Gun Review

A Wide Open World

Gun gives you a nice big world to play around in, but outside of the story missions there isn’t much to do. You can ride into town and start shooting up the place if you want, but there are no real penalties for doing so. There are a number of side missions you can do, but unlike the story missions which have multiple parts and are rather varied, the side missions are simple and straightforward and don’t take any real effort to get through at all. You can be a cattle rancher or a bounty hunter or mine for gold or even enter poker tournaments, but they are all pretty easy and ultimately pretty repetitive. Also, the rewards for completing these side missions are performance boosts for your abilities but your character is so skilled when you start out that these boosts don’t really have any effect.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Gun is an ok looking game but it isn’t going to really impress anyone. The characters have interesting looking, weather worn faces and are all wearing era appropriate clothing which adds to the authentic feel of the game. You’ll explore some nice looking environments, but when you compare everything to other games on the Xbox Gun is pretty unspectacular.

The sound, on the other hand, is very well done. Sound effects for everything are absolutely spot on and the characters are all brought to life by some amazing voice acting. The music is also very good and has a more epic feel than you’ll find in a typical Western movie or game.

Gun on the Xbox 360

Compared to the rest of the launch games on the Xbox 360, Gun sticks out like a sore thumb. It is flat out ugly. It looks better than the Xbox version, of course, with sharper looking textures and better lighting, but it also makes things such as the blocky characters and bland enemy designs stand out a lot more than before. The gameplay and features list are exactly the same here as they were on the Xbox, so no worries there. Ultimately, though, you are paying $10 extra for the same exact game so I can’t really recommend the Xbox 360 version.

Bottom Line

Gun is a fun action game that tells a remarkably good story, but it is all over far too quickly. It takes around six hours from start to finish to beat all of the story missions and that is just way, way too short. This problem could have been countered with more interesting side missions and a more interesting world to explore, but unfortunately Gun is pretty barren outside of the story so there isn’t much to do. You’ll play it once and then likely never pick it up again. There is a lot of potential here, no doubts there, but there simply isn’t enough of the good stuff to make it worth any more than a rental.