To say that I had no idea what to expect when I started playing Gun was an understatement. I had missed seeing the advertising for this title and all I knew about it was that there were a large number of banners hanging around E3 with the title on it. In hindsight, maybe it's a good thing I didn't know much about it since I probably would've been eagerly anticipating the title for months. You see, Gun is an excellent game.
To use some tired game industry terms, Gun is a shooter set in the Wild West. It's much more then just a shooter, however, and it's the excellent story telling that helps to set this title apart from all the others out there. You step into the role of Colton White, just your ordinary man living in the old west. When the steam boat you're riding on is ambushed and the man who you thought was your father tells you with his dieing words that he is not, the story really starts to kick off as you try to piece together the circumstances that led to these events.
The story takes a few twists and turns but is driven by one man's quest for this golden cross. What exactly this cross is for is revealed as the plot unfolds and I'm not about to spoil that for you here. The story is very well written by Randall Johnson whose previous credits include the films "The Mask of Zorro" and "The Doors". Many factual elements, including actual outlaws in the bounty hunter missions, help to immerse you into the days where the west truly was wild.
As the title would imply, your weapon of choice is a gun. You always carry a revolver and can switch between secondary weapons including rifles, shotguns, and even a bow and arrow. In addition, you can gather "whiskey bombs", a sort of Molotov Cocktail, and even sticks of dynamite for a little explosive power to dispatch the outlaws in your way. Each weapon that you acquire can be upgraded to increase its power and also the amount of time taken to reload. You will eventually acquire more powerful weapons and weapons with a larger ammunition capacity as you move forward in the story.
The game is broken down into several story based missions that must be progressed in order to further the game. However, there are numerous side quests you can embark upon to improve your skills and earn money along the way. From mining for gold, helping out the local sheriff, or collecting a bounty on a wanted fugitive, there is quite a varied amount of gameplay included. The most enjoyable missions for me were the ones involved riding around on horseback. Horses are scattered around the landscape, some wild and some tame, that you can simply mount up on and go for a ride. The Rancher series of missions requires you to use your horse to herd cattle and wild mustangs, and really captures a feel for what this sort of task must've been like out on the frontier.
To help tell the story as realistically as possible, Neversoft have gotten some top voice talent for the game. Thomas Jane ("Punisher") plays the lead role of Colton White. A rather extensive class of Hollywood actors fills out the rest of the bunch including Lance Henriksen ("Aliens"), Brad Dourif (Wormtongue from "The Lord of the Rings"), Ron Perlman ("Hellboy"), Tom Skerritt ("Picket Fences") and Kris Kristofferson ("Blade"). They're talents all help you to believe in the characters.
Being a launch title for the first "Next Generation" console, the graphics are rather impressive. There are some nice effects such as the dirt kicking up while you're galloping on horse back and bullets ricocheting off of a target. However, the textures seem, for lack of a better word, muddy. They're not as clean and crisp as I would expect from something labeled "Next Generation". This may be due to the fact that this title was also released for the Xbox and PlayStation2 and so the developers did not have the time or perhaps budget to re-make all the textures for the higher resolution. The benefit of anti-aliasing (which removes the jagged lines from the edges of the models) and HD support still make this title look much better then those versions for the Xbox or PlayStation2.
This is definitely the most fun I've had playing one of the Xbox 360's launch titles. The story is engrossing and the gameplay is just a lot of fun. Along with being a pirate, one of my childhood dreams was to become a cowboy and Gun helps to fulfill this wish enough until I get the chance to make it to the OK Corral itself.
I've been playing games ever since I was a wee lad. My favorite games as a child were the classic Pitfall and a game called SNAFU, which was a sort of puzzle game along the lines of Tron Light Cycles. I've had most of the major console systems since the early days and have a wide range of tastes of games and I'm always eager to give a new one a try.
