Gun
I received this game for Christmas and so far it’s a lot better than I thought it would be.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Old West. I could probably count the number of Western movies I’ve seen on one hand, with a few fingers left over. I remember playing a PC shareware demo of Redneck Rampage back maybe… 10 years ago? Before that the only Western I played was a game for Commodore 64, but I cannot remember the name.
This one is made by the guys at Neversoft who you may know from the 2,342 Tony Hawk games. Nice to see them moving on to another genre.
I’m only about a third the way into the main story. The story’s been solid so far. There are plenty of side quests and mini-games to keep you busy. There are places in towns that you stop for a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament, although it was disappointing to see other games which were unplayable.
The voice acting is good, featuring some Hollywood talent, but kind of often you’ll hear expanded pauses in dialog. I don’t know if was bad audio mixing or deliberate for the sake of drama, but it slows the pace just a bit.
The controls are smooth for most part. My only complaint is of one of the button commands. Throughout the world you’ll find Wanted posters and most of the time you’ll have the choice of bringing them back dead or alive. Of course you make more money from bringing them in alive, so you have to injure them enough to be able to run up and grab them with White (that’s a button, for all you non-Xboxers). Then you have the choice of White to let him go or X to subdue. I have a tendency to double tap the White button and there were plenty of times I accidently let the bad hombre go, just to have to shoot him in the leg a couple more times and try again.
The graphics are okay. The animations aren’t as polished and there’s the occasional (although tiny) graphical glitch. Personally, I love the landscapes. The game world is open (after a little bit of the story), so I find it fun to just ride around on my horse. If you ever played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time then you probably had some good times on horseback. Here, you have much more space to explore and I think the level designers did a great job.
The sound is excellent. The music is pretty damn good (relatively, we’re still talking about a Western), but it fits the game perfectly and it’s various throughout what I’ve played. Small glitches here, too. Sometimes you’ll take out a whole group of bad guys and then go to reload your gun and you’ll hear, “Get him while he reloads!” But it becomes obvious that the sound clip only played because of the situation and it wasn’t any AI that knew to say that.
The game is most definitely a shooter, but it has a little bit of RPG elements in that you can upgrade your weapons and stats.
Like I said before, I’m not a huge fan of Western games/movies/whatever, but as far as GTA-esque wild west shooters go, this game is pretty good. The story keeps me pushing on and there are no wildly annoying inconsistencies that make me want to leave the game unfinished. It’s worth at least a rental.
