Wii shovelware disguised in 'core gamer sensibilities'
Take a collection of Wii minigames - not the Wii Sports fun variety, but of the shovelware 'tradition' - give it a coat of paint of 'weird' humor, release it as an independent company and you have The Gunstringer: a game that's idiotic in all levels possible but critics and 'core' gamers will praise just because they want to 'support the small guy' (not to mention justify the fact they did bought Kinect but are too lazy to use it to play what it's generally best for, dancing and sports/exercise games).
Don't believe the hype: this game no different from what most 'core' gamers have come to expect from Wii/Kinect/Move shovelware minigame collections. It's totally on rails, it's gimmicky and it tries to rely on the idea of 'making gaming fun' by removing any kind of challenge or depth. Just an example, wherever else you would get to play platform sections *on-rails*, just flicking your arm up to jump? And no, the jump doesn't even change much according to your movements - just flick a little to jump high and far enough to cover three times the longest distance needed. You'll only fall if Kinect doesn't read your gesture properly. Even 8-bit games had more depth than this.
Worse yet, it doesn't do anything with Kinect that better games, such as Child of Eden or Rise of Nightmares, haven't done before. It just hides behind 'innovations' such as using real actors as if they were 'watching' the game unfold in a theater, spurting uncensored humor, and the promise that you can play it sitting on the couch. And, of course, the aforementioned fact that it's been made by an indie company, which makes people *way* more forgiving then they'd be otherwise if this was, say, the exact same game but for the Wii and made by Hudson or Ubisoft. The only real upsides to the game are the controls, which work very well, but even then it's hard to give it much credit since they're absurdly simple - that is, the game doesn't really go the distance to use Kinect such as Rise of Nightmares or even Kinect Sports did. And they aren't as precise as, say, the controls in Fruit Ninja Kinect.
What's even more annoying is that the game tries so hard to be funny that just ends up being silly. There's a difference between crazy, out-there humor such as in Shadows of the Damned, and what Gunstringer tries to do when it shows a grown cowboy stickin' it into a giant alligator; it's not toilet/dick humor, it's 10-year-old-giggling-at-porno-magazines humor. It's the same difference between the lifeless, stale humor in Duke Nukem Forever and the riotous dick jokes in Bulletstorm.
Which says a lot about how the industry, even its indie side, views 'core' gamers: as complete idiots who will never grow up. And in part they're right, given how this trainwreck of a 'game' is being received by so-called 'trusted' gaming portals around. It's sad to notice how platform wars and political ideologies have trumpled people's best judgements. But time will show how Gunstringer is forgettable; once the need to 'support the small guy no matter the crap it makes' dwindles off, which inevitably happens, people will notice that this is nothing like the games that made the indie market a reality, such as Limbo or Braid. It's as much a cheap cash-in as any mainstream game made to quickly tap on the huge Kinect install base while the peripheral is still hot, and it's even more shameful at it for trying to reinforce the basement-dweller, anti-social stereotype of 'core' gamer at the same time.
Just wait and see how many one- and two-star user reviews will pop up in here in a year, when loads of people start to buy it for $5 in bargain bins and come here to ask 'how the heck this game got praised?'. At least they'll get Fruit Ninja Kinect for half the price...
