Cue man playing harmonica… Time was when the Wild West used to be a place of good and bad people, right and wrong; a place of absolutes and heroes and villains. Well, this is nothing like how old Hollywood decided the West was won. It has little but location in common with John Wayne or The Lone Ranger. Neversoft isn’t interested in black-and-white hats or heroes who drink milk, and if protagonist Colton White drank down a bottle of blood while chomping on a cigar rolled with the ashes of his enemies, he wouldn’t be acting out of the game’s overall character. This is dusty violence as spectacle rather than commentary and it’s the direct result of how Hollywood, and subsequently television, now views The Old West; harsh, violent, bloody and muddied with gore and viscera. People swear. There are prostitutes. No one dies clean.

When you’ve just spent a good few minutes scalping Indians (yes, Indians not Native Americans – we’re using the game’s vernacular) for no reason, and they’ve been screaming in shrill tongues as you saw the top of their heads off, you have to ask yourself questions concerning the nature of modern interactive entertainment and what it can give you that films can’t. It’s one thing sitting in for an evening with a bottle of gin, tissues, and the DVD boxset of Deadwood, it’s another to actively act like a complete bastard to individuals whose people were decimated by genocide because you have been given freedom to do so. This is a game from the school of thought where violence is truth and blowing a man’s eye socket out of his skull with your six guns equals honesty. Where Grand Theft Auto has satire to justify its amorality, Gun simply has the attitude that, hey, that’s how it was.

We could spoon out platitudes that attempt to justify, explain or excuse easily the most violent title we’ve played, but we’re going to use the reasoning of French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. When asked why there was so much blood in Pierrot Le Fou, he said “That’s not blood, that’s the colour red”. Trouble is, that once you’ve taken the violence out of the discussion there’s not much left.

Gun follows on the path set by GTA, and that means it has an open structure that flanks a central story. After Kris Kristofferson (your adoptive father) has shown you how to shoot a revolver and rifle and has died in a heroic manner – thus giving you reason to avenge him – you ride horses instead of cars and are given the option to go wherever you like should you want to. Naturally, the West isn’t as detailed a place as a modern city, and so everything has been compressed so you don’t spend hours traipsing across empty deserts or negotiating crags. This gives the game a contrived and often totally unnatural feel that’s occasionally beautiful, and also means that actual exploration doesn’t feel as adventurous as it should. While you can visit towns for a game of poker or take jobs herding cattle or hunting buffalo, mining gold or collect bounties, there’s more entertainment in actually pursuing the story. If you want to improve your statistics before you take on a gang whose destruction is central to the plot, then look for a wanted poster and accept the gig. Unfortunately dishing out justice is the same as killing one of the game’s many resilient boss characters and their easy-to-snuff henchmen.

It’s a violent game and when it’s not being violent, it’s not that enticing. There are, however, plenty of reasons to pull a trigger because the game’s title isn’t a fashion accessory. Sure, there are delicately animated horses to enjoy and missions that involve moving barrels of TNT rather than killing, but it is the gun fighting that defines the main reason to play. Shooting comes in many forms, from using shotguns to rifles and Gattling guns, but its main guise is that of the Quick-draw, which breaks down to using a pistol to watch a man die in slow motion while your Quickdraw meter runs down. This is death as spectacle and while it’s never less than perversely pretty to watch, it feels more like Robocop than Clint Eastwood to play. It’s also the main reason why gunfights don’t quickly corrode into chaotic slaughter. It feels automatic.

So it’s all about violent acts and enjoyment thereof, but it doesn’t provide constant butchery and actual gunplay isn’t as strong as a game called Gun would suggest. This isn’t GTA with cowboys, but it has merits that maintain integrity, as long as you’re impressed with the death animations that make people die like mo-capped stuntmen rather than rag dolls.

Will Johnston