Gun may be the greatest game of all time....

[Chris]

self explanitory.....fucking spectactular. especially for a fan of westerns. this was a week of western goodness. First I get Brian Azzarello's Loveless, a western comic about a souther soldier, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray's Jonah Hex #1, a fantastic western about a scarred veteran killer with a conscience....The devil of the west. Killer of killers and so on. Amazing fucking comic. After that there was a western marathon showing butch cassidy and the sundance kid and high noon. classics. and of course I've been playing the full version of gun for a couple days now and it's fucking fargtacular. Wasily one of the greatest games I have played in a long long time....It's like GTA but better and more beautiful. and sexy fun. smooth and gabletacular. I can't make up enough words to describe how much fun I'm having with this game.

[Zeus]

I'm dyin' to check this one out myself.....in about 3 months when it's $30 :-)

[Chris]

worth it at full cost man.....I've been playing like crazy and have still barely scratched the surface.....it's all about the poker

[SineSwiper]

You're biased. You like westerns :)

[Flip]

I plan on getting it, soon.... like REAL soon. I'll post an unbiased opinion soon there afterl.

[Julius Seeker]

IGN

8.0 Presentation
Standard Tony Hawk-like menus, one helluva story, and some wonky interfaces here and there.
7.0 Graphics
Good wardrobes and leathery faces, but awkward animations and motion capture. A few pretty sections of landscape dull ones.
8.0 Sound
Excellent voice acting and a perfect soundtrack. But? do these Apaches sound realistic or like total caricatures?
7.5 Gameplay
Loose controls and a giant bounding box are mostly fixed with QuickDraw and a flick-style targeting control. Lots of meaningless side missions and a few really good story-based ones.
7.5 Lasting Appeal
The game itself is about 10 hours. It's not long, but for an action game that's about par for the course. Thus, lots of side missions are left, but once the story is done, are the worth doing?
8.0
OVERALL
(out of 10 / not an average)


GAMESPOT

Gameplay 7
Graphics 8
Sound 8
Value 6
Tilt 8
OVERALL 7.4

[SineSwiper]

A few pretty sections of landscape dull ones.

I reject IGN's opinion solely based on shitty English.

[Chris]

yeah it does take only 10 hours......if you rush through and ignore all the side missions which run from easy to quite fun and diffiult, never play poker, just play right on through......guess what.....GTA took about the same if you ignore the sidemissions and everything......

[Julius Seeker]

one helluva story, and some wonky interfaces here and there.

Yeah! What right do they have to slaughter our language?!

[Julius Seeker]

yeah it does take only 10 hours......if you rush through and ignore all the side missions which run from easy to quite fun and diffiult, never play poker, just play right on through......guess what.....GTA took about the same if you ignore the sidemissions and everything......

Time to finish a game is more or less a subjective matter. For example, it takes some 25 hours to finish Final Fantasy 10 when it takes some people 35, others 45, and still others 85, or 175. I guess the measurement dhould be how long a person is willing to spend on a game; games can be replayed too!

[Don]

Reviewers nowaday pretty much assume you only play a game once and the longer a game takes the better it is.

Though, to be fair, for a lot of game there is no reason to play it more than once.

[Julius Seeker]

Reviewers nowaday pretty much assume you only play a game once and the longer a game takes the better it is.

Though, to be fair, for a lot of game there is no reason to play it more than once.

That's only when the game (well, we are talking about RPG/Adventures here I assume) has much chore work to do in it. Games like Chrono Trigger which are almost fun 100% of the way through are definitely worth a lot of replays. Well, this is true if you are anything like me at least.

[Zeus]

Reviewers nowaday pretty much assume you only play a game once and the longer a game takes the better it is.

Though, to be fair, for a lot of game there is no reason to play it more than once.

Any game that's a blast to play is worth it again. I'm lookin' forward to MGS3: Subsistence 'cause I loved playing it the first time.

And what's wrong with a 10-15 hour game? That's still $4 an hour or so, which is better than a movie. Plus you can sell it and recoup some of your money since you have a tangible object. I don't see the issue with shorter games, as long as they're good.

[Don]

Any game that's a blast to play is worth it again. I'm lookin' forward to MGS3: Subsistence 'cause I loved playing it the first time.

And what's wrong with a 10-15 hour game? That's still $4 an hour or so, which is better than a movie. Plus you can sell it and recoup some of your money since you have a tangible object. I don't see the issue with shorter games, as long as they're good.

If only people, and in particular, game makers, actually believe this.

Unfortunately, they do not. Even Megaman X8 takes 8 hours to go from start to beginning without doing anything special. Fate: Hollow Ataraxia has about 100 hours of garbage time and about 3 hours of the finest dialogue ever written in a game, and they sure aren't advertising the 3 hours of godly gaming goodness.

[Julius Seeker]

That's a problem with a lot of RPG's, they inflate their length with chores such as battleing X number of monsters to get to a certain power level so you can actually have a chance at getting past specific bosses.

Some games have great systems such as Vagrant Story; Kill enemy X and get something special (more HP, str, weapon, etc..) it's not about how many you kill, but rather who you kill.

Legend of Zelda/Illusion of Gaia system: Defeat bosses to gain extra power, perform specific tasks or open certain treasure boxes to acquire items and abilities.

Final Fantasy 8 - Multi method: kill enemy type X to get item A/B/C, use specific commands (card, mug) to get item A/B/C play cards to get specific cards, buy items. Each can be refined into magic which is used to power up characters.

Chrono Trigger - uses kill X amount of enemies, but due to the lack of random battles, the game is passable by just defeating most of what you are forced to fight along the way. Battles are flashy, quick, and a lot of fun. There's also a small degree of strategy involved (besides cure + attack) which is rare in RPGs, especially those by Square.

[Don]

Chrono Trigger's battle system isn't anything particularly innovative. It was simple and yet effective, and the battles really aren't easily avoidable but there isn't enough of them to be annoying. Similar to Grandia it's a game you will be sufficiently leveled if you just kill everything you're supposed to kill once.

Problems is some games would be too long even if you fight everything you're supposed to just once. In FFX I was using Flee on about half of the enemies and it still took a while to get through the game, and that had one of the more exciting battle systems. Most games don't give you the option of a guaranteed flee and require more random battles. In today's RPG every game should, at the minimum, have an easily accessible guaranteed flee command so at least there's a way out of the boredom.

[SineSwiper]

Well, with games like Xenosaga II, Shadow Hearts, and Shadow of Colossus, developers are starting to realize that hundreds of monsters don't exactly make the games more fun.

[kali o.]

To put the thread back on topic...

I'm less impressed with Gun, personally. Not that it's a bad game mind you...its just a tad shallow for my taste. For example, the mechanics with which the side quests occur are rather "weak"...its hard to explain. Like, there are relatively few side missions available, and they feel entirely spawned and tacked on - which would make sense in a game as large as GTA maybe but not here. And the world, while decent sized, feels pretty damn empty.

On the plus side, characters are interesting and the story seems deep (though I'm just a little past the 'Jenny meets the Preacher' bit, where the sequences just before that didn't make a whole lot of sense). The game reminds me that there are tons of cool western settings/history that deserve RPG treatment....we need more Western rpg devs.

So far, good game but I wouldn't pay full price for it. Gonna try The Movies later and see how that goes.

[Chris]

ok kali generally the perfect review. some of the game makes sense. The story is fantastic right up till the end. the only problem is that there isn't much replay value at all. no real unlockables or anything. big problem there. the sidemissions for the pony express and peacekeeping are fun and make sense. hunt the gang in the city rescue trapped caravan from injuns. the story flows. It's a great story and I love it just for the setting but yeah. not a lot of replay value and yes, it is a very short game.....so wait for it to ht budget. me I couldn't wait and am glad I bought it due to my love of westerns. but yeah....wait a few months till it's 30-40 and then it will be more worth it

[Zeus]

That's what I'm thinkin'

[Blotus]

After two days of hardcore playing, I'm at 100%. I don't think there's anything left to do but post my impressions:

Good: Scalping

Bad: No point to the scalping (no bounties for scalps? Boo)

Good: Story, characters, excellent pacing

Good: Slaughtering entire herds of buffalo and wild ponies without reprocussion

Bad: The last boss fight vs. McGruder (sp?)

Good: Texas Hold 'Em

Bad: Shitty opponent AI in Hold 'Em (big blind folding before a free flop, all-in with a 10-high on a five-player table)

Good: Horse riding and subsequent horse spurring-to-death

Bad: Only one brothel


Overall, a great rental game. Enjoyable, but one time through was enough for me.

[Chris]

man the last boss was a bitch to figure out but easy as hell once you figure it out. I found that funny. and for any difficulty you need to play on hard. hard is playable with challenge and the texas hold 'em AI is also smarter and kicks your ass from the first hand. If you play on normal the game is easy. a little too easy. hard is actually relatively difficult and insane is well, insane......they added difficulty in a way that drives you crazy. especially on that first escort mission that took me about an hour to beat on insane because of that bad guys can actually shoot thing. g

[Blotus]

Ah, I didn't even think about the difficulty setting affecting the hold 'em AI. Think I'll try playing on insane just for that.

[Lox]

Ok, I have a question about a fight in Gun.

--POSSIBLE SPOILER--

The fight with the guy who throws the dynamite and uses Ned's rifle: how do you beat him?

[Chris]

headshots.....it's all about headshots on that bastard....then just run the second fight.......final boss is a bitch and a half but once you figure him out he's cake