Gun

A Blast from the Past review

FBT saddles up and other clichés as he rides out to tame the wild west.

The Past

When it comes to free-roam, the wild west is perfect for making your own trails; if the buffalos roam why not gamers? But if you say ‘Western free-roam’ aloud, tumbleweeds pass by. Westerns had always been an underdog in gaming, mashed into other genres while pure Westerns usually fall into caricature-driven silliness. Red Dead Redemption was perfect yet still failed to spur a serious resurgence in the genre. Western games just never got over Custer’s Revenge. And then there was Gun.

Released dead-centre of the free-roam explosion of the mid-00’s, Gun was set in the vile west of revisionist western cinema; its brutality earned Gun a BBFC 18 and it exemplified Leone’s description of a western; “where life has no value”. It was a proper wild west experience, William Munny not Roy Rogers and I loved it. I think. I can’t remember much about it other than the violence and a lot of riding but I’d swear Gun was the real west while still hitting all the western beats. Time to yeehaw through the wild west again.

Still a Blast?

Gun’s menu is so western I expect ‘Technicolor’ and ‘Panavision’ to appear while someone yells ‘Rawhide!’ Sweeping plains, buffalos roaming, a stirring score; open and vast, it immediately looks epic. So does the voice cast. Any star who can pull off a moustache is in this – Ron Perlman, Lance Henriksen, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Skerritt, Brad Dourif; all of them at their Marlboro Man best (No Sam Elliott? How’d they miss him?!), while our hero is earthily voiced by Thomas Jane. I’m excited to be a cowboy! Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’.

We are tracker Cole, who, along with his grizzled Pa, boards a Steamboat to collect payment for the animals we shot during a tutorial mission. Once aboard, a prostitute pal of Pa’s gets an axe in the head and the boat is overrun. With the men closing in, Pa tells Cole he’s not his Pa after all and then ignores a chance to escape in favour of making Cole promise to reach Dodge City and visit a prostitute. Pa had his priorities right to the end.

After saving Pa’s back-up prostitute from some impatient types in a gunfight, Cole honours Pa’s memory and sleeps with her. In return, she tells us to reach Empire City, but first we have to defend bowing, rice-hat wearing Chinese workers from howling pissed-off in’juns while they finish a bridge connecting Dodge to Empire. This being a free-roamer, I ignore their plight in favour of getting to know Dodge.

Well that didn’t take long. There’s not much to know really, a saloon where you can get battered at poker (you can cheat, but it doesn’t help this greenhorn) and side-distractions like Wanted posters; capturing the renegades Alive nets more gold than Dead but it’s not easy and they often have cohorts making it hard to not kill them during the fight. Elsewhere there’s the Pony Express where you deliver goods within a set time, but those I quickly give up on thanks to my untrusty steed. Horses in Gun are quite hardy and fast in a straight-line, but they turn like a cruise ship and can get disorientating when you’re swivelling Cole one way and the horse turns another. You can also work with the Marshall to take care of various trouble-makers in town. All those give you gold and add to your reputation, making Cole better at riding, quick-draw etc., so they’re worth doing. Except the Pony Express.

Having exhausted all to do in Dodge I go help secure the bridge. As I fight off waves of American Indians I use quick-draw to shoot dynamite out of the air, stop them tomahawking the workers, generally live out my cowboys vs Indians childhood fantasy, if I’d been born in a time when cultural sensitives weren’t a thing. The game did generate a fair bit of controversy around its depiction of American Indians and Activision’s (Not An) Apology was insulting; “we apologize to any who might have been offended by the game’s depiction of historical events which have been conveyed not only through video games but through films, television programming, books and other media”. To deflect it as nothing we’ve not seen before is the EXACT problem; you’re perpetuating an outdated view from a simplistic and one-sided viewpoint – even in 2005 we knew that image was grossly inaccurate and offensive, and it’s inexcusable because a character comments they’re attacking because the bridge is in their territory; so … they’re right to defend themselves then? The bridge stays with me for the rest of the game, hoping it’ll be justified later but it isn’t, and when you consider the clichéd appearance of the Chinese railway workers, Gun takes on an unpleasant, outdated tone.

Equally unpleasant and outdated is the portrayal of women. There’s only one which has a more than incidental appearance, a prostitute who’s gratuitously murdered. Elsewhere there’s Pa’s prostitute with the axe in her head, a prostitute on wanted posters (who will be ‘castrated’ on capture) and most female NCPs are prostitutes, pacing around in their underwear. We do meet two home-maker wifey types – both of whom get shot – and interact with a couple of nagging Southern-Belle types. That’s it. The male characters though are richly characterised and most were based on real-world cowboys (in name only, their real-life exploits were far more entertaining than Gun’s interpretation) – there have been a few notable women in the old west, just ask Doris Day. There’s no reason they couldn’t have found a place for an equal-footed female, yet not one plot-related woman survives.

The game itself has aged about as well as its treatment of women. The world just isn’t as vast as I recalled – there’s convenient cliffs and less convenient invisible borders stopping you roaming the bare and basic environment and there’s no real exploration; only two or three routes between the two cities which feel like a TV backlot rather than the old west, and there’s nothing in-between them. You can work as a ranch-hand for a local farmer, corralling cattle and the like – it’s a nice little side-mission and a great example of RPG that Gun could have done with more of. It’s just a whole lot of nothing. The game also constantly reminds you to go finish the main mission, like you were otherwise distracted. There’s also an American Indian who asks us to kill local wildlife pestering his tribe, but about the only other thing to do is annoy the locals; running over townsfolk with your horse or shooting/stabbing them causes the town to lose patience (Literally, you get a patience meter) and assemble a posse to go after you; for which there’s quick-draw, an old-west bullet-time. Gunfights are fairly straightforward but a macabre element is Cole can also scalp wounded enemies. Originally, he’d sell scalps to the Apaches, but it was removed pre-release (wouldn’t want to appear insensitive). So it just remains a compulsion of Cole’s. Who has other problems.

The biggest problem with Gun is Cole himself. He’s not for or against the American Indians, he’s indifferent towards them. They’re just between him and his revenge so it’s okay? Later Cole is excused for the bridge scene after saving some American Indians from slavery – which he did utterly by accident. Besides that, he’s boring to play; he never instigates or drives anything, just reacts. He’s not the man with no name, he’s the man with no idea. Less Shane, more lame. Not Josey Wales, it’s Josey fails. He’s not even Woody. When we first meet Cole, he’s napping; our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, turns out a railroad boss is searching for a lost city of gold. Pa had a clue to the city hence his murder, so it’s off to avenge Pa, find the gold and help the Apaches regain their land. Well, that bit just happens by accident again. Along the way Cole finds out he has a little Indian in him – bet you feel bad about the bridge now, dontcha. No? No reaction; it’s frustrating that mid-way through Cole goes Dances With Wolves for the wrong reasons; he ends up working with the Indians by accident, not because of his heritage, or any deeper understanding of their plight but because they are looking to bring down the Rail Baron too (and need a white saviour to do it). All that to explore and we’re concerned with a city of gold? We’re playing the plot to Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958) and it has the same dated red-in’jun killin’ and misogyny.

It’s hard to render an incredibly contentious period in America’s history comfortably, but because cowboys vs Indians has been normalised and the image trivialised, it somehow still seems okay; you’d not get a game where a Slave owner puts down thirty slaves for revolting and I’m sure in years to come, more than a few games and a lot of movies featuring ‘the middle east’ as an enemy will start to feel a little uncomfortable on retro-revisits; yet I bet we’re still shootin’ in’juns. I’m beginning to see why most westerns are something else-terns; sci-fi westerns, cyber-punk westerns, horror-westerns; no one gets offended by the misrepresentation of a zombie.

I hadn’t realised how small Gun really is; small in scale and small-minded. It’s not the game I recall on any level; I think my memory of disappearing into a western is because there wasn’t anything else like this then. To be fair, almost all the missions – as far as a game experience goes, are fun – the Bridge battle included; shooting dynamite out of the air, charging a fort, doing train robberies, quickdraws, defending stagecoaches is going to awaken the little cowboy in anyone. As to its tone – the voice cast, the violence, set-pieces and plotting, it’s clear Gun intended to be a mature, serious game and those were the politics and realities of the time – that a tracker from the mountains isn’t going to view the American Indians as anything but a threat and women were second class citizens. The characters can have those opinions, but the game can’t, not when we’re the hero; playing it is a lot different to excusing some old western as ‘of its time’. Gun’s heart might be in the right place but its head was scalped.

2005 | Developer Neversoft | Publisher Activision

platforms; Win | PS2 | X360

Call of Juarez Gunslinger

A Rage Quit review

FBT gets into the rootinest, tootinest, ragingest game seen in those parts for nigh on a season oldtimer, then goes watch Young Guns.

Call of Juarez has had the weirdest franchise narrative. The first featured two playable characters in a converging western storyline where one tried to solve murders that the other was hunting him for. The prequel Bound in Blood explained the backstory with backstabbing in every cut-scene. Cartel leapt into the present day and centred on three protagonists in an incoherent co-op storyline where they all double-crossed each other. Will Gunslinger finally explain what Juarez keeps calling about?

Sometime in the early 1900s, an ornery old coot ambles into the Bull’s Head Saloon and a young man excitedly recognises him as Silas Greaves, the infamous bounty hunter from his Dime novels. The bar patrons take a knee as Silas relives his legendary career, almost at an end – one more bounty and he’s done.

We open on Silas’ involvement with none other than Billy the Kid. Silas reveals he was one of Billy’s Regulators, helped them escape Pat Garett and won a quick-draw with Bob Ollinger. Thing is, if you’re a student of western lore (or a fan of Young Guns), you know Silas’ stories don’t smell right; the locations, folks and events happened, but not the way Silas tells it, and not with him the hero. One of Billy’s most famous killings was Ollinger (With his own shogun). Silas also recalls how he became a bounty hunter; as a younger man, he and his two brothers were lynched for their money. He survived, the brothers didn’t. Silas swore vengeance and as he hunted the robbers, he fell into bounty hunting and became the legend, driven by hate as the men continued to elude him.

Visually, Gunslinger is close to Darkness II – hyper saturated and hard edged, to reflect Dwight’s dime novels, and the kills have a comic-book look. But it doesn’t forget it’s western cinema influences. The levels recall the romantic imagery of the old west although there’s no involvement the way Gun or Red Dead attempted, it’s practically a rail shooter and you have one mission goal – reach your bounty through a slew of bandits, outlaws, rustlers, robbers, fugitives … I can’t think of any other words to describe bad guys in westerns.

The cowboys we hunt use the terrain well, hidden in bushes or behind rocks and while there’s only three variations, who look like a ZZ Top cover band, they not pushovers – Some prefer running straight towards your muzzle like the psychos of Borderlands (another game whose aesthetic it shares), and letting them get too close is dangerous; they’re dangerous at a distance too but there’s a bullettime where Silas moves faster and enemies are highlighted. That doesn’t make it easier, just a lot more frantic. It might actually be one of the better examples of bullettime, you have an edge not a get out of jail button press. There’s also super-bullettime called Sense of Death. When near death, and assuming it’s not a hail of bullets or dynamite that’s about to take Silas down, everything will slow to the speed of a bullet and you’ll see the kill shot come flying at you. You have a second to move Silas and it’ll either skim past or hit him in the face, and there’s also nice standoff moments where hitting the right keys will make Silas quick-draw his way out. In some of the more brutal fights it all happens at once and coupled with the general frenzy of the fights and the bloody messes you make of the cowboys, it’s all pretty intense. Gameplay wise, Gunslinger is up there; the fights aren’t for the greenhorns, it’s brutal and unforgiving, even after leveling up – although level ups don’t mean the cowpokes become cowboys, they’re constantly a Nightmare mode. Once you level up you have three skill trees dedicated to pistol, shotgun and rifle – He can only carry two at a time though, you’d think a grizzled bounty hunter could manage a third. It’s great fun though, Silas kicks ass. You can see why the bar patrons are enjoying his tales. At least the believable ones.

As Silas continues his story, the patrons become suspicious of his escapades. They point out inconsistencies, question the claims Silas makes and the sheer luck that the bounty hunter seems to keep having; and the game doesn’t seem to believe him either.

When questioned, Silas’ mastery of storytelling comes to the fore. When the patrons rubbish his doubtful tales, he corrects them for assuming elements of his story; when one scoffs that a bounty of his is still alive, he retorts with ‘I didn’t say he died did I?’ – well, no but … and then they reappear alive, having strangely survived – brilliantly, the game reworks itself to match his story; He mentions being surrounded by Apaches and we’re in the middle of shooting dozens of them when we hear someone point out they were never even in that area and Silas says he meant they fought like Apaches – suddenly they all respawn as ZZ Top. In another he claims to have gotten out of a dead end after finding a body with dynamite – but there isn’t one … and then a body drops from the sky in front of him. Once, we battled through an explosive-laden mine, carefully lining up shots to hit cowboys not dynamite but eventually it all goes off and we’re running through tunnels and just as it seems Silas has talked himself into a corner he says, ‘but I realised the futility of that plan’ and the game spins all the way back to the beginning and we replay a more believable route. Everyone tuts, but Silas just carries on, as his story gets closer to his final, personal bounty.

Silas also plays with gaming conventions. Several times he’s trapped until he does an action; kills everyone, stops something happening etc., and then says ‘then I noticed a ladder that had escaped my attention’ or ‘I noticed an escape route’ and the game quickly places them there. There’s sly nods to gaming clichés, such as pointing out how is he carrying dynamite and not getting blown to smithereens when shot – Or constantly surviving getting shot? He also has some cracking death lines, dryly saying things like “I just needed to jump to the cliff *I jump only to fall off* assuming I don’t fall off.” Alright smartarse. I wondered if they were actually scripted fails they’re so well done. You can also find ‘nuggets’ which unlock the real stories behind Silas’ tales. You’re not going to read them, but they carry hefty XP so it’s worth tracking them down. All of this self-awareness though, even with Silas’ unreliable narrator act isn’t quite enough to hold it all together; there’s a serious threat under Silas’ genial nature, like he’s giving them all this hokum to disarm the patrons, play up the harmless old soak routine. You imagine one of his rapt audience is his final bounty but we never see them other than in brief dime novel stills and not being involved in those scenes drains the tension. The episodic, arcade nature doesn’t help either; Silas and his wily ways does, but the story doesn’t follow through. Had it been a mystery where each chapter gave you the opportunity to reveal something about their identity or clues to narrow down the suspects and we cut back to a tension-filled Saloon where we could question or call them out like some Western edition of Cluedo it could have married it all up but you’re just not invested in Silas’ final reckoning.

Gunslinger even manages to do the good old red in’juns about right. One mission has him tracking ‘Grey Wolf’ an Apache whose tribe is causing trouble. After an epic battle, a cornered Grey Wolf points out Silas’ revenge is consuming him, which causes Silas to pause and Grey Wolf escapes; Stricken by his words, Silas gives up saying he realised it was an unfair bounty considering what the Apaches have been through. Take note, Gun. We catch a glimpse of Grey Wolf passing behind a tree – from which a real wolf emerges. Nice touch.

By now Silas has tangled with every famous outlaw in western history; and what an annoying tangle it is. Once you’ve reached a gunslinger of note, the game goes into a stand-off. Using the mouse, you focus your concentration – which inexplicably wanders; if I was facing John Wesley Hardin who killed 40+ men including one for snoring, I’d keep my eye on him. You then have to use two keys to constantly keep Silas’ hand above the gun ready to draw. It becomes the gamer equivalent of pat your head and rub your tummy. Why am fighting Silas’ compulsion to put his hands in his pockets? You can’t watch the percentage of gun grabbing at the same time as keep your eye on your opponent; one will drift. Then once they shot you have to dodge left or right to avoid their shots and keep the gaze on target and you have fire once to pull your gun then again to fire – if he’s not been distracted by something. It’s rage-inducing. You can cheat, pulling before they do but that gets you a Dishonourable kill and zero XP. But it’s worth it, stand-offs are annoying enough to sacrifice XP. Later stand-offs get harder until even cheating won’t do it. It really is something that your heart sinks at the sight of a shoot-out in a western.

Eventually, Silas’ revenge sends him spiralling into increasingly outlandish stories and the game takes on a beautifully surreal edge – at one point he excuses himself and the game repeats the same sequence as we hear the patrons pick apart his legend until he returns; to confront none other than both Butch and Sundance. The man he wants is supposedly part of their posse. We face off and … enter a double stand-off. Not only am I trying to juggle concentration and gun-hand and anticipate a draw but I have to flick between the two of them to work out which will shoot first; that’s another set of keys. To recap, two keys to gauge where the hand should go, two more keys to switch between opponents, and move the mouse to keep him focused. Silas may be the fastest hand in the west but even he doesn’t have three of them. And I have to re-concentrate each time I switch while the gun-hand makes like Thing and takes off and when one does fire I have dodge and fire back AND flick to the other opponent and dodge his bullets while – Or not. That’s four keys, two places to look (three if you can’t touch type) in two QT sequences plus some surgical mouse-movement and timed clicking. And, the story just made clear they were now enemies and he only needed one of them alive. Just let them have the quick-draw and interrogate the other! I just get so angry with it, so annoyed I crash out and never go back. Rage Quit.

So I never found out if Silas was telling the truth, if he got his vengeance, if any of it was true. And that’s really annoying. Silas was great company and I’m really aggravated I didn’t get to see how his story ended because of idiotic over-complicated controls. I don’t know if it’s easier on a console and I don’t care; all the imagination and subversion in this story, the bullettime, quick-shots and Sense of Death and they couldn’t save one for the quick-draw or come up with something else? At the very least, Gunslinger could have worked like Gat Out of Hell or Blood Dragon, a subversive companion to the main series, but it’s an Add without an On and the quickdraw ruins an otherwise brilliant game that could have stood on it’s own. Why can’t PC Gamers have a good western? I loved this game until it went all button-mash.

A narrative thread throughout the JoC games has been betrayal, and this time I feel betrayed. I’m ignoring Juarez’s Call.

2013 | Developer Techland | Publisher Ubisoft

platforms; win | PS3 | X360