Gun

Gun is an open world action adventure game set in the Wild West that was released in 2005 for Windows and consoles with an enhanced PlayStation Portable version a year later (Gun: Showdown). Often compared to the highly popular Red Dead Redemption franchise that would be released 5 years later Gun is one of the original video games that opt to explore the 1880 Wild West setting.

Within Gun players take on the role of Colton White as he attempts to take revenge on those that have wronged him in his past. While this is your core focus and takes players across the realistic locations of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico you’ll find the open world allows for countless hours of additional content. Your adventure starts with Colton and his father Ned travelling together on the Missouri River where they hunt and sail on the many riverboats that travel around.

While on such a riverboat they are attacked by a group of bandits lead by the preacher Reverend Josiah Reed that kicks of a series of missions to discover the truth of Colton and Ned’s relationship while serving as an important figure to many settlements along the way. This sees players help townships, individual people and be drawn into a broader resistance movement and military level engagements with the weapons of the day.

Along the way this also includes plenty of side missions for players to accept, hunting, mining and a number of mini games to create a realistic Wild West experience where you have multitudes of activities to undertake. Side missions in particular have great variety and all come with their own backstory to give them a place within the world that feels natural in design. Rewarding players that participate in these missions and other various activities with gold you’ll in turn take this currency to unlock new items and upgrades for your character.

Weapons and combat in general within Gun stay tightly to Wild West expectations with revolvers, rifles and shotguns being the guns available in the game. Other weapons include a bow (with a huge variety of arrow types), explosives and a large number of melee weapons which see plenty of use given the AI will often charge the player to add combat variation.

Through this combat players are intended to focus on the protection of the innocent while gaining a good reputation but of course there is no requirement to do so and players can easily take up the much harder evil approach to gameplay. These less than desirable acts aren’t without consequence though and will quickly attract the law and civilians to attack the player that make your ultimate goal significantly harder.

Summary:

• Brings open world gameplay into the Wild West with a diverse range of locations set in 1880.
• Protect the innocent or cause mayhem in the towns you pass through to leave a lasting impression.
• Take part in side missions, activities and mini games to earn rewards and fill out the game world.
• Huge variety of firearm and melee weapons to mix and match for combat challenges.
• Released in 2005 for Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox (and Xbox 360 with backwards compatibility) with an enhanced version for PlayStation Portable.

Links:

• Buy Gun (Amazon)

Videos:

Review Platform: PC