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Monday 14 January, 2008
SUMMARY
Think Grand Theft Auto meets Max Payne meets The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and you have GUN, a free-roaming third-person shooter taking place in the Old West. The storyline follows the bullet-ridden path of Colton White, a hunter-turned gunslinger with a gritty personality reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s finest cowboy personas. After the murder of his father, he seeks to hunt down those responsible for his death, and in the process discovers the secrets behind his mysterious past, involving the true identity of his father and the location of a holy golden cross; a beacon to limitless fortune. The game was released in 2004 and was received with high acclaim, if little controversy for its depiction of Native Americans.
GAMEPLAY
The game is free-roaming and features authentically western locations for the player to explore, from Dodge City to the rolling plains of the old west. The gameplay is exceptionally violent, allowing the player to blow off heads, set enemies on fire, and even scalp them. However, one of the most compelling aspects of GUN is the immersive and movie-like cinematics which gives each shootout sequence a real sense of purpose. It's rather clear that the developers watched the dialogues of many Westerns closely when writing out the scripts for these intense and at times hilarious scenes.
Colton dishes out his definition of justice with weapons quite accurate to the time period – Peacemaker revolvers, Winchester rifles, dynamite, and even an Apache bow play a role in the carnage. A somewhat revolutionary feature of the game, the Quickdraw, allows the player to engage in slow-motion combat with the pistol. The Quickdraw has a time limit that is recharged by headshots, multiple kills, and other various demonstrations of marksmanship. Undoubtedly, it serves as a valuable tool when facing multiple enemies at once. Since its 1800s, medkits dont quite exist yet, so a good ol' swig of Whiskey replenishes Colton's health in the case of a bloody showdown. Like the GTA series, the player changes outfits throughout the game, and horses serve as the vehicle by which the player moves across the map on missions. And - you guessed it - there is a mission sequence where you even ride alongside a steam engine!
The developers did an excellent job of interweaving frontier history with Hollywood-inspired raw action sequences. I recommend GUN to every Western film fan, or just to anyone who just likes gritty action, intense showdowns, and shooting em' up frontier style.
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