GUN Review - Xbox 360

6.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 6
Audio: 7
Innovation: 7

For a game that was released at launch as a “2 games for the price of one” deal packed tightly with Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, Gun really never had much of a chance to shine. Gamers were overwhelmed by the amount of choice they had at the launch of the Xbox 360. Project Gotham 3, Dead or Alive 4 and Oblivion are just some of the great titles that were on offer, so when a game that’s highly based on the GTA style genre but set in the 1800’s western American world was released, it was definitely overlooked by many. We decided to try out Gun, to see if it was a title worth missing, or if there was a spark of enjoyment in experiencing the history of America.

Gameplay

Gun is a game of luck, patience and bad-ass attitude. You’ve got to be the toughest guy in the west to survive, and there are plenty of people that want nothing more than to see you die. As the game starts off, you basically watch your father die when the steam-boat you were on gets attacked, only just before he dies, he tells you he’s not your father. From then on, you set out on a revenge journey to kill whoever is responsible, and whoever gets in your way. As you progress through the story there are flashbacks of your childhood, and the story is much better explained.

Basically, Gun has one main mission to complete, with many side missions to upgrade your skills. The side missions get progressively harder as you complete them, and they are not completely necessary to beat the main story mode. Some of the side missions include rounding up cattle, hunting down criminals from “Wanted” posters, and even killing wild animals that prey on the Indian camps. They are all fairly easy, and well worth doing to level up your skills as you progress through the game. The main mission has its hard parts, but all up it’s got a fairly small learning curve due to the well thought out controls.

Shooting the bad guys can prove difficult at first, when you’re trying to aim on a horse, the gun swings around a lot. This is where Quick-draw comes in handy. Quick-draw is the 1800’s version of bullet time. It slows you right down, and allows you to target enemies with precision and take shots before they even target you. It works on a meter that runs out eventually, and can of course be upgraded from side missions. Quick-draw really gives a whole new dimension to the fights in Gun, and there’s so many of them that it’s essential to master the art of the slow-mo lock-on and kill style.

Unfortunately ... (continued next page)