun way to make a quick 10 bucks if you win the tournament.

Another thing you can do (if you spot a wanted poster) are bounty missions. These are available in different cities and they basically want you to hunt down criminals. Some have different rewards for catching them dead or alive. For example, if you kill the criminal you’ll get $10, but if you subdue him you’ll get $20. There are lots of different scenarios to these side missions and you don’t always get the same reward. It’s the most exciting way to make a buck in the West, that’s for sure.

Other side missions include taking on a mail route with the Pony Express, joining the law and Keeping the Peace, rescuing victims from criminals, and corralling livestock in Ranching mode. There are enough side missions to keep you busy shooting for a 100% completion for hours, but the story mode will take you a short 8 hours to complete.

I love this game to death and will play it over at least once on a higher difficulty setting (it offers the standard: easy, normal, hard). But for those of you who play through the story only, then this game is more of a rental than a purchase. Unfortunately, GUN starts out as an epic adventure and ends more like a short story.

For those of you who grew up playing cowboys and Indians, or if you’re just looking for something with a fun story, amazing presentation, and astonishingly fun gameplay set in the West then this game’s for you.