GUN Review

I laughed, I cried, I kissed forty bucks goodbye.  Sort of.

(Reviewed using a Pentium 4m, 1.6GHz, 1 GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon Mobility 9600, and two-channel sound.)

Gun is a great idea, a cinematic shooter that takes place in an under-represented genre: the Wild West.  The execution, however, is just a notch above bad, and some of the game's elements are just silly.  The game puts you in the third-person shoes of Colton White, a mild-mannered frontiersman whose father's recent death starts him off on a misadventure in the old west.  Colton must face off against an evil railroad tycoon who rides around the countryside in a locomotive with a gigantic skull on the front. 

Added to the gunplay is the quickdraw function.  Quickdraw changes the perspective from third- to first-person, slows time down, and incorporates a target-lock feature that allows you to hit any target anywhere on the screen in front of you, regardless of where your crosshairs are.  Added to this, your pistol never needs reloading in quickdraw mode.  The only thing that limits the power of quickdraw is a timer that ticks down so slowly it's not really a factor in gameplay. 

Since combat is what is paramount to a shooter, perfect gameplay in other areas of Gun wouldn't be enough to recommend it.  However, Gun falls flat on it face in other aspects of the game and in level design.  A great inclusion to the gameplay--the incorporation of horse transportation and mounted combat--is ruined by the dull incorporation.  Your horse rides and handles easily enough, and you can boost your speed by spurring your horse; too much spurring can kill your mount, however.  Everything is nice until you realize your horse can do powerslides, as if it was an unlockable vehicle from Need for Speed.  Your horse is also your most effective weapon, as it can trample your enemies faster and easier than you can using your weaponry while mounted.  Combat is even further simplified by the inclusion of a flask, that one chug off of restores every point of heath Colton starts with.  Each level has many bottles scattered around that refill your flask.

Gun starts the player off with a tutorial, then a level, and then another tutorial that requires you to win a "three laps around the meadow" horse race that requires holding down several buttons at once to keep your horse running, jumping, and moving in the correct direction.  It is a needless annoyance, and nothing the horse is needed for during the rest of the game is as difficult as the horse tutorial. 

Colton has the option of purchasing some additional equipment throughout the game, and also improves his attributes through time.  The improved attributes have no real impact on the gameplay.  The upgraded weapons are useless as well.  You can purchase a scalping knife, which allows you to scalp not-quite-dead-yet enemies, but other than being gory, there is no benefit to use the scalping knife.  Good ideas, poorly executed. 

Graphically, Gun is not impressive.  It isn't horrible, but it looks dated and muddy.  Most buildings and terrain look to be the same shade of brown or green no matter where you look or where you are.  Levels are all basically the same; there isn't anything to offset one from another.  The character models do look pretty good, and their motion-captured animation is convincing, but their static faces, fluorescent-white teeth, and blank expressions gives an overall animatronic feel to the cutscenes.  The entire game feels on autopilot.

The audio is the best part of Gun.  The voice acting is very, very good.  The sound effects are well done.  The firearms sound appropriately loud and powerful.  The sounds of the horses' hooves galloping across the ground sound convincing.  At no time is the dialogue cheesy.  The sound is well written, conceived, and stands out against the other poor production values of the game.

There is almost no replay value to Gun, as there is barely enough reason to play it through to begin with.  It isn't a really bad game--about on par with the Punisher--but it certainly is not worth its price.