With the upcoming release of Aces and Eights I decided to pick up Gun for PS2. I just needed to smack some banditos and injuns around and this game was recommended to me by FuzzyOrangeDave on the K&C forums.
I can sum this bad boy up in but a sentence: Grand Theft Auto the Western. Some might be turned off by that. Sissies. If you’re a fan of Deadwood or gritty, albeit fictional, Western tales this game is for you. Screw the naysayers, I think Gun was one of the better games to come out in the past few years. Why? How many Western games are there? How many were good? I rest my case. Gun is one of the first really awesome Westerns, finally raising the bar and hopefully just the forward scout of a greater force: in my honest opinion Westerns are an untapped resource as far as video games go. I’d love to see a really good Counterstrike-style Western game. Anyway, back to Gun.
Gun has several thing that appealed to me:
- A Free-Roam Environment: I can not stress enough how much I love sandbox, free-roaming games. I actually feel constrained by levels after years of playing games like GTA, Scarface, the Godfather, Bully… even the Warriors had enough of a free-roam element to make me happy.
- Horses: the horses felt natural when you rode them. They could have really dropped the ball on this one, but they didn’t. Add some realistic horses to a free-roam environment and you have a happy Grim.
- Voice Acting: it doesn’t suck. Following in the vein of GTA, they really tried their best to have talented voice actors and celebrities breathe life into their digital ‘toons.
The plot was pretty decent too. One of my gripes about the game was that it felt a bit rushed. The main plot should only take a couple of hours to beat. The last fight seemed a bit out of place as well; you’ll know what I mean when you play it. It just didn’t fit the type of action the rest of the game had going on. But despite the rushed storyline and the weird last fight, the plot was pretty cool. Yes it was predictable, but c’mon now, it’s supposed to play out like a classic Western. And here’s the deal: the plot isn’t really what the meat of the game is. The side quests are where it’s at. I’ve read some reviews that said they weren’t very engaging. Blegh. I loved ‘em. You can do a whole crap load of things, ranging from collecting bounties from wanted posters, to cattle ranching, to helping out a federal marshal to running for the Pony Express and a few other things in between. Of course, like most other GTA-like games, there’s the collectible items to hunt for. This time around it’s veins of gold you have to mine. The nice things is that you don’t just collect ‘em: they give you more money. Money can be used to buy upgrades, ranging from the useless scalping knife to gun upgrades to things that make your horses faster and healthier.
It is in my humble opinion that even people that don’t like Westerns will appreciate the genre after playing around with Gun. Those that already love or like the genre will really like what Neversoft has done with this game. It’s worth noting that you can find the game for less than $10 at EB Games (it’s not new). To get a darn good Western for less than the price of a pack of Manhattan cigarettes? That’s a fine deal in my book.
[...] A Cowboy Is A Man With Guts and A Horse [...]
Are those PS2 screenshots? They look damn good if they are.
i agree it was a pretty kick ass game. one the last i played before my roomie bought The Warriors. now they need to make a Gun styled game based on Dead Lands. now THAT would get my money. oh man, would that get my money…
I’m 87.16% sure those are the PS2 ones. I think the XBOX ones look better. The game is definately pretty and pushes the abilities of the PS2. I’ve never once had lag either. Except the first one… that might be the XBOX one. The rocks look too pretty in the distance.
-=Grim=-
I miss cowboys! I used to go out to Arizona with my grandparents almost every year to visit family when I was a kid. And we always went and did this chintzy tourist stuff, most of it involving either cowboys or injuns. We went to that place where the thing with Wyatt Earp and all that stuff happened and whatnot and it was mad fun. I ad a whole cowgirl outfit that I got down there and wore for Halloween a couple times back in NY. I remember this one time when I was a kid they put a Western on TV in 3D! And you could get the 3D glasses from 7-11 or something. It was so exciting. Of modern movies, Young Guns is still one of my favorites. And working in Borders, our most dust-collecting, never-gets-messed up section (in books and dvds) is Westerns. Which is kinda sad. I haven’t played on my PS2 for a while. (Wii!) But I might pick this up when I get a chance.