If you're like me, and have greedily devoured the first season of HBO's Deadwood, then you're in the mood for a gritty, greasy Western game full of cussing and action. The West was a different world, one where female 'company' was shared with fifty other men and whiskey replaced water. A world that reflected the hard life of the American Frontier; where men made their own rules and women followed them. Neversoft's Gun, in a surprising genre shift from their Tony Hawk series, attempts to deliver such an experience. Mostly, it succeeds, but there are a few caveats.

Firstly, Gun features a pretty impressive voice cast, with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Lance Henriksen, Ron Perlman, and Brad Dourif (the doctor from Deadwood ' yet another nod to the series) all giving truly excellent vocal performances. The main story follows Colton White (Thomas Jane, who also starred as the Punisher in the recent movie), who starts the game accompanying his father, Ned White (Kristofferson) on a hunting trip. Kristofferson is hilariously terse as he gruffly instructs you in the finer details of hunting. This first level gets you acquainted with the main controls for the game, especially the important quick-draw ability.

The quick-draw ability, rather than just another example of the 'bullet-time' gimmick being put into a game, is actually an essential skill easily mastered in Gun. When surrounded by five or six enemies, quick-draw is a great tool for culling the bad guys down, and cull them you will. When a nice boat trip turns sour, Ned and Colton face off against a heap of bad guys after 'The Item'. Entering quick-draw is simply a press of the Y-button away and drains fairly quickly at the start of the game. Whilst in quick-draw, time slows down, your gun has unlimited ammo (actually you always have unlimited ammo for pistols but you don't need to reload during quick-draw) and your bullets do a lot more damage. Arrows appear on the screen in this mode, which represent nearby enemies' locations, which can be quickly targeted with a flick of the left analogue stick in the direction of your next victim. It's an incredibly fluid and intuitive system, and is a vast improvement on the targeting system employed in the recently similar game, Red Dead Revolver. Comparisons will naturally be made but Gun is actually a superior title as its story is much more compelling and its world much more open-ended.

Riding a horse also becomes a crucial skill for many missions so it's a good thing that it is so easy to do. Mounting up is as easy as pressing the white button, and whilst saddled Colton can easily ride and shoot at enemies. It's pretty cool to ride rings around a bunch of mounted enemies, go into quick-draw, blast them to bits and within about an hour of playing, you'll be doing so with no worries at all. Horses can also be used as weapons, by sliding into enemies and trampling them underfoot. I enacted several evil giggles as I rode into town and promptly started to trample anyone who got in my way. Do so, however, and you will incur the wrath of the townsfolk with a 'town patience' meter that dwindles the more you stir up folks. You will get attacked if you push it too far, and this is analogous to the cops in GTA games, but you never really feel like you're being severely punished for being a bastard as anyone that gets in your way gets taken down pretty quickly by your superior gun skills and quick-draw ability.

Of particular note throughout the game are the excellent character and animal animations. Horses walk, canter and gallop like real horses and the change in their speed, via how hard you push the left analogue stick is fluid and natural. Many missions require you to follow mounted allies or beat people to certain locations. You therefore need to learn how to balance spurring your horse (B button) but also keeping within your horse's limits. Push your horse too hard and you're likely to cross the finish line just behind the little fat kid from Hey Dad, or worse, they may drop dead under you!

Enemy death animations are also quite a laugh, for the simple fact that they look so damn real. Shoot a guy in the foot or leg and he'll stumble from it before shooting back; hit a guy in the head and he's not likely to have one left (especially once you get the higher powered rifles and shotguns). Similarly, popping cowboys off of horses sees them falling from the saddle realistically. The damage from guns, particularly the shotgun, can get quite gruesome, and some may feel it is a little gratuitous as it's possible to go up to a slain cowboy and splatter his head into what resembles a broken vase (and I think Gun is the first game to ever let you scalp someone). It is, however, fun to experiment with the different weapons that become available to Colton as the game progresses (usually after defeating a boss or mission). The stash includes pistols (you even get to go akimbo eventually), shotguns, knives, hatchets, bows, and rifles, all of which deal differing amounts of damage and have their own individual statistics for things such as reload rate and capacity.

Gun's missions are generally a lot of fun, and there are quite a few side missions as well, such as the aforementioned mining and ranching. There are also bounties, which involve either killing or subduing a target (by grabbing them with the white button). You get more money for bringing them in alive, but not so much that it stops you using them for target practice with your newest weapon and your hard earned money can then be spent on things such as increased weapon damage, health, or lengthened quick-draw time. It's not quite as open-ended as GTA, but the option is there if you enjoy a particular activity. The main story missions are all quite exhilarating, especially some of the earlier missions that see you breaking out of jail and stealing horses to escape, and one where you set up explosive barrels to ambush a train full of Indian slaves.

I am not a huge fan of protection missions, and so found those that required Colton to 'cover' a particular character rather irritating. But then the difficulty of Gun, even on normal, is not particularly hard. I died a few times, mainly because I was stuffing around, but on those occasions the game actually popped me back mid-mission, which is a commendable programming addition.

Graphically, Gun can look great but is also at times, a mixed bag. The world looks very much like any Western movie, with sweeping plains, grazing animals, and ambush-perfect ravines twisting throughout the map. The textures do a good job of making the world quite pretty, and explosions are satisfyingly meaty affairs, but it fails to really compete with most of the graphically strong titles that have been released recently. This really doesn't matter, though, as most of the time you'll be more interested in the mission you're on and layin' lead into bad guys. The stylised story cut-scenes and realistic animations more than cover over any graphical disappointments.

The only other negative comment that can be made about Gun is that its main story is quite short. A competent gamer will probably be able to pass the main story within an overnight-hire window (assuming no pesky interruptions), and unless the side missions really appeal to you there seems little to entice a second play through. You can actually keep playing the game once the main story mode is finished, but seeing as the main reason for actually completing side missions is to increase your stats, once you've finished the game this is no longer important. Having said that, the story is a good one and perhaps if you buy Gun you may want to bump the difficulty above normal, as it is quite easy to cruise through otherwise. Also, for those who actually understand how to play poker, Gun features gaming tables, which may provide for your gambling fix of a weekend, and helps to lengthen Gun's gameplay. The only disappointment is that the only game available is poker, the interior of the casino contains other games such as roulette, but you can't actually play anything but poker, which I suck at! As a result, the world itself doesn't feel quite as alive as it could have.

It's also quite amazing that Neversoft failed to actually include fun shooting mini-games or competitions ' such as shooting targets or archery contests that aren't side missions but which would act to increase your stats. Instead, the only way you can increase them is by taking the side missions, which as explained above are fun for a while but tend to get repetitive and are a bit limited. There is no recourse for increasing your skills simply by being a badass and actually using your skills in the main game areas. As a result, the side missions feel kind of tacked on, and they are even labeled 'side missions' in the game. A little bit more variety in this side of the game, to bring you back after the story ends would have almost raised Gun into an all time classic game'