GUN is a very weird game. It is presented and marketed as if it's an Old West-styled GTA-type game: a sandbox world with lots to explore and do; but in reality, GUN is actually, essentially, a PS2/Gamecube/Xbox-era action-adventure game with a big hub world, like Ty 2 or Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. You only have a few basic weapon types, and get straight upgrades to each slot over the course of the game; you do side missions to increase your stats; you get health upgrades for finishing main quests; you buy passive upgrades from shops; there are some boss fights; there's even a collectable in the form of minable gold deposits. If you take the game in this light, I think it's more enjoyable probably than if you go in expecting simply a poor man's RDR. The graphics are mediocre for the time the came out, and the game doesn't support widescreen natively (although there's a fan patch that fixes this). The music tends toward generic sweeping faux-John Williams orchestral stuff which mostly does not fit the game very well. The story is a generic, mediocre western, which feels like it is being told in fast forward: no plot events have any time to breathe, and there's almost no characterization. You soon realize how small the world is, and almost every level takes place within its confines; there's not much in the way of exploration to do: you'll know the world like the back of your hand a third of the way through the story. The side missions are mostly generic- races, escort missions, etc, with a frustrating poker tourney minigame that you have to beat six rounds of to get 100%. The game tracks your progress in percentages, but there's no reward for getting 100%, and you can get all the upgrades with about 80% completion I'd guess. Even getting 100%, the game probably didn't take me more than eight hours, but better that than it overstays its welcome. Overall, GUN is thoroughly mediocre, surprisingly goofy at times, and worth playing only if you NEED another western game.
