Gun

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy GUN…"

When people think about free-roaming gameplay with a thrilling plot, numerous features and a large world to explore, many would think of Grand Theft Auto. Take that world back a couple of hundred years, and you have Neversoft's Gun. Set in America's Old West, players step into the boots of Colton White, a hunter on the harsh frontier making a living with his father in a stunning yet bloody Wild West third-person shooter.

The game begins with another average day in the wilderness hunting for elk and quail. The opening stage doubles up as a brief tutorial, walking players through some of the basic gameplay features such as movement and shooting in order to hunt various animals and ward off wolves and switching weapons to take on a large grizzly bear. Following this is a long cutscene on a steamboat introducing the players to some of the enigmatic characters in the world of Gun.

Colton's father, Ned White, tells him to wait on deck while he speaks with a mysterious lady behind closed doors. While standing around admiring the scenery, Colton is approached by preacher who admires his marksmanship. A few minutes later, he spies on the reverend and witnesses him murdering the lady Ned was speaking to. Taking cover, he overhears the preacher ordering a large mob of renegades to attack the ship and search for a valuable item. In the defense of the boat, Ned White is killed but manages to save Colton by pushing him into the river. His last words: “I ain't your father!”

Waking up several days later on the riverbank, Colton begins his quest for revenge. Arriving in Dodge City, Kansas, he meets Jenny, an entertainer at the local saloon and acquaintance of Ned. After doing some odd jobs around town and warding off Indian attacks, Colton's journey leads to Empire, New Mexico, where he meets Mayor Hoodoo Brown who offers to assist Colton in his search. Colton soon runs into the interests of mining tycoon and former Confederate captain Thomas Magruder, the beast-like renegade commander Sergeant Hollister, local resistance leader Clay Allison and numerous friendly Indian leaders who aid Colton in his quest. As Colton rides over the plains of cattle and buffalo, he discovers a far more sinister plot that he has become trapped in, and what was a quest to avenge his would-be father turns into a struggle between Magruder's henchmen and local townspeople, spiralling into a search for a lost relic.

The gameplay is structured around missions in the same manner as Grand Theft Auto. Players can advance through the plot by talking to specific people who form the core missions. The plot missions are interspersed with numerous cutscenes introducing the player to various characters and more story elements. The missions themselves vary greatly, and include tasks like breaking out of prison, setting up ambushes, attacking forts and protecting key individuals.

Additionally, there are numerous side missions that are unlocked as the plot is advanced. Players can read Wanted posters to obtain bounty hunting missions, work as a deputy to maintain peace in the violent towns or participate in elaborate plans to take out entire gangs or rescue stranded settlers. For some variety, players can work in the Pony Express, a delivery-based set of missions under a very strict time limit; hunt animals with a bow and arrow; participate in poker tournaments and even work as a ranch assistant herding cattle and fighting off raiders. The game encourages players to take these missions, as they can increase player stats (such as accuracy, horseriding, melee skill) and provide money to purchase various items and upgrades at traders.

Any Western game or film would be quite empty without gunslinging action, and Gun does not fail. Equipped with a repeating rifle and a trusty revolver, Colton faces many opponents during his journey, hunting down criminals and engaging in gang fights in the streets of Dodge. As the game progresses, players can discover different and better weapons, including shotguns, sharpshooter rifles, bows, melee weapons, more revolvers, dynamite sticks, Molotov cocktails and even cannons and gatling guns. Players can pepper their enemies with lead, or make precision shots to capture enemies alive, score headshots for quick kills or knock weapons from their hands. While players can carry various types of weapons with them, they can only quickly switch between one primary weapon and their revolver, with the ability to switch primary weapons being mapped onto a different key combination.

Players can zoom in for more accurate shots while using rifles, assisted by a targeting reticule. Most weapons are difficult to aim with using the reticule, forcing players to close in for more accurate shots and building up their shooting stats in order to attain more effective results. Furthermore, Gun features as “Quickdraw” mode. By tapping the Quickdraw button, the view snaps to first-person as Colton draws his revolver out. Everything moves in slow motion while the player can quickly switch targets and make quick, precise shots against multiple enemies, making it possible to pull off shots normally very difficult to do, such as shooting a horse from under a rider.

As for transportation, the Wild West obviously lacks the powerful sports cars of Grand Theft Auto and instead uses true horsepower. Players can commandeer any one of the many steeds scattered across the towns and plains to quickly travel from point to point. Horses can be spurred to provide a quick burst of speed and continue to gallop and a steady rate. However, too many spurs in a short amount of time will drain the horse's health and can kill the horse if too much strain is put on it. Players can also use their weapons while on horseback, or use the horse itself to trample enemies.

Visually, the game is extensive in its presentation. The character models are detailed and well designed, with unique and authentic variations between characters. Mayor Hoodoo Brown, for example, is often seen wearing a waistcoat and top hat, while Reverend Reed wears a gothic priest outfit. Colton White himself changes his clothing at various points in the game, varying from the rugged woodsman outfit to various bits of army uniform to a bare-chested Indian style of dress. Horses look like…well, horses, and the various enemies encountered vary from thin but agile Indians to stocky henchman to zombie-like renegades. While not as detailed as games like Half-Life 2, it certainly is on par with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The environments, however, are simply stunning. As Colton rides across the land, the landscape changes from flat plains to rocky hills and canyons. With dynamic time, players are struck by the memorable scenes of the lone rider silhouetted against the sun riding past herds of buffalo, storming camps at dawn or hunting fugitives under the cover of night. And of course, who can forget the tumbleweeds blowing across the ruined huts and sheds or the dusty streets of Dodge City?

The audio aspect of the game is also outstanding. The voice acting is superb, and it should be with an all-star cast of old film actors such as Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane lending their gruff voices to the Old West theme punctuated by piano players in saloons, gunshots in the streets and the footsteps of horses on the plains. The game also features conversation in the native Indian language. As for the music, “epic” is the only way to describe it, from the typical Western-style music heard in many films to the dramatic brass overtures while riding into the sunset.

Despite the excellent presentation of the game, Gun has an innate sense of feeling hollow. For all the plot and stunning visuals the game has, there isn't much flesh to it, giving a sense of the game being incomplete. The graphics engine is somewhat buggy, for example. Horses are not loaded at the same time as their riders, so when players are attacked by mounted enemies approaching from a distance, players will witness people floating through the air. While aiming down the sight using rifles, the end of the rifle will clip through people and objects that are actually ten metres away. Loading times when travelling across different parts of the world are very slow. As with Grand Theft Auto and most other games with extensive world exploration, the game only loads detailed environments for the immediate vicinity and uses blurry fields to represent distant objects and locations. However, the transition between the detailed and blurry sections is so slow that riding a horse from Dodge to Empire can force players to stop half-way in order to let the graphics processing to catch up. Going any further would remove all terrain maps, resulting in objects appearing like they are floating in the sky, making it very difficult to engage in combat or navigate through narrow mountains. Additionally, the Pony Express missions can be tough to do because of the sheer speed required to complete them, and dashing through all the locations before the graphics are loaded can actually crash the game.

The weapons and items in the game are not well-balanced either. Despite the availability of different types of weapons, the game does not present enough scenarios that would encourage the use of them all. Players can easily go through the game using only a rifle and revolver, rendering more than half the weapons as useless apart from one or two specific situations. Furthermore, the better weapons are attained as the plot progresses, so there are no optional missions that can provide a bonus other than stats. Each weapon is better than the last in all aspects, so older weapons become obsolete and forgotten. Some items have no actual purpose in the game at all. This is made worse by an awkward weapon-switching scheme with primary weapons, and weapons of the same kind can only be swapped through the menu.

Saving and loading can be quite painful too. While players can save anywhere instead of using prescribed save points, the game does not load in the last location the player was in. Instead, the game will always begin in the last location of the previous plot mission. A player can spend an hour doing a stack of side missions across the world, but even if they save a game while in Empire, the game will drag them back to Dodge City when the save is loaded. There is some redemption by having checkpoints for the longer missions, but loading a game can be very frustrating.

Perhaps the most evident flaw in the game is that it's too short and too limited. While Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas provided countless hours of roaming, Gun can only notch up no more than 15 hours of gameplay. While the plot is very gripping, many aspects of it could have been fleshed out. Colton tends to meet a couple of characters before killing them off five minutes later, wasting possible character development. Minigames available in side-missions can only be done once, so players cannot play poker in the casino after they have played through the poker missions or herd cattle after the ranch missions. In turn, the shopkeepers are very limited in what they can sell, and players will often find themselves with an abundance of money by the game's end simply because money has no other use. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, Gun is not a true free-roaming game, as all the optional tasks can only be done once, eventually leaving the player with nothing to do but ride around on a horse, and with the world being so small, there isn't much room to ride. As a comparison, GTA: San Andreas featured three cities that you could fly a plane between; Gun features two towns that take two minutes to cross on horse.

The bottom line is that Gun could have been so much more. With an excellent cast, thrilling storyline, outstanding visuals and impressive voice acting and soundtrack, Gun had all the makings of a great game. However, Gun disappoints in being so short and lacking any replay value. If Grand Theft Auto was not around, or if Gun came out a few years earlier, it would have been the best thing since sliced bread. Instead, it's a horse that's been beaten by a Dodge Viper.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 10/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Replay: 1/10
Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/06