Ducking into Empire's bank, we headed downstairs to the vault and let Soap do his thing. Predictably, the stick-up didn't go a smooth as hoped. A couple dozen enemies started swarming down the stairs and it was here that we learned the controls in a little trial by fire. Without a second analog stick, Rebellion opted to use the face buttons for aiming (similar to Syphon Filter), and though it takes a little getting used to, it's not all that bad.

The more advanced features have been remapped to the d-pad, and there are actually a few toggles in place to help replace the two missing shoulder buttons. Now, holding a direction on the d-pad allows you to switch weapons or explosives, call your horse, zoom in, manually reload, and so on. Tapping different directions is reserved for more immediate actions like starting QuickDraw Mode, or swapping/pulling out a weapon. Using cover is accomplished by holding down the L button, while tapping it lets you jump. The R button controls all attacks, firing weapons if they're ranged, and if you get in close enough, an icon appears indicating a melee attack.

This was all picked up fairly quickly (with a little trial and error), and it wasn't long before we were busting into QuickDraw and flicking around with the analog nub to chain together some head shot combos in slo-mo. A quick dash out of the bank, and another shootout in the town's central square and we loaded everything up and headed out of town. We were, of course, ambushed on the way out, but after a few retries, our enemies were stopped and we used a power keg to blow apart the blockade that was penning us in. At each step along the way, the game's checkpoint system insured that we never lost all that much progress, despite the fact that we were killed off fairly quickly a few times.

If the new Bank Heist mission was where we outright learned the controls, Showdown's Multiplayer offerings were where we were first introduced to them. We played two different Deathmatch maps, one in the very same Empire City area where we would rob a bank a few minutes later, and another in the cavernous final boss fight location. Both were tweaked slightly to create some little side routes (the cave map actually has a tunnel that loops around and ends up above the rest of the action, and the Empire map has a few buildings you can duck into to find weapons.

Though the game is Ad-Hoc only, it does allow up to six players to get down on one of eight different maps. The aforementioned Deathmatch mode is but one of three options (the others are a capture the flag-style mode called Golden Cross and of course Texas Hold 'Em), but we actually played solo against the game's bots, which were set to medium difficulty. It's a good thing, too, as we got our ass kicked rather handily by the zig-zagging and cover-taking artificial intelligence. Since we suck anyway, it's probably fair to posit that on hard, they might be fairly close to a human player.

The final bit of the game we peeked at was the new Quickplay option, a simple set of mini-games with a five minute time limit and a single goal. In the first, it was felling a seemingly endless swarm of bears in the very same intro area where Colton and his pa Ned hunted. The second was a shootout in what looked like a repurposed part of Empire City where we had to capture some thugs -- dead or alive. If we did actually get close enough to grab them and drag them back into a circle near the jailhouse, we got 10 points rather than just the one for offing them normally.

Both games, along with the rest of the game proper were actually rather fun. The more compartmentalized maps for multiplayer games and Quickplay ran very, very smoothly. Rebellion's Asura engine was put to task a little more during the free-roaming bits, though, and we noticed that, even with the game being fed from the PSP dev kit, it was chugging a little. Nothing huge, and the game still has a month or so to go, but worth mentioning.

Otherwise, though, it looks (and sounds) just like the PS2 big brother, which is a remarkable accomplishment. Playing like something of a Director's Cut of the game can't hurt things so long as the engine can keep up in the more outdoorsy sections of the world. That we walked away surprised at how, well, the same it is as the PS2 version is a testament to just how strong the PSP hardware can be in the hands of developers that have played around with it for a while. In addition to our hands-on play time, we managed to steal a handful of screenshots and movies, so take a peek and let us know what you think [forums]in the forums[/forums].