Reviews » Gun [PC]
Reviewed by vinnie1023[Note: While Gun is available for a very wide variety of platforms (PC/PS2/GCN/Xbox/etc), the review that follows is based on playing the PC version. Your enjoyment mileage may vary.]
I wanted so badly to like Gun.
The first non-Tony Hawk game from Neversoft since that series’ first iteration in 1999, expectations were high. A free-roaming Western-themed third person shooter by the company who single-handedly brought about a revitalization of the extreme sports genre of games seemed too good to be true. Leading up to the release date, it looked like Gun would do what Outlaws should have done in 1997—Western games would finally have their day, and gamers all over the world would rejoice as a criminally underused setting would finally hit the big time.
Unfortunately, Gun doesn’t deliver. Sub-par graphics, a short, lackluster plot and an extremely aggravating checkpoint system mar the experience appreciably, but they’re really only the tip of the iceberg. The motion capture is poorly implemented in some cases, the voice acting manages to be barely passable, regardless of the recruitment of a number of Hollywood actors for the game, and the “seamless world” of the game doesn’t exactly play out as such.
However, it’s worth noting that the game does have its entertaining moments. The gunplay in the game isn’t bad for the most part, and the game’s quick draw function (read: bullet time) is implemented a little bit differently than you might expect. While time slows down just as you’d expect, when you finish off one enemy, you merely have to hit left or right to switch to another enemy within range. It’s a useful feature that helps you out in a bind without feeling overpowered, since you can only use it in brief spurts.
While the plot is quite short, leaving little time for character development, it’s just compelling enough to make you play through the game’s relatively small number of story missions, even though it’s often fairly obvious what’s going to happen next. You play Colton White, a simple farmer whose life is turned upside-down after a steamboat you’re traveling on is ambushed by a “reverend” and his thugs in search of some kind of artifact which is apparently on board.
Barely escaping with his life apparently makes Colton very angry, as he soon begins shooting every baddie in sight in search of the Reverend and some answers. The game is very violent, and has location-based damage, allowing you to dismember and decapitate your opponents with some very powerful firearms. Unfortunately, there is little satisfaction to be found in gunning down your opponents, as they are improbably numerous and mostly uninteresting.
In fact, one of the few really interesting enemies are the Indians you’ll face early on—even though they were discriminated against and marginalized in the Old West, it still feels kind of weird to gun them down en masse. Eventually Colton’s perspective on them changes and they become your allies, but even then their complaints about “the white devil” and they way they have Colton massacre an entire battalion of soldiers doesn’t really paint them in a better light in the end.
The graphics engine powering Gun was obviously designed for the consoles, but was still supposed to look good for the PC, since it was a port of the Xbox 360 version of the game. However, the characters still lack the kind of detail you’d expect in a PC game, and the frame rate has a way of hitting the ground whenever there are a lot of particle effects on screen. It’s important to note that the detail levels were turned up all the way, but it still seemed like either the game should’ve looked or ran better being as such. The motion capture work in the game’s cinematic cut scenes is generally good, but when you’re just roaming around town, the gesticulations of the townspeople often feel very awkward, and all of the game’s enemies move in almost the exact same way, making them all blend together after a while, even though you’ll ostensibly face a variety of them.
It’s also worth noting that the game’s world, while seamless as advertised, nonetheless has points where your system will choke as it struggles to load a new area. It seems like this should’ve been possible to alleviate with more constant streaming of content a la every Grand Theft Auto game since GTA III, but as it is, the game stops abruptly whenever you venture in to a new area, though at least it’s a fairly brief hiccup.
The world itself seems very large at first, and has a few towns and other areas to interact with, but after the initial impression that it’s very large wears off, it becomes apparent that not only is it not actually that large, but for the most part it’s pretty sparsely populated. You’ll occasionally come across bandits, and a myriad of hostile and non-hostile animals, but for the most part the world just seems like one big empty plain. The train tracks never even have trains on them unless there’s an event in the story or side missions that calls for one.
When shot, your enemies die in gory, entertaining fashion, which you’ll notice particularly the first time you get a good head shot in. Blood and chunks splatter everywhere, and when shot while in motion, enemies will often leave a trail of blood as they stagger and fall to the ground, lifeless. The only strange thing about all of this gore is that as the game progresses, it generally becomes more difficult to kill your enemies, even though there is no apparent change in their appearance to suggest that they should be more difficult to kill.
The game tries so hard to offer a variety of game play options, but most of them feel incomplete or half-baked. For example, the game has stats that are supposed to govern how well you shoot, your health and how long you get to use quick draw for at a time, but in practice none of these stats really matter. On the higher difficulties, it’s worth taking the time to accumulate some money and purchase some of the weapon and health upgrades, but even then there’s only a modest difference compared to the time it takes to acquire the required cash.
There are lots of different side missions you can take on to get that cash, but none of them are all that fun. You can play Texas Hold ‘Em with computer opponents, but it takes so long that when you finally win and collect your money it feels like it was a complete waste of time. You can also offer your services as a ranch hand and herd cattle, but this too feels like it isn’t worth the effort. The deputy side missions which have you dispatching local baddies aren’t bad, but they’re not nearly as compelling as the story missions. You can also do jobs for a federal marshal and track down men and certain animals for bounty, but again these things take time and aren’t as interesting as moving the story forward.
You’d expect a game called Gun to have lots of shooting, and it does, in fact. You acquire a large number of different arms over the course of the game, though there are really only a set number of types with a number of upgrades for each. Each upgrade does its job better than the last, and at first, enemies will have a hard time coping with your new machine of death, but over the course of the game they tend to become harder to kill, which eventually has a way of ruining any suspension of disbelief.
For example, if you shoot an early enemy in the head, chances are he will go down—later in the game, it can take two or three of the same shots, even though you’re still hitting his unprotected head and your weapon is supposedly stronger. While the character models may not wear any kind of obvious armor in order to sustain some kind of realism, there were so many other liberties taken to make the game more fun (let’s litter our mine/base/fort with exploding barrels!) that it’s still not much of an excuse. The bosses also take the usual ridiculous amount of punishment before going down, but that’s a bit more expected in a shooter.
The sound in the game does its job but isn’t really exceptional in any way. The guns all make sounds that seem about appropriate, but as your weapons get more powerful as the game progresses, it doesn’t really feel like they make a more powerful noise to reflect that. When you finish the game’s story, your reward is a shotgun that holds seven shells and dispatches enemies with a single shot, but it still uses the same stock shotgun blast that the pathetic single-barrel shotty did at the beginning. Explosions also sound like they should, but again are nothing spectacular.
Where the game really falters, though, is with its voice acting. With more and more game studios hiring professional actors, there should be some sort of increase of the quality of the voice work, but here that isn’t really the case. While nobody is particularly horrible at voicing his or her character, the game’s dialogue feels just as hokey as anything with voice acting released in the past few years. The script is probably partially to blame here, as it was penned by Randall Jahnson, who’s writing credits include The Mask of Zorro, which was not exactly the pinnacle of cinematic brilliance.
The one bright spot of the sound design is the music, but even it isn’t as good as it could’ve been. When you first start up the game, the theme that introduces you to the game’s menu is absolutely breathtaking. It fits the rendered backdrop that scrolls in the background perfectly, and really sets the mood well. Unfortunately, it loops way too often, and there isn’t nearly enough variation in the event music, such as when an enemy spots you and the game switches to its battle music. You’ll get very sick of the same battle theme playing over and over again at this point, especially if you repeatedly die and have to replay missions.
Playing the game on the third difficulty of four was an absolute chore. Usually in a four difficulty mode system, the third option offers a nice balance of difficulty and challenge, but in this case it’s mind-numbingly difficult in places. There were a few sequences where surviving was a matter of luck more than anything else, and if you die before reaching an unseen checkpoint, you have to do it all over again. Sometimes the checkpoints work out well, but it seems like they’re too spread out a lot of the time. The PC version would’ve benefited from a quick save function, or even just from a better save system that actually saves your progress exactly where you are and not at the last checkpoint.
Sometimes the challenge made for an intense experience, but your enemies are so good at shooting you that you’re often dead before you can even tell who was shooting at you. The game gives you a bottle of whiskey to “dull the pain” which in this case is a euphemism for “restores your health”, but Colton has to get his bottle out and take a pull, and that takes a second or two, forcing you to stop shooting while allowing your enemies to continue to riddle you with holes. Especially in later portions of the game, it’s possible to try and restore your health only to find that you’re dead before you’re allowed to start shooting again.
The boss fights were something of a mixed bag. While the bosses all had an incredible amount of health as mentioned above, most of them were still susceptible to typical circle-strafing tactics and some of them didn’t put up much of a fight even when you just stood there with your zoomed-in rifle and shot them in the head. One boss in particular was reported to be very difficult, but thanks to poor AI ended up being incredibly easy because he just wouldn’t get out of the way of incoming headshots. The last boss of the game the only one that took a hefty number of tries to complete, mostly because the game doesn’t really tell you how you’re supposed to decrease his health, and while you’re figuring out how to do so, he only has to shoot you three times and it’s all over.
Apparently the game is much easier on difficulty number two, to the point where many people are saying it was way too easy. It’s a more satisfying experience having finished it on the third, but also an exponentially more frustrating one. With a little more time devoted to play testing and quality assurance, it would’ve been possible to tweak the mechanics to create a slightly more forgiving experience on the higher difficulty settings, but it looks like Neversoft had a deadline and was forced to rush the game out the door in the end.
In fact, that’s probably the source of a lot of the game’s problems. The fact that there’s still an enjoyable game underneath all of the flaws speaks to the fact that it really could’ve been something special if the development team was given a little bit more time to get everything right. As it is, the game is worth a rental, but definitely not a purchase as it can probably be finished in a weekend of play, even on one of the harder difficulties. Just be prepared to tear your hair out in frustration at regular intervals.
Gun - All Platforms
Presentation
Gun has all the right ingredients for a high-quality presentation, but they never come together quite like they could, and the faults tend to be glaring because there’s always the impression that it could’ve been so much better.
Gameplay
The story missions are generally fun and varied, but few-and-far-between checkpoints make some of them an exercise in frustration at the higher difficulties. While there are plenty of side-missions, none of them feel particularly consequential, and there’s no reason to keep playing once the story’s over, though it is an option.
Replayability
Once the story’s finished, there’s no real reason to ever play the game again, unless you’re a glutton for punishment and you want to try one of the game’s sometimes frustratingly hard upper difficulties.
Value
The story is over pretty quick, making this a pretty decent rental, but it’s definitely not worth full retail price. If you can’t rent it, buy it used or wait for the price to come down significantly.
Overall
Though the game has its merits, those merits are offset by some fundamental problems which mar an otherwise enjoyable experience.
