Title: GUN

Genre: First/Third Person Shooter

Publisher, Developer: Activision, Neversoft Entertainment

Rating: Mature

Console: Playstation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC

Price: $30

Saddle up pardner it is time to get those little doggies along, dodge the tumble weeds and ride off into the sunset with GUN.

This is not your father’s Wild West in GUN though. It also shouldn’t be anyone’s Wild West under 15 years of age. The Mature rating on this game is one that the Entertainment Saftey Ratings Board (ESRB) marked just right.

Aside from a well placed head shot sending chunks of an enemy’s skull and brains flying, prostitution being a key part of the story line and language that would make most sailors blush, your character, Colton White, replenishes his life by taking a straight swig from a whiskey bottle.

You can scalp vanquished foes as well in a spray of blood. It has nothing to do with the game play other then adding a few extra gruesome moments to the experience.

So parents, flag this one if you hear about it.

With that being said, this game suffers the same fate as Peter Jackson’s King Kong in that it is a good game with great graphics, but the story line is painfully straight forward and too short.

Colton is determined to avenge the death of his father Ned White, or so he thinks, for the majority of the game after being ambushed on a steam boat in the early levels. White is a likeable character and a reserved person with an extraordinary set of shooting skills thrown into a difficult situation.

He has one of the steadiest hands in video game history with both a regular rifle and a scoped one whether on the run or looking down the iron sights of the weapon. He also has the ability to go into a bullet time mode, called quickhand, where he can expend as many rounds from a revolver that he can pump out while the rest of the world slows down during a limited time. It is useful for taking out a group on enemies almost simultaneously, but the ability isn’t a brand new aspect of gaming.

The story line of the game, which regular gamers will recognize as a cross between the Grand Theft Auto and Spiderman series, rockets you along failing to develop White much more then what you get in the beginning. You learn his background, but not what makes him tick. Many of the other characters in the game are addressed even less then the hero.

After getting through the tutorials which are good for the storyline, you start the game thrust into the rough and tumble town of Dodge City, Kansas. Eventually after maybe half a dozen rather you play your way to Empire City, New Mexico. It only takes about half a dozen very straight forward find-an-enemy-and-shoot-him missions to get from the first town to the second. Plus, that is it for the environments.

There are a good number of side missions including making deliveries for the Pony Express past angry Indians, herding cattle from horseback, mining gold, hunting the mighty beasts of the prairies, keeping peace in Dodge as a itchy-trigger fingered lawman and collecting bounties for profit. Once again though, they are very straight forward and not hard to complete on the first try, most of the time.

One of the biggest drawbacks to this game is the difference in the difficulty levels. I beat this title very quickly and easily on the normal setting, but going up to the hard level it was a shock to how much quicker Colton was taking a dirt nap instead of tucking enemies into one.

The controls of the game are the defaults for all third person shooters where you can zoom into a first person mode. If you are familiar with these types of games, ala Grand Theft Auto, you are going to be gunslinging in no time. Once you get on horseback, which is almost the required mode of transportation, there is no change in either the shooting or locomotion controls at all.

The graphics and sound are where this game shines.

The buildings and characters are rendered very smoothly and are very detailed. Characters even move their mouths to talk during regular game play, which is tough to find outside of the more up-to-date titles. The backgrounds of the canyons, rivers, clouds and tumble weeds are beautiful.

The cutscenes are also well put together and shot. They actually live up to the title of “cinemas.”

Multiply the graphics by about 100 for Xbox 360 users. This game, despite its flaws, thrives in the high powered console’s advanced graphics platform.

The voices of the characters in this game are exceptional to go along with the nifty ricochet noises of bullets glancing off near-by rocks. The gun shots themselves a little cookie cutter, but hearing them over the authentic clopping of hooves you can let it slide.

Overall, for a mature gamer GUN is a fun, gunslinging, cattle driving, albeit short ride in the saddle.

5.5 out of 10

Sliding rating scale explanation

1-3.5: Better left on the shelf

4-6.5: A rental

7-9: If it up your alley then definitely buy

9.5-10: If you are a true gamer you already own this title

Title: Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Genre: Real Time Strategy

Publisher, Developer: Atari, Fixas

Rating: Everyone

Console: PC

Minimum requirements (PC only): 1GHz CPU, 128MB RAM, and GeForce2 or equivalent video-card

Price$25-$35

Gather round me hardies and I will spin a tale of the sea. ‘Tis a not yarn fer de faint of heart nor any scurvy ker that don’t have his trusty parrot on his shoulcder. It is one of swashbucklin’, sailin’, trasure huntin’ and piratin’.

It is Sid Meier’s Pirates!

The title, which is actually a remake of a game made by Atari in the mid-80s, is another real time strategy one that was released in 2004, but has the staying power and the addicting game play that make it a really easy and fun game to get into.

If you ever wanted to step into a Pirates of the Caribbean movie or the famed Disney ride then this game is for you. Since there is no alcohol, tobacco, or blood this is a game you can be sure that the game really is for all ages. The worst thing for the younger buccaneers is the low cut shirts of some of the more well-endowed wenches you come across in the game, but it is nothing to get your eye-patch in a twist over.

After your family has been kidnapped at the start of the game by a group of villains you catch sail to the tropical Caribbean as a young knave with high hopes of garnering their safe escape and making some gold along the way.

You can choose to be commissioned to plunder by the Spanish (easiest), English, French or Dutch (hardest). With varying difficulty settings and a non-linear story line the decision of where your loyalties lie is a minor one.

You also choose your specialty (ie. Fighting, medicine etc.) and when you want to base your adventure (ie. 1600-1620, 1660-1680 etc.).

One you have your ship you can raid passing ships for gold and cargo, sink any vessal you wish, visit towns and gather more rift-raft for your crew or sell your plunder for a pretty penny.

The more you do to help a country’s cause the higher your rank will become for that nationality and you will gain perks. This can be done with any of the countries though so it isn’t hard to be an English Baron, a French Admiral and a Dutch Colonel all at the same time.

You can romance governor’s daughters, take over towns, get ships upgraded with better weapons and hulls or divide the plunder you have accumulated when the crew gets cranky while in towns.

During your travels you will get hints on where the evil Baron Raymondo is, where secret treasures are buried or where some of the most famous pirates who sailed the seven seas such as Blackbeard, Captain Kid and Captain Morgan are sailing.

The Baron holds the secret maps to where your family is held and is one of the ultimate goals in the game. Chasing him around the Caribbean can be a bit taxing when you have to do it for the 12th time to track down the last map to find your family.

The game is so deep on game play and goals that you can waste a whole evening saying, “I am just going to do one more thing.” That amount of work to do is overwhelming though.

The game has a travel mode where you steer your ship around the water of the tropical seas. There is a combat mode where you trade broadsides with an enemy vessel or one you wish to plunder. There is a battle mode where you go blade-to-blade with a salty pirate or a scared ship’s captain. There is a dance mode to help you woo daughters with your twinkle toes. There is a mode where you talk to bar flies getting information about your enemies. Even if you come upon a hostile town, which will happen a lot if you pick on a certain nationality a lot, you have to sneak into town which has its own mode. So as you can see your peg legs will be a bit tired.

The game controls are designed for a desktop as the number pad is used extensively when sword fighting with other pirates and ship captains, dancing with govenor’s daughters and sailing your ship. Sometimes you can keep up with a few mouse clicks on the key pad on the screen, but using the real keys is faster and more effective.

You also have to be somewhat familiar with how the wind effects how you sail your ship both in traveling and fighting because in the 1600s, when the game is based, Mother Nature did what outboard motors do today.

The graphics are smooth even though there are a few bugs that can make characters look as though they have been dipped in a vat of melted gold. The sound has a lot of subtly as when your sings merrily after winning a sea battle or when you hear a different song for each of the different nationalities towns, but it doesn’t blow you away.

Overall this is a fun game that has a lot of different things that can be done, but that is sometimes the problem. The controls can get a little dicey as well.

7.5 out of 10

Title: Peter Jackson’s King Kong

Genre: First Person Shooter/Third Person Action

Publisher, Developer: Ubisoft

Rating: Teen

Console: Playstation 2, Xbox, PC

Price: $40

And now, ladies and gentlemen, before I tell you any more, I'm going to show you an avaerage thing for your eyes to behold. He was a king and a god in the world he knew, but now he comes to civilization merely in a game that could have been much better - a title to gratify the throngs of fans that needed something to go with the movie. Ladies and gentlemen, look at Peter Jackson’s King Kong, a game that had a ton of potential and came up short.

I one of the biggest King Kong fans around. The iconic image of the great beast busting the jaws of a T-Rex or swatting at planes like flies on the top of the Empire State Building are one of the first memories I have about watching movies.

The chance to being the huge ape was one that I couldn’t pass up, but unfortunatley it was an oppurtunity that was not really delivered in this game. Just as Independecne Day was a good movie that needed more aliens to make it great, this game was a good looking and sounding one, but needed more Kong to make it great.

You play the majority of the game as Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody’s character in the movie) in first person mode fighting off the various beasts of the movie as you try and catch up with the great Kong and your love interest Ann Darrow. You loosly follow the plat of the Jackson movie including Ann to the greatest of the great apes in a cinematic clip that is pretty captivating.

You get a few firearms, but the weapons you use the most are the spears that the inhabitants of the island have left around. Initially, it is fun to shish-kabob a few overgrown centipedes and velociraptors, but after the 25th one in a row you just want to throw your hands up and say, “Where is Kong?”

When you finally do get to control Kong it is one of the greatest moments in the game. Making the huge ape run and swing on branches is hard to get used to, but once you are locked into combat with an enemy, whoa mama. Getting Kong into a rage and slo-motion hammering creatures is iconic. Controlling Kong and getting to perform the gruesome fatalities the ape is capable of is something that fans of the film will replay levels to simply to do again.

The problem with the Kong gameplay is that there isn’t enough of it and when there is the ape is so superior to his enemies that unless a player is inept or outnumbered there is no chance the ape will loose. Of course you want to win, but there is seemingly no challenge for Kong.

Once you complete your time as the ape though it is back to being an exterminator with Driscoll either spearing giant bats or lighting overgrown crabs on fire. It is fun, but too repetitive.

One part of this game that was exremly innovative was the lack of a health bar, ground radar, ammunition count or on screen map. You feel like you really are living the movie because you have no idea how many bullets, where the next enemy is coming from or where you have to go. You have to totally react to the environment just like you are living the adventure. It is a very cool twist.

The game does reward a player for wading through the boring human gameplay by giving them three sepearte New York missions as Kong and Kong alone. They are short, almost too short again, but they are there.

Running amok in the streets of the city, tossing cars, smashing police crusiers and scaling building walls is worth blasting your way through Skull Island. A place where this game shines is when Kong finally finds Ann and scales the Empire State Building to his ultimate fate.

Swatting the biplanes on the top of the building as Kong is something that gamers wish they could get a still frame of and hang on their wall.

The graphics of this game are very good, the backgrounds on Skull Island are lush and detailed. The streets of New York are a bit more cookie cutter, but you aren’t focused on them as you toss cars left and right.

The sound is also good. The surrounding effects of the jumgle are complete as chirps and skwaks that are audible from every angle with the right set-up.

The controls are that of a default one person shooter when you are Dricoll making it easy to get into for an expereienced player. The Kong controls are a little more difficult as the fixed camera makes it a little bit harder to see where you are going and what you are swinging your giant fists at.

The final knock on this game is that it isn’t long enough. It seems that it takes longer to watch the Jackson movie then it dose for an expereinced gamer to beat this one. The levels are of average length, but there aren’t that many to get on and off the island and back to New York.

Incedentlly, I am much bigger fan of the 1933 King Kong then the 2005 Jackson version. What the newer version has in special effects and bidget the 1933 version trumps in gripping preformance and iconic images.

I would say this game is a good rental, but a debatable purchase unless you are a big fan.

Overall, it wasn’t the beauty of this game, lack of Kong and gameplay killed this game.

5.0 out of 10

Title: Star Wars: Empire at War

Genre: Real Time Strategy

Publisher: Lucasarts, Petroglyph

Rating: Teen

Console: PC

Minimum requirements (PC only): Intel Pentium III or higher, Windows 2000 or XP, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB Graphics Car, Keyboard, Mouse

Price: $49.99

The themes, characters and locations in the Star Wars universe have been used for every kind of video game from first person shooters to role playing games on every console ever made. In the experiences of many gamers their first contact with a new genre of game comes through the familiar Star Wars theme.

Star Wars: Empire at War was the first Real time strategy (events happen in a simulated day and effect decisions you make later in the game) that I gave a try and it was out of this world, no pun intended.

With real time strategy struggling lately against both sports and first person shooter titles this game is a good shot in the arm for the area of the industry. There hasn’t been anything really new, until this title, in a while as Warcraft, Starcraft and Command and Conquer can only be reincarnated in so many ways.

Playing as either the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance you try a wrest control of the galaxy during the time in-between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope.

Much of the game takes place on a galactic map with the planets of the Star Wars Galaxy scattered across a star field where you try and strategically position your ships, troops and vehicles to defend your planets while building forces to move in on your opponent.

On the galactic map screen you can command each of your individual planets to build defensive buildings, factories, mines, space stations, X-Wings, Y-wings, Star Destroyers, AT-AT walkers to crush the rebellion underfoot, T-47 airspeeders to bring down the plodding walkers and yes even the ultimate weapon: The Death Star.

There are also the heroes of both the empire and the alliance in this game, but refreshingly they don’t take up the majority of the game play. Even though they are a powerful addition to a fleet or army, heroes aren’t required to win most missions.

When a pair of conflicting fleets or armies reaches the same location, be it the space above a planet system or on its surface, the game goes into a tactical battle mode where a player directs his or her troops directly on the field of battle, or his or her starships in the space above a planet. Troops and vehicles are in transports during space battles though so it is a good idea to try and clear out the space above a planet before launching an invasion.

You can micromanage to your hearts content in a battle, which tends to save some troops, or you can let the computer auto-resolve the skirmish to save time, but you run the risk of loosing more of your forces.

Overall the space battles, which are one of the newest twists the game brings to the table and one of its strongest points, are more picturesque then the land conflicts. The land battles can get repetitive after a few times, but commanding a few Imperial Class Star Destroyers to slug in out with a swarms of X-Wing and Y-Wing squadrons above a planet is something that has never been done before and never gets old.

I recommend playing as the empire first. The dark forces have deep pockets and a solid technology base to start, allowing you to quickly build up fleets of Star Destroyers and eventually armies of AT-AT walkers to crush the rebellion; clearing the way for the Death Star to mop up the rest of the resistors.

The rebel scum do make some sneak attacks, but if you leave a heavy garrison or troops and build up the defenses of a planet with Turbolaser batteries and Shield Generators after taking over planets you can destroy an attackers handily.

As the rebellion you start with far less money and even fewer options for attack. You can create raiding parties that can sneak past enemy fleets to weaken their planets and steal technology with C-3PO and R2-D2, but the going is slow and intense for the alliance. If you have the experience of playing with the empire then you will be fine.

Unlike some games where the tutorial is just a waste of time, starting the game with the learning levels is a good way to get familiar with the dozens of different functions of your units that you are going to come in contact with during game play.

The tutorial also gives a gamer a chance to figure out the best graphics configuration your machine is capable of to run the game smoothly. Even some of the more advanced system out there may experience some trouble with choppy game play if a player doesn’t go to the options menu and figure out what works best. If you can get the right combination of environmental and units detail then this game is one of the most comprehensive and smooth renderings of the ships, buildings and vehicles that made these sci-fi epics so recognizable.

The AI tends to be more aggressive as the empire and more cautious playing for the rebels on the galactic map, but in a tactical battle if I didn’t bring the right mix of troops or starships to a battle I might as well have just not showed up at all.

One of the smallest details that the game adds may be one of the coolest parts of the gaming experience. There is a button on the control bar that lets you enter “Cinematic Mode” where instead of controlling your troops you can watch as the camera makes pans around the conflict like you are watching one of the classic films unfold in front of your eyes. You don’t want to get too wide eyed, because it could sway the battle against you if you aren’t paying attention, but for a few times a battle it is worth checking out. It is especially breath taking during space conflicts.

The controls are simple points and clicks with the mouse or common keyboard shortcuts, so the learning curve is a breeze. The sounds are also exception, from the TIE fighters’ scream to the high pitched shrieks of the AT-ST cannons, the sound is grand. The classical score that seemingly has to be part of every Star Wars title by law is something that fans of the movies will love and will get annoying for straight-up gamers.

With multiplayer game available over the internet this game is great for wasting an evening. There is a save option because most online contests will run for hours on end.

This is a fun and entertaining game. Its weakest points are average at worst.

9.0 out of 10.