Review | The Gunstringer

Being a cowboy is the worst thing. For a start, you live and work in the desert. If movies and TV are accurate, your career choices are to work really hard on the land and die a lonely death, or turn to a life of crime and die a lonely death. And your friends are definitely going to betray you and take all your stuff.

Grim doesn’t even cover it, but the depressing world of the American West does seem to capture the imagination. The Gunstringer is the latest video game to ride the trend, and chronicles the sad demise, resurrection and bloody revenge of a wronged man. It sounds dark as hell, until you note that the developers are Twisted Pixel – the same Twisted Pixel who made games about an exploding meme and a superhero who wears a filthy-mouthed star on his chest. And it’s a Kinect game.

Gunstringer’s title refers to the main narrative conceit: you control a puppet, and this is a puppet show. A live-action audience is watching your every move as you lead the Gunstringer on a murderous rampage. His quest is to kill his old posse, and pretty much anything that stands in the way. Seriously, I shot a lot of innocent goats.

Like a cowboy set on his destined path, so the Gunstringer unfolds – like many Kinect games – on rails. The puppet undead runs along a preset path littered with everything from evil Big Oil executives, to dynamite-hurling maniacs, to innocent civilians. And you shoot them all with your fingers. Controls are simple and shockingly intuitive, with your right hand controlling the characters movement and your left his aim. Simply hold your hand up as if you were holding the strings of a real puppet, moving side to side to navigate around obstacles. Kinect isn’t really built for accuracy, so targets are painted with a hand wave across them and eliminated by pulling back your gun hand.

Making a finger-gun for this move isn’t necessary, but if you don’t do it then you are actually a monster. Frequently you’re pushed into combat set-pieces, which place you behind cover and ask you to wave your hand out each side to pop out and shoot. Controls are pretty responsive for the most part, although it’s easy to lose track and have the game think you meant left instead of right. The Gunstringer is forgiving, however, and a few slips will rarely be the difference between life and death.

After all, this a performance, and nobody really wants to see the main character die in the middle. Especially when he died at the start.

The presentation is easily the strongest element of the package, as you might expect by now from the bearded wizards doing the developing. Everything reinforces the idea that this is a stage show in progress, with you as the puppeteer. As mentioned, the show begins with a live audience filing into the theatre and sitting down to watch. At appropriate moments they laugh, clap and cheer for your on-screen actions, even booing the bad guys in true pantomime style.

Cardboard buildings line the streets as paper civilians flee in terror. Ship steering wheels made of pushpins must be turned. Deadly – and very fake – boulders bear down on our hero. And every act begins with a spotlight on the Gunstringer as the perpetually deadpan narrator informs the audience of your escapades.

Gunstringer is a short game, with the main story taking about five hours to finish. That’s not too much of a deterrent, however, as there’s a lot packed into those hours. Aside from the standard run-and-gun gameplay, things will often switch up and see you batter enemies with your fists, flee from rock slides, leap over crocodiles, or climb carefully balanced platforms. And of course there are the bosses, Gunstringer’s old posse. They range from evil corporation head to booty-laden brothel owners and keep the old west parodies running hot.

Once you finish the main game there is still a wealth of content to unlock, including behind-the-scenes videos, artwork and music from the game. On top of that, the free DLC “Wavy Tube Man Chronicles” gives you an entirely new experience hearkening back to old FMV shooting gallery games. Add into that a free download code for Fruit Ninja and it’s hard to feel short-changed.

Besides, it’s great fun. The Gunstringer is the perfect excuse to let out that small child living inside you and enjoy pretending to shoot outlaws. Pew pew pew.  [9]