News and Reviews: The Gunstringer

I own an X-box 360, and must say that by-and-large I'm pretty happy with it.  It runs fast, it looks nice, and the controls are usually tight.  And comfortable. Until you get into the Kinect, where everything has a nasty habit of breaking down. But not always, sometimes it works wonders.  Sometimes you get,

The Gunstringer.



The Kinect has always been long on potential, and that's part of what I've loved about it.  It's a tentative step into the world of tomorrow.  It's everything Minority Report and Star Trek have been tantalizingly showing us for decades, saying "someday, chum.  Someday.".  But it hasn't always delivered, of course.  We've had to deal with plenty of malfunctioning Fruit Ninjas, and bizzare fighting games that have trouble figuring out which are your arms and which are your legs (Protip: legs go on the bottom).  We've had voice commands that take us to the far reaches of menus, when all we wanted to do was quit.  It has been a bumpy road.

But The Gunstringer looks to change all that. It's a marionette-based old-west rail-shooter from Twisted Pixel, the same team that brought us 'Splosion Man.  Now if you're wondering why I choose to classify it as a marionette-based old-west rail-shooter and how many games of the genre can there possibly be, well... not many.  But it needs this specific classification, because there really is nothing like it.  Sure, it takes elements from older games like House of the Dead and Time Crisis, but that's just the foundation upon which a beautiful new idea has been built. It is simply too weird to be derivative.
Now, I could talk for ages about the excellent atmosphere brought on by the use of live-action audience reactions, or the brilliant use of gritty dialouge to expose the latent hilarity of the experience, but what I really want to discuss is the mechanics.  How the act of playing this game elevates it from fun, to unforgettable.

Game mechanics are what put video games in a whole new class of media.  The interactive nature of the storytelling is what gives the medium its unique appeal, and the power of its impact.  A video game starts its life with all the benefits of literature, film, and music because it is from these that it springs.  These are important parts of what makes a game, and using them to their fullest potential is a great way to immerse someone.  But they all exist elsewhere, they are pre-existing entities with their own benefits and limitations.  When you put the control in the hands of the consumer, they stop being a viewer or a reader and become a part of their own experience.  You can inform them of things without having to explicitly state them.  This is narrative at its most primal.

You don't have to tell the player that their character felt invincible now, the fact that bullets bounce off them as they rush headlong into the fray takes care of that.  You don't need to explain how vulnerable they feel after it wears off, the rapidly diminishing health bar does that for you.

So, what is it that makes The Gunstringer a good example of this?  Lots, actually.  The team obviously made it a point never to take themselves too seriously, and this pays off dramatically in the gameplay. This is one of the few single-player (or co-op) games I've ever felt comfortable busting out at a party.  There's so much goofiness going on it's impossible to get bored.  And an excellent start to this goofiness, the first taste, is that you have to stand in front of the sensor like a half-cowboy-half-pupeteer straight from the beginning.  There's you, one hand out like a pistol, the other holding an invisible puppet rig.  It's funny stuff.

The controls of this psuedo rail shooter are pretty simple.  Move your marionette hand left and right to move The Gunstringer left and right as he runs.  Pull it up to make him jump. The gritty little guy dashes headlong into the fray at a pretty reasonable pace, so you never feel too out of control.  The simplicity of this system is partly due to the limitations of the Kinect, but they do a wonderful job of making you feel physically tied to the game.  This control scheme has you wiggling and jumping and doing all those things that you used to do with an NES controller even though you knew Mario wasn't going any higher.   It's nostalgic.  It's goofy.  It gets you freed up to feel like having fun, and focusing on your other hand.

The other hand controls the gun.  You make a gun with your fist, and point it at the screen. It was at this point that my inner six year old was climbing up the back of the couch with excitement.  Wherever you point your finger at the screen, a little red targeting reticle follows.  You line up targets (as many as you have bullets in the gun, up to 5) and you jerk your hand back like you just shot a Peacemaker to fire.  It is a gloriously ridiculous, simple, and fun system. It means you never feel overwhelmed, no matter how many enemies appear on screen.  At no point do you find yourself saying "How can I possibly shoot all these paper-mache bad guys?"

So, by simplifying the movement controls, and using a point-select-fire shooting mechanic, Twisted Pixel has made a game that makes you feel accurate, spry, and more than anything fun.  They've freed you up to enjoy the scenery, to take in the details of their silly enemies and environments.  To listen to the narrator, who takes on the role of a lot of your HUD.

A few good mechanics, means a really great experience.  If you have a Kinect, I highly recommend you check The Gunstringer out.  If you don't, I highly recommend finding someone who does own one, and pestering them until they let you try it.