Living the life of Kinect isn’t that easy. Although the Kinect isn’t that hard on the eyes, it doesn’t really seem to succeed in seducing a lot of people to ‘play with it’. Great technologies, great appearance and innovation just aren’t enough to keep the Kinect away from the infamous friend zone. Luckily, there still are a few things Kinect could try, like The Gunstringer. It’s a lucky shot for sure, but maybe, just maybe, it’s the one thing that will reveal the true potential of the machine.
Project Natal or Kinect didn’t really had a great start for the hardcore gamers. We can’t deny that Kinect is a success but for the more hardcore gamers, the interactive camera didn’t had much to offer. Until the Gunstringer came by.
First things first, the Gunstringer wasn’t supposed to be a full retail game, at first it would only be available on Xbox Live. But Microsoft thought elsewise. Because it’s one of the first ‘bigger’ Kinect games that may appeal the core as well, Microsoft decided to release this Xbox Live game as a full retail games in stores. A smart move to promote the Kinect but also the reason for the biggest point of critic. The Gunstringer isn’t a very long game, but does that really bother us?
Thanks to the innovation and unique graphic design it didn’t really bother us at all. In the Gunstringer you’ll take control of a dead skeleton puppet. The puppet is used in a theater to entertain a crowd and it’s your job to give them the time of their lives. You do so by controller the dead cowboy with virtual strings attached to his body. The Gunstringer isn’t a living puppet, it’s a marionette.
As you may already have guessed it’s up to you to take control of the Gunstringer. With your left hand you hold the imaginary ropes of the cowboy. This means you can move him at the same time you move your hand. When you move your hand to the left for example, the Gunstringer will also run to the left side of the screen. But there’s more, if you lift op your hand, you’ll make the Gunstringer jump. A handy trick to avoid falling into an endless pit….
Although it looks like you’ll have full control of the cowboy, don’t be mistaking, you don’t have complete control. Running and gaining speed is something our cowboy will do for himself and he doesn’t need your help for that. The Gunstringer isn’t an open world game at all, it’s an on-rails action shooter. This means you’ll be able to control the cowboy with the only limitation of running. For a game that uses the Kinect as only control option it’s the perfect solution for creating a fun and action-packed title.
On-rail games however tend to be very repetitive but thanks to the unique story and art design, that’s not the case for the Gunstringer. The story is about our proud cowboy that once was part of an infamous posse. For reasons I won’t explain in here, the cowboy was kicked out of his posse. That awful day let to his new live goal: take vengeance and kill all the members of his former posse.
It’s up to you to track down your former comrades and kill them one by one. Before taking them up close, you’ll have to defeat their companions. First you’ll have to play through 3 or 4 acts to finally face to boss battle. Without spoiling anything, the boss battles are definitely one of the best seen in a game and take good use of the Kinect. The acts before the battles are also very fun to play thanks to the variety.
The creators made the game so that it looks like your just playing a show for the audience (which by the way is played by the developers). This means that during various acts, human hands can assist you by destroying a pack our enemies or put you into danger by creating an avalanche of rocks. The fun part is, that our cowboy doesn’t know he’s actually just playing a theater show. He sees those things as an act of God. This creates a special type of humor that will get you hooked on the game, wanting to play more.
The levels themselves are also created with a lot of love. Each level is a small masterpiece and the creators putted enough variation in the levels. Although you’ll mostly be running through landscapes and shooting enemies with your right hand, you’ll sometimes land in other, more unique setting. Think about a sudden switch to 2D that lets you relive the old Donkey Kong Arcade game or a level where our cowboy is airborne and needs to dodge various obstacles…. The levels never really get boring because of this. You’ll never know what to expect and that’s definitely one of the strong points of the Gunstringer.
But does the game have any weak points you may ask? Unfortunately I must admit that not everything is perfect in the game. First of all, as I mentioned before, the Gunstringer isn’t a big game, you’ll eventually finish the game in around 5-6 hours, which of course isn’t long. Another point of critique is the intense use of the Kinect. Although the Kinect controls are very well implemented, they are very intense. Meaning that you won’t be able to play long sessions of the game, even if you want to, thanks to muscle pain.
Don’t let those minor points of critiques mislead you however. The Gunstringer is by far one of the best games to play on the Kinect and probably one of the most funny and unique games out there. If you own a Kinect controller, you’ll have to buy the Gunstringer. It’s the first game that can convince you of the true potential of Microsoft’s camera.
