GUN

Neversoft Entertainment finally steps away from the long tradition of developing Tony Hawk video games and delivers an action-packed western game. Set in the 1800’s, GUN contains a rampant story about one man finding his roots. Playing as Colton White, the story is all over the place. From making deliveries for the Pony Express, hunting down wild buffalo and even scalping your victims, Neversoft makes every attempt to make GUN the total package.

GUN is played from the third-person perspective. The story advances similar to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – find the contact and accept the mission. It is a straight-up action adventure with a few RPG elements thrown in for good cause. RPG elements include upgrading your equipment and keeping track of stats along your journey. ‘Leveling-up’ your stats will help you become a better fighter. Not only that, you’ll be able to add points to your aim and how fast you shoot.

You will, of course, be using W, A, S, D buttons for your movement. The game will begin with a tutorial that will train you on the basics. The tutorial has Colton managing his gun and aim as he follows his father Ned around. Through the tutorial you’ll engage combat with bears and wolves while hunting elk. Right after the tutorial, be prepared for an ambush on a steamboat by an unexpected criminal. Colton is just now beginning as the journey he is about to travel on will be a difficult one.

The game is relatively short and doesn’t last too long. Participating in all the cool Western things to do is expected. You’ll defend your hideout, escape from jail, hijack a train, and even save a man from being hung. GUN contains all the typical western-based missions so there aren’t any radical surprises that will curveball the story.

There are side quests to partake in. If you want to show off how good you are at being a mail man, why not deliver some mail for the Pony Express? Want to show off your hunting skills, feel free to share your talents in the bounty business. Do you have ambitions to gamble?  Then you can take your chances at the poker table in a hand of Texas Hold Em’. Mining for gold always sounded fun, so there’s the opportunity to do that too as a mini-game.

The levels are big but they do have those nasty invisible walls that pop out of nowhere. GUN isn’t the free-roaming experience that any of the Grand Theft Auto games are. Riding your horse throughout the desert is fun until you hit that invisible roadblock standing in your way. There are several places to track through with your horse. Places like “The Badlands” and “Devil’s Canyon” are home to some of the dangerous outlaws you’ll want to take down.

You can travel to each place via horseback or warping to them. Warping to them is easily done as you find a map on the roadside and choose the destination you need to go. I enjoyed the horseback riding more due to I am in love with riding horses in video games (Kameo, Zelda, Shadow of the Colossus). The design of the towns and buildings you enter are eye candy but nothing too outstanding. It has all the vibes of a graphical achievement but it is missing something. The game needed more attitude and personality. I felt sometimes bored and it seemed like it needed to throw out some of surprises to keep me entertained.

The lighting effects for GUN are properly done to increase the visual presentation. Long shadows beat down into the desert from Colton. The night life isn’t rich due to that most of GUN is placed during the day when the sun is out. The characters have enough detail in their faces and bodies to help create the illusion you are actually playing in the Ole’ West. Graphically overall, it did a good job but it isn’t the next step for the visuals.

The voice acting has an all-star cast. I could take this cast and easily make a movie adaptation that could work in theatres. Here’s a few of the major voice actors that lent their talent to GUN.

Lance Henriksen (Alien vs. Predator)
Thomas Jane (The Punisher)
Frank Collison (The Village)
Brad Dourif (Seed of Chucky, the voice of Chucky!!!)
Kris Kristofferson (Blade Trinity)
Ron Pearlman (Hellboy)

These six have all been in movies that have a large following and fanatics alike. The inclusion of Thomas Jane and Ron Pearlman excited me and they drove home excellent voice-overs throughout the whole journey. The soundtrack is a pleasure to listen to since it fits the western theme fine.

This has to be my favorite western game I have played. What’s disappointing is that I haven’t played too many that were actually good. Red Dead Revolver was way out in left field, containing bizarre moments like fighting midgets, and Dead Man’s Hand was full of flaws that held it back. GUN lacks multiplayer that it needs to keep its players playing beyond the first play through.

Minimum System Requirements:
Pentium III 1.8 GHZ or Athlon XP 1800+ processor
256 MB of RAM
2.8 GB of hard disk space
3D hardware accelerator card required
Direct X 9.0
NVIDIA 3 GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500

Gameplay: 7.0
It’s fun while it lasts but I don’t feel the need to pick this back up again and play through it all over again.

Graphics: 8.0
Sure they aren’t “AAA” graphics but they serve their purpose with holding up all the way through. Didn’t encounter any frame rate problems at all.

Sound: 9.0
The voice acting is superb. Several Hollywood actors are providing their voices to video games and I love every minute of it.

Difficulty: Medium
Action-adventure games on the PC prove to have a little more difficulty than the console adaptations in my own opinion. The game does become increasingly tougher with the enemies you encounter towards the end of the game.

Concept: 6.0
While the western background hasn’t been used often in video games, GUN could have used some original storylines to make it a fresh game all the way through. Seemed as if the developers robbed the storylines from the best western movies in Hollywood and meshed it into one game.

Overall: 7.3
Even with the low score, GUN is a game you can purchase without any worries. It is better played on the consoles so I advise that to be your first option. It doesn’t have much replay value so be wary of your purchase and how you intend to play GUN. If you are looking for multiplayer, look elsewhere.