The premise of Gun is simple. Run around in a free-roaming environment, get in some gory gun battles, and bring in those bounties. The free-roaming environment is one of Gun’s most endearing features. And the horseback gun battles even make things better. Unfortunately a short story-mode and graphical issues on all version of the game will leave you wanting.

In Gun you walk in the shoes (or more accurately, boots) of Colton White. White had a falling out of sorts with quite a few people. Actually he was betrayed, and now it is time for revenge. You spend a good deal of the story reaping revenge and bringing in the bounties. The story is good, but ultimately a little too short. Also there is a great deal of violence, gore, and vulgar language. At times the language and gore felt forced, as if it was only there for show. You will also have a few side-missions, but they aren’t anything special, and they won’t keep your attention for long.

The main story starts off with White and Ned. Ned raised White and is wonderfully voiced by Kris Kristofferson. Ned and White find their way to a steamboat which is carrying an important artifact. Ned seems to have knowledge of the artifact, but the boat is besieged. White escapes, and makes his way to Dodge City. He will face corrupt lawmen, a murderous preacher, renegade army psychopaths, merciless outlaws, and warring tribes. The story is compelling, and the cut-scenes keep you wanting to move forward.

And the story keeps you moving forward. It keeps you moving forward way too fast. I enjoyed the game and its concept, but six to ten hours of story just isn’t enough to warrant full price for this game. There were several points in the game where it seemed a rather important plot element had been introduced, and then all of a sudden everything changed before the developers took advantage of some excellent gameplay opportunities. Gun could have easily been stretched out to fifteen or twenty hours with the same plot. They could have just added more substance, more missions.

You have several ways to make your revenge. You spend a good amount of the time running and shooting in a third-person perspective. White has some pretty authentic weapons at his disposal including pistols, rifles, shotguns, rifles, bows, and dynamite. He also has a magic flask that refills his life when he drinks from it. Well it’s not exactly magic, but it seems that way.

One of the most amusing aspects of Gun was the horseback battles. You jump on a horse, and take off into the sunset. You can shoot from your horse, or just trample your foes with your horse’s mighty hooves. White can make his four legged friend speed up by spurring it, but this also wears the horse out. In fact, ridding a horse around is your best mode of transportation.

Of course you will also get a few side missions. You can bring in some bounties to bring in a little cash. The bounties are usually the same. Find the baddies, take out the gang and either subdue or kill the leader and collect the bounty. You can also take a hand at poker or even cattle ranching. The side missions do add a little more to the experience, but they don’t make up for the short story mode.

Visually Gun isn’t as impressive as one would have hoped. It looks average on the Playstation 2, Xbox, PC and the Gamecube. Gun does suffer from some pretty nasty slowdown which makes thing feel pretty choppy when the action is at its height. It also made it onto the Xbox 360 as a launch title. You would expect better graphics across the board, and you would be let down. Playing Gun in HD on the 360 just brings the flaws out. You see, as far as I can tell, all we get is a near direct port of the Xbox version of the game. Gun just doesn’t feel like a next-gen title on the 360. The only advantage I noticed for the 360 version was that the frame rate seemed to be much more stable.

The physics are realistic, and the world feels like the old west. Explosions and horse tromping sends your foes flying with some decent rag-doll movements. The characters move realistically, and almost feel alive. The world is full of a whole bunch of tumbleweeds, townspeople, and dirt. Overall the world feels authentic enough, at least when it’s not over the top with the western themes.

The voice-actors did an excellent job, and really brought even more life to the characters. White is voiced by Thomas Jane. The primary villains are voiced by Lance Henriksen and Brad Dourif who all give great performances. The rest of the sounds are authentic enough, and keep things feeling as they should.

Gun gives us a good, relatively authentic, western shooter. It has a gripping story, and some variety to the side quests. Unfortunately the graphical issues and the extremely short story will keep Gun from being remembered years from now. This is a good game, and it was a blast fighting on horseback, but it just didn’t feel finished. Also the lack of care given to the Xbox 360 port helps illustrate that the game could have used a little more time in development. If they would have doubled the story mode, and given us a better port to the 360 then Gun could have been one of the best games of the year.