This game, while getting solid reviews, didn't exactly light up the charts when it first came out. However, it definitely stands the test of time. It's one of the best capital ship combat simulations to date with battles being fairly slow and ponderous and more of a chess match / slug fest than a dogfight simulation. The graphics are par for the course for 2002 but it doesn't detract. I've put a lot of hours into this game - replayed it three times through. My only complaint is the rather 'on rails' nature of the story and the missions - if they had made it more of an open universe/sandbox experience it would instantly become one of the best games of all time. But - I'll take it for what it is: the best Starship combat simulator ever made. I'd expect nothing less from the creators of Their Finest Hour, SWOTL, and the X-Wing games.
I have a soft spot in my heart for this game so this review is probably a tad biased. Having played and loved Outlaws way back in the day, I'd been waiting years for another good western video game and along came GUN. I bought it and gave it a shot despite reading the (mostly) negative reviews. It's not fantastic. It's not amazing. It's not even overly large for an open world game. In fact, most of the in-game missions have you walk across the street to complete them, and the one long journey mission towards the beginning of the game where you 'open up the rest of the map' has you leaving one town and running this long circuitous gauntlet of enemies, finally making it to the far town. After you complete that, you learn that the two towns are almost next door to each other and there's literally a straight shot path between the two that takes about 30 seconds to cross. What GUN is, is... fun. I enjoyed the slow-mo quick draw mechanic. I enjoyed the gambling for money to buy upgrades and weapons. I enjoyed the upgrades and the weapons because they definitely made a difference to the gameplay. The story was somewhat derivative but serviceable. The characters were somewhat archetypical but passable. I just mostly enjoyed the western setting. The graphics at the time did it justice and it was nice to ride around on horses through canyons, fields, and streams. Given the nature of the story I entered it feeling like the music should be Man with No Name Ennio Morricone but instead found it was Dances With Wolves John Barry, but even that I eventually came to accept as fitting for the game's atmosphere. In all, given the extreme dearth of the Western Genre in video games, there was enough going on in GUN to provide a fun, engaging experience. I've since gone back and played it twice more, and have started it up and just ridden around on numerous occasions. For some reason I could never get into Red Dead Redemption. Just not a console person I guess. If they ever came out with a GUN2 I would buy it in a heartbeat, but clearly this will not happen. Here's hoping RDR2 is more engaging for me than the first one. Till then, I'm going to buy this, download it, and ride around the west some more.
