Written by: Rik
Date posted: March 17, 2023

The phenomenal success of Grand Theft Auto titles in the early 00s was always going to spawn imitators and similar games offering a twist on the big thing of the time. While Gun developers Neversoft had previous third-person action-adventure pedigree through the likes of Spider-Man, and – to a lesser extent – the Tony Hawk skateboarding games, which increasingly developed an open-world/exploration element, it’s hard to think of Gun outside the context of a Wild West GTA: a Grand Theft Horse-o, if you like. (If that line is good, then it’s probably been used elsewhere; if not, then I almost certainly came up with it. In either case, I offer my sincere apologies). It’s a seam that Rockstar have also mined themselves, initially prior to this game, in 2004’s console-only Red Dead Revolver, and with more success in the 2010 follow-up, Read Dead Redemption.

I hadn’t expected to be quite so ‘Route 1’ with the GTA comparisons, except that it’s not just the basic setup of Gun that calls those games to mind, but also its general feel and approach to combat, which is loose and floppy in all the same ways Rockstar’s games of this period are, and in the way that dedicated third-person action games tend not to be. It’s a compromise made in exchange for the promise of an open world: the ability to move freely throughout a map, outside and inside buildings, punctuated with slightly eccentric and slapdash encounters rather than more polished choreography.

The tale is of a wandering gunslinger by the name of Colton White, whose simple and nomadic hunting life is dramatically interrupted by some bad doings that set him on a course of investigation and revenge. After a brief tutorial and a significant action interlude, Colton turns up in the town of Dodge, with the promise of opening up a larger map upon completion of a variety of tasks. Go to a marker, talk to someone, and do what they say, then rinse and repeat.

Early impressions are hampered by less than impressive visuals at the outset. I must admit to not trying out unofficial widescreen fixes or looking too deeply into why I was not allowed to enable shadows, but I’m really talking in relative terms here: the early greenery does the game no favours, but once you get into the desert, things pick up significantly. By which point you’ll likely have recognised enough of the familiar-sounding Hollywood gruff men among the voice cast to send you scurrying off to Wikipedia and being surprised by the range and calibre of talent on offer (including Lance Henriksen, Ron Perlman and Kris Kristoffersen, among others).

There’s also the slightly misleading suggestion that the game is going to involve a lot of hunting animals, which turns out to be a minor (and optional) part of the action, although any relief turns out to be short-lived when you realise that early story missions require you to gun down waves of Native Americans instead. Even if that also doesn’t turn out to be a persistent part of the action, with the story ultimately going in a different, more palatable, direction, it’s all rather disturbing nonetheless.

Once you’re genuinely left to your own devices, with some options regarding what to do next, the game urges you to partake in some optional side missions while providing constant and urgent-looking visual reminders of the next one that will move on with the story. It’s a slightly curious tension, and even the blunt in-game use of the phrase ‘side mission’ seems a little bit too direct, with no attempt to dress up the structure in fancier or more appealing language.

But partake you should, for three simple reasons: one, the law of video games suggests that doing extra bits brings rewards, and sure enough there’s an RPG element here that requires that you beef your character up sufficiently to cope with later story missions; two, if you didn’t, Gun would be a very short game (I mean, it’s pretty short anyway); and three, they’re mostly a lot of fun and round out the wider game world nicely.

Helping out the sheriff or other law enforcement generally means combat, and blowing away some recently spawned baddies in exchange for cash and stats. You can also, in the traditional manner, take on bounties, bringing back wanted men dead or alive (the latter involves a slightly muddy process of disabling your target with a shot or two then getting close enough to manhandle them to the ground). Pony Express, meanwhile, is a courier service, which means you have to ride your horse from place to place as fast as you can, making use of riding mechanics that allow you to push your poor dobbin harder at a greater risk of exhaustion. If you’re into such things, and a slight change of pace, then helping out at the ranch offers a chance to herd up some cows and a brief slice of the gentler side of life in the old West.

Hunting missions allow you to indulge in some animal slaughter, if you really missed it from earlier, although I personally found that the vague requirement to track down each animal manually and take your opportunity when it comes, rather than simply going to place X on the map and doing the deed, made them more trouble than they were worth. Oh, and I ignored the poker mini-game altogether, as I cannot and will not play cards, under any circumstances, if it can be avoided.

For each side mission you get an improvement in your stats, although these are pre-set and not up for free allocation by the player, and money which can be used when speaking with the various storekeepers dotted around the world to upgrade the weapons at your disposal. Ammo, however, is found in random places or on the bodies of vanquished enemies, while stocks of whisky, the medicine of this world, are also picked up as you need them rather than being bought, collected, stored and used.

Meanwhile, the main action rolls on, relying generally on a mixture of skills on horseback and with a weapon. When the two are combined, Gun is arguably at its best, galloping around in a firefight trying to separate your opponents from their rides by means of a well-placed bullet or two: it’s certainly a whole lot more fun than the uzi-out-the-window combat of earlier GTA titles. On foot, while the combat retains the slightly marionette feel mentioned previously, Gun does add a few extra layers, with effective use of cover encouraged and the slow-motion Quickdraw mode (reserves of which are limited) allowing you to make short work of groups of enemies.

On the negative side, plain old horseback riding as a method of transportation soon feels a little bit dull, and although some thought has been put into it, galloping from location to location just isn’t as much fun as driving, with long journeys tending towards the tedious, although set against that you have the fact that Gun is generous with its checkpoints, reducing backtracking to a minimum (although it does occasionally abandon you upon completion of a mission without a horse and miles from anywhere). There are also occasions where rarely-used mechanics are the only acceptable method to accomplish something – rearing up a horse to break a gate, or using molotovs to set fire to some haystacks – which may hold you up longer than you might like.

Plus it has to be said that, although a wide range of weapons are available, and the game urges you to make note of their different strengths and weaknesses, on normal difficulty, just using whatever I was holding at the time seemed to be sufficient for all but the very final encounters. This may well differ on higher settings, but in any case, there remains considerable satisfaction in being an overpowered hero, gunning down hordes of baddies with ease.

Gun’s world, once you get into the desert proper, is well-realised, if a little sparse (even allowing for the fact that sparse is appropriate for this setting). In general, missions are found in designated places and there’s little incentive to explore, other than stopping to mine a little patch of gold with your pickaxe if you see one. It also means that when travelling from one spot to another, you’re unlikely to suddenly pick up a side mission to distract you on the way back, unless you count the bandit attacks, which are random encounters that seem to serve no purpose other than to irritate when you’re a puny character and be ignored/hastily ended with ease later on.

You’ll occasionally witness some violent shootouts that take place in the towns, without your involvement, although like the comical gang encounters of Liberty and Vice, they do more to undermine than reinforce the impression of a genuine living world. Ditto citizens suddenly barrel-rolling out of the way of your horse as you ride through town. There’s also a way to turn towns against you by killing too many innocents, although it’d be hard to do this accidentally, and I’m not sure why you’d do it deliberately.

The tale, penned by Hollywood screenwriter Randall Jahnson, progresses nicely until the final endgame, which is by several degrees much more difficult than anything that came before. Where previous bosses can be despatched rather too quickly, the extra challenge at first feels refreshing, but it soon becomes apparent that you have to employ such a specific strategy with a great deal of care and luck (without much help from the game, which otherwise can’t shut up when it comes to stating the bleeding obvious) that it does seem like rather a big spike.

Narratively and structurally, Gun is much tighter than GTA, with fewer strands to its story, and significantly less busywork. Repetitive tasks are largely the preserve of the optional supplementary quests, with story missions keeping things varied, and each one feeling unique and significant in some way. However, as we mentioned, it’s also quite a short game as a result. While complaints about the number of chores in modern open-world titles are certainly well made, there is a sense that the world and setting here could have had more to offer.

Still, while things last, it’s a good time, and retains the all-important feeling that a few more minutes, and a couple more missions, are needed before you switch off for the evening. And while the combat may not be quite as precise as PC gamers might want (I used mouse and keys, God knows how I’d have fared on a controller), it does have more refinement than the likes of Vice City, and encounters feel a little more under your control and less like trying to escape a random and chaotic situation with your life.

Although Gun was also released on the Xbox 360, this PC release seems to be based on the version released on the previous generation of consoles. In this form it definitely feels more like a game of the PS2 era, with compensation for occasionally scrappy visuals in the form of a decent story and some high-quality voice acting. And whether it’s deputising as temporary sheriff, bursting into the saloon to gun down wrong-doers, herding cattle through a gate on the ranch, or having a horseback shootout in the desert, there’s plenty of fun to be had here. Compared with contemporaries it may all be a little slight, but Gun still holds up pretty well as a mid-00s, open-world, Wild West caper.