Gun
Can Neversoft actually do something besides skating games anymore? Find out inside.
Published: November 14, 2005
I don’t even know if kids play Cowboys and Indians anymore, but I’m fairly sure if they do, it happens in more remote parts of the country. I’ll save the whole diatribe on what happens when childhood truisms fall from grace due to being politically incorrect and just say the whole game idea probably resonates far more succinctly for older gamers than it ever will with the younger crowd.
This may explain the near-instant love for games that recall Spaghetti Westerns or the whole Old West theme among our crowd, but it’s a dying art, the Western, and I’m happy to see there’s another game that at least tries to pursue the genre since Clint Eastwood probably won’t be making too many more movies in the coming years.
Gun gets it. It’s not a Spaghetti Western like Red Dead Revolver before it, but Neversoft didn't necessarily pattern it off Sergio Leone's work. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn because the games share a basic similarity, but to hold the two up as the same kind of game would be missing what Neversoft tried to do. There’s an attempt here to capture what it was like to live in the Old West that only stuff like Firefly really did: that whores were treated with a kind of respect common hookers would dream of and that lawmen were as corrupt as the people they were reputed to protect.
The amount of corruption and rampant lawlessness was something that spawned the Code of the Old West: a dictation that said if you wronged someone, you could call them out and settle things like men -- a simple showdown with weapons. Unfortunately, this almost never happened like in the movies; less reputable men would bring along saboteurs and have their opponent gunned down before the showdown could ever happen, lawmen would employ bounty hunters with loose morals and a carelessness for life to bring order to the streets.
And through it all, dust would blow and harden every man, woman and child that was forced to endure these conditions. They were changed, and as civilized as the romantic novels would have you think these conditions were, it was different. It was truly new and unkempt and raw human nature took the fore. This is exactly what Gun portrays, and it’s so wholly unceremonious in its presentation that it’s easy to lose this in what the game fails to deliver in terms of presentation and overall feel.
It’s not a perfect game, and not by a long shot. What it is, though, is a delightedly true representation of what the period was, and while I’ll certainly knock the game for its faults, trying to paint the picture of a man trying to figure out his past after his father since infancy tells him he’s not his father is admirable to the point of being a must-play experience. I’m not kidding, if you can see something like Unforgiven, you should play this game, because the themes, dialogue and setting are perfectly fitting for such and exercise.
If it seems like I’m skimming over the gameplay, understand that’s not the idea. It’s sound, and a blast to play, but I want to point out that the central theme here is really delivered unlike any game Neversoft has tried. There is a cinematic quality to things, but they’ve really tried to reach beyond normal gameplay to deliver something like a movie, and it works. I have no doubt that reviews you may have already read have outlined what’s going on, and even we tried to detail that in previews, but the key here is to understand that this game feels like it “got” the style of the Old West.
This may explain the near-instant love for games that recall Spaghetti Westerns or the whole Old West theme among our crowd, but it’s a dying art, the Western, and I’m happy to see there’s another game that at least tries to pursue the genre since Clint Eastwood probably won’t be making too many more movies in the coming years.
Gun gets it. It’s not a Spaghetti Western like Red Dead Revolver before it, but Neversoft didn't necessarily pattern it off Sergio Leone's work. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn because the games share a basic similarity, but to hold the two up as the same kind of game would be missing what Neversoft tried to do. There’s an attempt here to capture what it was like to live in the Old West that only stuff like Firefly really did: that whores were treated with a kind of respect common hookers would dream of and that lawmen were as corrupt as the people they were reputed to protect.
The amount of corruption and rampant lawlessness was something that spawned the Code of the Old West: a dictation that said if you wronged someone, you could call them out and settle things like men -- a simple showdown with weapons. Unfortunately, this almost never happened like in the movies; less reputable men would bring along saboteurs and have their opponent gunned down before the showdown could ever happen, lawmen would employ bounty hunters with loose morals and a carelessness for life to bring order to the streets.
And through it all, dust would blow and harden every man, woman and child that was forced to endure these conditions. They were changed, and as civilized as the romantic novels would have you think these conditions were, it was different. It was truly new and unkempt and raw human nature took the fore. This is exactly what Gun portrays, and it’s so wholly unceremonious in its presentation that it’s easy to lose this in what the game fails to deliver in terms of presentation and overall feel.
It’s not a perfect game, and not by a long shot. What it is, though, is a delightedly true representation of what the period was, and while I’ll certainly knock the game for its faults, trying to paint the picture of a man trying to figure out his past after his father since infancy tells him he’s not his father is admirable to the point of being a must-play experience. I’m not kidding, if you can see something like Unforgiven, you should play this game, because the themes, dialogue and setting are perfectly fitting for such and exercise.
If it seems like I’m skimming over the gameplay, understand that’s not the idea. It’s sound, and a blast to play, but I want to point out that the central theme here is really delivered unlike any game Neversoft has tried. There is a cinematic quality to things, but they’ve really tried to reach beyond normal gameplay to deliver something like a movie, and it works. I have no doubt that reviews you may have already read have outlined what’s going on, and even we tried to detail that in previews, but the key here is to understand that this game feels like it “got” the style of the Old West.
