GOTD 5/16/2016: Gunfighter (PS1)

[celerystalker]

Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James is a light gun shooter from Ubi Soft and Rebellion on the original Playstation. Set in 1870 in the Missouri Territory, it tells a fictitious tale about Jesse James and his adventures. Starting in a saloon, it follows Jesse pursuing wealth and saving friends through the desert, mines, and back into town to take down the corrupt sheriff. Using Namco's Gun-Con, you must gun down outlaws, bandits, and henchmen in the pursuit of justice within tight time limits.

There are three main modes to play: story, arcade, and sub-games. Story mode is what most would consider arcade, as it allows you to play all five levels in order as long as you can do so within a handful of continues. Arcade mode is what most would call a practice mode, where you can select any level reached in story mode and attempt to play solely that stage. The sub-games are simply shooting gallery mini-games unlocked by beating each stage in story mode, meaning there are five to unlock. Story is, of course, the meat of the game, as the rest is just window dressing.

Jesse has four aces (playing cards) representing his life bar. He can recover aces by shooting cans in the background, and can gain extra time by clearing sections of levels and by shooting clocks or watches in the background. It is a cover-based shooter, so you must pop out from behind obstacles to quickly gun down enemies. By default, you stay down until you hold a side button on the gun, but this can also be reversed to automatically stand, with button presses causing you to duck, which is beneficial for more aggressive players. This all works well so long as you've calibrated your gun correctly, as the Gun-Con is as always a very good gun controller. It is tough, though, especially due to the strict time limits to clear each section. You also at times get to do little bonus actions like shooting a noose to save a hung friend or mounting a gatling gun for variety, but the bulk of the game is very much a duck and cover affair.

Graphically, Gunfighter is not as crisp as Virtua Fighter or Time Crisis, and features a lot of dark, brown-tinted environments. It's not pretty, but the characters are at least polygon models as opposed to digitized sprites or sloppy FMV, so it feels pretty good. The music is suitably western, maybe a little spaghetti western in influence, but it fits the tone despite being pretty average. Overall, the production values work together pretty well, though I found that it works better with the brightness turned up a bit, as is the case for many darker light gun games.

I like Gunfighter, as its western theme is a nice change from the modern settings in most of my favorites. It's far from perfect, but it is a nice little gun game for the system after you've played the hell out of Time Crisis, Elemental Gearbolt, and everybody's favorite, Puffy no PS I Love You, the Puffy AmiYumi shooter... and it costs very little.

Played it?