Meta Reviews

For the assignment of Meta reviewing Gun, I used reviews from Gamespy, (http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=642410) Gamerfeed (http://pc.gamerfeed.com/gf/reviews/993/) and also IGN. (http://pc.ign.com/articles/665/665543p1.html) The reason I picked these three reviews is because they give three varying accounts of the game so hopefully this will mean that the styles of review differ between articles. I also only reviewed PC port of the game, not the console versions.

The first review, from Gamespy, features an excellent introduction. Just as the article claims Gun receives bonus points for not featuring "Nazis, aliens, terrorists, robots, gladiators, zombies, demons, or monsters of any kind" then this review receives bonus points for featuring an entertaining opening which quickly grabs the attention of the reader. From this opening the review branches out to talk about the plot of Gun, without giving too much away, as well as drawing comparisons to the Grand Theft Auto franchise in that they both boast of having open ended gameplay. In terms of the way the review is broken up, the paragraphs tend to be clearly split up between positive and negative. An example of this being that the review mentions the mini games and the sorts of things you can do, and then the next paragraph is spent discussing the lack of depth within these mini games.

There is a very different feel to the Gamerfeed review then there is to the other reviews. The layout is distinctly different in that you are shown both a quick review, the pros and cons and even the conclusion before a more in depth review. Personally I don't like this layout as it encourages people to not bother reading the in depth review and just take a quick look at the conclusion to ascertain whether the game is any good or not. If the reader was determined to read the actual proper review however, then they would read a fairly decent review. It is similar to the Gamespy review in that it draws parallels to Grand Theft Auto and also comments on the relative originality of the
"Wild West" setting that Gun has, yet also does manage to comment on more things about the game, such as the amount of well known actors lending their voice to the game. Indeed, this review claims the audio work on Gun to be its best feature and claims the voice acting to be "phenomenal" and " quite possibly the best we've seen" This reviews main gripe about the game is about the poor port of the PC version from the consoles and marks the game down quite considerably for this.

IGN provide the final review and very impressive it is too. This review is the only one to point out that all Neversoft (the makers of Gun) have done for seven years is make skateboarding games, with the successful Tony Hawk brand. Therefore they try to draw comparisons with Gun and the Tony Hawk series to make sure this point is not lost on the reader. For example in the box at the end rating the game, in the presentation section they say the following, "Standard Tony Hawk like menus." Again also, several comparisons to Grand Theft Auto are made, with the storyline you can dip into at any time, as well as the mini games and open ended gameplay. The review covers a lot of ground and is very comprehensive, one problem I have with it despite this is that it tends to give away too much of the story which means there won't be a great deal to surprise you if you bought or played the game on the strength of that review. Overall IGN do a great job in stretching out a review for a game where in the end they essentially tell you that Gun is an above average game, perhaps worth a rental.

Overall I would place the IGN review as the best, followed by the Gamerfeed review and then finally Gamespy. My rationale for this is that the IGN review is by far the most comprehensive and after reading this review you would be in no doubt whether Gun was the game for you. I feel that the Gamespy review is rather formulaic with its approach of mentioning a feature then simply moving onto another feature, to me it seems a bit disjointed. It has an excellent beginning but sadly runs out of steam rather quickly.