Review: Gun

Gun (Neversoft, 2005) is a western shooter (both first and third person), a relative rarity in these times of infinite space marines. I scored it a one before, because while my computer could handle the graphics just fine, the streaming terrain loading system made my PC stutter and freeze. Now that it only stutters, I can play it enough to review.

Gameplay
Gun is a pretty standard shooter. You point at stuff and shoot it. Shooting stuff gains you bullet time, which you can use to shoot stuff in slow motion, but the game is generally so easy, I didn't use the bullet time much. I think this was due to the game being a quick console port, with no adjustment made for the ease of aiming a mouse provides. If your target moves slowly enough, the aiming reticle actually follows them on it's own.

You can also shoot stuff from horseback. There's also hand to hand combat, but it's super simplified. You can also grab guys and use them for cover, but I never found occasion to use it except for bounty hunting, where alive often pays better than dead. There were also leaning buttons and crouching that could be used to take cover, and I could sometimes shoot a weapon out of an opponents hand, but combat was generally so easy that all of these mechanics just felt tacked on.

Theatrics
Like the gameplay, Gun starts solid, then fades fairly quickly, giving you characters with potential that never get developed. Once in a while, they'll tell you stories as you're riding from one place to another, but it mostly feels tacked on. Your own story is standard western revenge, with enough twists to be somewhat interesting. But since discovering the truth is never your characters motivation, it also feels tacked on.

Aesthetics
Gun's graphics are definitely PS2 optimized, serving up some malformed looking people.


But the landscapes are good.


The sound effects are good too, with jangling spurs and creaky wood floors for added flavor (although they could have used a couple more creaky wood sounds as it felt like it was always the same creak).

The music deserves special mention, too. It also repeats a bit too much, but before I got tired of it, it made the game feel a lot more epic than it would have otherwise.

Final Score
3 of 5

I hope Gun did well enough to merit a sequel. With so many elements of the game becoming repetitive or not feeling fully fleshed out, I suspect there wasn't time or money to realize the game's vision. And it's a great vision. If Gun had had six to twelve months more development, I expect we'd be reading about the new crop of Western shooters coming out next fall, to go along with the bald space marines. As it is, Gun's just an interesting footnote, and that's too bad.