Ten minutes into Gun, I was ready to write it off. The shooting seemed clunky, the environments seemed hastily constructed, the voice actors seemed to not give a shit, and the wild west setting was a major turn off. An hour in I wasn’t feeling too much better, but then suddenly, sometime after I arrived in Empire, everything in the game just clicked. My plans to blast through it were put on hold; I started enjoying what I was doing and sought to draw the experience out as long as possible. I was claiming Wanted posters, I was assisting the sheriff and federal marshal, I was taking missions as a ranch hand, and I was tracking animals for an Indian – all because I wanted to. I didn’t necessarily need the extra experience, but I liked the results of leveling up my gun hand and loved how much more engaging the combat was because of it.
Actually, the gun play was awesome around the board. Quick draw was ridiculously addicting and conveyed an amazing sense of feeling like a badass. It felt awesome when I mowed down five or six guys all in the blink of an eye, and essentially completed an entire shootout in what amount to a second’s time. I didn’t use the other weapons nearly as much, but, toward the end, it was hilarious to blast someone with a shotgun from point blank range and watch their body parts fucking explode all over the place.
Some of the violence and imagery was quite a bit more than I expected. Seeing Hoodoo’s lifeless corpse put on display, watching Marauder (magruder? the last boss) get crushed by a fucking rock was quite unexpected, the gratuitous macabre and gore in the gun fights was a bit overwhelming. Some of the missions titles were pretty funny as well (my favorite was, “Save the whore”), and, in general, the game felt like more of a representation of theatrical old west, as opposed to historically accurate old west. I guess, otherwise I’m not sure how they can explain zombie confederates, bloodthirsty indians, scalping, and my ability to kill well over 1000 people in a few day’s time.
Gun also housed a reasonable number of insane gameplay quirks. Power sliding horses was one thing, but running them to death and watching them collapse into a sliding death rattle of blood and meat was quite amusing. Seeing a horse run around with its head and/or entire body on fire was quite unexpected and, along with their expendability, transportation only served to increase their similarly to cars in GTA. Shooting people’s limbs off was entertaining, and eventually lead to a personal quest of sorts; I tested the dynamite bow on every living thing in site, only to discover that horses were the only other creatures that boasted limb-severing explodablity.
Sure, a few number of hiccups occasionally pissed me off. I hated it when I was stranded in the middle of nowhere with no horse, I never figured out where the fuck to get sniper ammo, weapon selection could have been easier, parts of the map being totally obscured was dumb, and I would often find outlaws I had been tracking to actually be on the other side of a mountain, but they weren’t really a big deal. Gun was, above all else, fun. It wasn’t particularly deep or innovative, and I might forget all about it in two years, but it wound up doing something quite unexpected; a great deal of good games have probably flown under my radar. Games I had no interest in or any reason to play might have actually been titles I would have enjoyed. Black immediately comes to mind as a similar title, but god only know how many four star games I’ve missed over the years.
