Gun Preview

For those of you out there that are fans of Neversoft’s work, be prepared for a little stray of the norm! For six straight years, they’ve done nothing but bring fans of Tony Hawk games that many have come to know and love. Whether it’s the hardcore aspects of the sport, the cool licensed music that comes with it or the sheer entertainment of pulling off acrobatic maneuvers you wouldn’t normally be able to in real life, Tony Hawk has been an extremely popular franchise. It’s also in part that Tony Hawk himself is avidly involved in the development the games that bear his name, doing everything possible to ensure final quality.

But this time around, Neversoft has chosen to try something new! This time around they are going at it with full force, guns blazing in the once extremely dangerous Wild West!

Gun is obviously a western-based shooter that will take on the first and third-person perspectives. It is meant to be a very gory and gruesome take, capturing the crazy nature of the American Wild West in the late 19th century.

The story of Gun follows a mountain man that goes by the name Colton White. He lives in Montana, close to the headwaters of Missouri. He eventually accompanies his father, Ned White, to a steamboat so he can meet a friend of his. But something horrible happens in the process, causing a mayhem to ensue. Onboard this boat, a nasty fight breaks out and a preacher ends up killing your father’s friend. Your father then gives you a mysterious medallion, and before the boat ends up exploding, he tosses you overboard saying, “I’m not your father.” Wow, what a way to start what may have been a simple and clichéd storyline!

After that mind numbing event, you take your newly acquired medallion and head to Dodge City. Here you meet up with a prostitute by the name of Jenny and pretty much right then and there a massive gunfight occurs! In the fight seen in a demo, Colton executes a variety of maneuvers to protect himself and give himself an advantage against his enemies. Whether it’s using cover, peeking, rolling out, shooting, getting into a groove using Quick Draw mode, or even hurling sticks of dynamite, he has a wide variety of tactics at his disposal!

Then you will witness a man-on-man fight that Colton himself starts which eventually turns into a massive upstairs and downstairs bar brawl! It involves around 30 or so people, with punching, shooting and people knocking people left and right! Tables will break, glass will shatter, people will fly across the tavern and it all comes complimented with a gruesome display of physical violence!

Now like you’ve probably guessed from all the talk of this “Wild West” lifestyle, Neversoft did indeed not shy away from making this game a violent one. This is actually accentuated by the very physics system that Neversoft created just for this game!

So for those of you violence junkies out there, Gun should not disappoint you whatsoever! You will see just how it might look to blow an adversary 5-10 feet off his horse with the use of a well placed shotgun blast. You can choose to be truly sadistic and nail a guy’s neck with an arrow…..but with a stick of dynamite attached. You can even wield a tomahawk for close encounter combat, and while butchering your enemy to death, you can scalp him!

To bring the level of violence in this game even higher, you even have the option of collecting scalps just to prove you’re not a force to be messed with! Did I mention this game was violent?

Next, unlike Red Dead Revolver, the only other likeable western-based shooter, Gun happens to be a completely free-roaming and open-ended affair! This virtually means that once you get Colton to town, you are free to do whatever you wish. There will be plenty of story-based missions to send Colton through, but it appears that all the ones “on the side” will end up being the most grabbing. These side missions will allow you to build up character points for Colton, which may include upgrades for your horse, gun handling, melee and various other aspects of his battle tactics.