Gun (Xbox 360)

GUN on the Xbox 360 is very disappointing

What do you do when you're fed up with making yearly skateboard titles that appeal to a hugely broad demographic? Make a brutal shooter set in the Wild West that carries an 18-certificate and has the 'kids can't play this' appeal of the Grand Theft Auto series. This is what famed Tony Hawk developer Neversoft has done, and while it's not really a genre that you could have predicted they would move into, GUN is a solid entry in what will undoubtedly be the first of a new series.

Despite being weighed down by claims from Activision that GUN was going to be the game of the year (this was many months before its release), GUN isn't the travesty that you might have expected - far from it in fact. You play Colton White, a young man with a talent for shooting. One day, after hunting with your 'father' Ned (who's played rather excellently by Kris Kristofferson), you board a steamboat to do some businesses. You gain possession of an important artefact and the boat is attacked, forcing you to jump ship, with Ned accepting his fate on the doomed steamboat.

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So, this sets up the game's story, and gives you a reason to ride to Dodge City and start on your journey, with this mysterious artefact holding a secret that Ned wanted you to discover. As you might have assumed from the game's title, there's a lot of shooting in GUN. There are a total of twenty weapons in the game and Colton is pretty nifty with all of them. As well as standard third-person aiming - and a zoom for long range weapons - Colton can use what is called 'Quick-draw'; this is GUN's version of 'bullet time' and it gives you a huge advantage during shootouts. Using the slightly zoomed view you can take out enemies with ease and quickly switch targets with the left analogue stick. You could get by without using it, but it makes the trickier confrontations that little bit easier to handle.

It's worth noting that, as with the console versions, there's some pretty heavy handed auto-aiming, with the aiming reticle actually moving for you in some instances, tracking the movement of enemies. All versions of the game also have huge hit boxes, meaning you can hit the enemy without actually hitting them. Whether or not this bothers you will be down to personal preference, but even with its rather strong helping hand, combat is still entertaining.

As an Xbox 360 title GUN simply doesn't look good enough.

Aside from gunplay, you have a basic melee attack which lets you slash enemies if you get in close, and you use a range of explosives throughout the game. It's particularly satisfying to take a barrel of TNT, throw it into a crowd of enemies, enter 'Quick-draw' and then blast the barrel mid-air, taking out the whole group in a blood soaked explosion - it's been done before, but it's no less enjoyable here. Combat in the game is exceedingly brutal, with decapitations, scalpings and general nastiness. It certainly earns its 18-certificate and isn't for the fainthearted. Some moments even go beyond what you might consider decent taste, but the game's over-the-top take on the Wild West just about makes it bearable.

To get from area to area (the game gives the illusion that it's free-roaming, but is in actual fact pretty linear) you can walk, but it's much easier to mount a horse and gallop off. Now, this is another area where GUN doesn't stick to Wild West tradition. Horses are treated like dirt, allowing you to ride them to death (literally) and their lives are generally meaningless. If yours dies you can find another wandering around and take it. It would have been nice to feel some attachment to your horse, with its death actually meaning something, but you feel as close to them as you do a stolen car in GTA. Riding horses is actually a lot of fun and they are animated quite beautifully. You can even draw your weapon and fire while in the saddle and use the horse itself to trample enemies. All nice unpleasant fun.

The biggest problem with GUN is its length. The game is just too short. If you ignore side missions the story can be played through in less than seven hours, and the only real reason to play through the extra missions is to increase Colton's stats, but this is only really essential if playing the game on its hardest difficulty. It's not that they aren't fun, but they don't offer anything all that different to the main game, making you take out a thug and his henchman time and time again. Animal ranching and poker games mix things up a little, but they're simply not much fun to play, and feel like they've been added to artificially extend the game.

Ports are to be expected, but this is a rather simple one

Gun is already available on PC and home consoles, and it shows. Playing in 720p makes the game look sharp, but the environments are rather basic for a next-gen game and textures look pretty flat. A scene at the beginning of the game shows the game's current-gen roots perfectly, with the camera panning out to reveal a vast open space and a steamboat on a river. With the music playing and the game's title appearing on the screen, it was obviously intended to be a 'WOW' moment, but it just falls flat due to the lack of detail in the scene. As an Xbox 360 title GUN simply doesn't look good enough.

Audio is exceptional, with superb voice work and a great score. As already mentioned, the game features the voice of Kris Kristofferson, but Thomas Jane (The Punisher), Lance Henriksen (Bishop from Aliens), Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Brad Dourif (Deadwood) and others all put in strong performances. It's just a shame that you never really get to know any of the characters in any detail, with the game moving along at such a breakneck pace that it's all over in a few short play sessions. Things move so fast that the time of day will suddenly change between missions, even though the game makes no attempt to show time has moved on.

There's no denying that GUN is an entertaining game. The controls are tight and the action never lets up, but considering the setting and story, it deserved a game of epic proportions (in length and scope) and it's hard not to feel a little disappointed. This Xbox 360 version is the most disappointing of the lot, doing nothing to push the new hardware, making it the ugly duckling of the 360 line-up. It's the best version available, but isn't a game to highlight the move to a new generation of consoles and the fact that it'll cost you £10 more than the other versions is somewhat of a joke.