Video Game / Gun

When life robs Colton White of all that matters, the only thing he can trust is his GUN.

GUN is Wide-Open Sandbox Western Third-Person Shooter developed by Neversoft and published by Activision in 2005.

Colton "Cole" White (Thomas Jane) lives a life of a Mountain Man with his father Ned (Kris Kristofferson). However, after a routine hunting mission, he encounters a Sinister Minister named Reed (Brad Dourif) at a river steamboat where he and Ned sell their game. Reed leads an attack on the ship with help of the local Renegades and just before Colton falls overboard, Ned tells him a startling truth: He isn't Colton's father, and there's a small treasure waiting for him.

After recovering, Colton sets out to find Reed for some good ol' revenge. He ends up crossing paths with Magruder (Lance Henriksen), Reed's boss, who has closer ties to Colton's past than he knows.

GUN was a Multi-Platform release for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PC. It also got an Updated Re-release on PSP as Gun: Showdown.

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Has the examples of:

• 100% Completion: Easier to get than a lot of games of this type, thanks to the small exploration area.
• Affably Evil: Despite looking like Rob Zombie's great grandfather returned from the dead and being a little Ax-Crazy, Sergeant Hollister is a pretty accommodating host when he captures Colton and Soapy, offering them drinks and even some captured Native women. Granted, he's doing this while he tries to figure out whether or not to KILL them and gut their corpses. But still, can't say he's not a gracious host.
• Action Girl: In a couple of early missions, Jenny's quick to grab a rifle and help Colton keep bad guys at bay. Justified in that she's a prostitute in a particularly violent old west setting, so it's not surprising that she'd know how to fight.
• A.K.A.-47: Averted. All the guns are given their actual names. Even the rare guns.
• Ancestral Weapon:
  • Ned's Ferguson Rifle.
  • The Schofield Revolver is a downplayed example. Jenny gives Cole Ned's old revolver that Sadie had been keeping for him. Cole notes that Ned never really cared for "six guns", preferring rifles and tomahawks.
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Colton's opinion about Reverend Josiah: "If he's a man of the cloth, then I'm the King of Siam."
• And This Is for...: Said by Cole before he kills Reed: "This... is for Jenny!"
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Your clothes change as you progress through the game. You get your final set by completing all the hunting missions.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: This game is arguably the one that started the trend of the Volcanic Pistol having greater stopping power than it did in reality with it eclipsing the Colt Navy and Schofield revolvers, both of which packed way more punch than the Volcanic.
• Arch-Enemy: Cole has two:
  • Josiah Reed well and truly earned Cole's hatred by initiating the attack that kills Cole's adoptive father Ned (though Hollister may or may not have personally killed him) and later killed Jenny, a prostitute Cole was fond of.
  • Magruder naturally becomes this to Cole after he tries to have Cole framed and hanged for Jenny's murder. It becomes even more personal for Cole once he learns that Magruder killed Cole's birth parents, though Magruder later shooting off two of Cole's friend Soapy's fingers also didn't help.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Magruder wears a cuirass that protects him from bullets, meaning that Cole is forced to use explosives and geysers to hurt him.
• Army Scout: A flashback to the Civil War reveals that Ned was hired by Magruder to guide his troops in native territory.
• Artificial Stupidity: Enemies don't react at all to their buddies being sniped just a few feet in front of them, as long as you use the silent bow. Gunfire causes everybody on the map to instantly aggro.
  • Additionally, the poker games can frequently be won by simply continuing to call your opponent's bets, even if you dont have a hand worth anything
• Artistic License – History: The game is explicitly set in 1880, but Clay claims that Ned supposedly died in the war ten years earlier, which would be five years after the war ended.
• The Atoner: Ned is actually not Cole's father, but has raised him in an attempt to atone for accidentally getting his real parents, along with a Native American tribe killed by Magruder after Ned led him straight to them.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Cole loves poking fun at Soapy, but during his final confrontation with Magruder, he makes it clear how angry he is that Magruder shot off two of Soapy's fingers.
  Colton White: Reckon instead I'll take my knife, whittle you some like you did Soapy.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Nock Gun and the Cannon Nock Gun. They're great weapons, but the only way to get them is to beat the main missions (for the Nock Gun) and all the side missions (for the Cannon Nock Gun), which means there's little point to them, unless you use an Easter Egg that lets you replay earlier missions. This is likely deliberate, as both weapons are so insanely overpowered that they're a Game-Breaker in normal play.
  • To boot, the real-life Nock gun was incredibly impractical due to the tremendous recoil that either injured or shattered the shoulder of the wielder.
• Bad Boss: Magruder isn't above cruel torture when his subordinates fail him. Best shown when he has Reed's ear cut off for failing him early in the story.
• Bald of Evil: Sported by Dutchie, Magruder's muscle, who is completely bald. Magruder himself is also balding.
• Bar Brawl: One breaks out when you visit Alhambra saloon for the first time.
• Bathtub Scene: Jenny is bathing in a bathtub after sleeping with Cole. Censor Suds preserve her modesty, but she still shows a bit of Toplessness from the Back and gets some Leg Focus.
• Beard of Evil: Big Bad Magruder has a large beard that's becoming gray due to his age. His flunkies Hollister and Dutchie also have these.
• Bears Are Bad News: The tutorial ends with a fight against a bear.
• Big Bad: Magruder is the main antagonist of the game, a civil war vet turned criminal who leads the Texas Mountain Rifles and has taken large parts of the western territories both from the Apache tribes and Federal Government.
• Big "NO!": Magruder lets one of these out before being crushed to death by a boulder.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Hoodoo Brown's engraved Colt Peacemaker revolvers. You get them once you defeat him.
• Boarding Party: You get your first taste of gunfight action when the Renegades attack the Steamboat you're on.
• Bond One-Liner: Colton loves this trope.
  Hoodoo Brown: I'M HOOOOODOOOOO BRRRROOOOOOOWWWWNNN!
  (BANG)
  Colton White: You were.
• Boring Yet Practical: The Winchester rifle, available to you from the very beginning, is a good weapon to use for most of the game until you acquire the Ferguson rifle.
• Bottomless Magazines: On the lower difficulties, pistols come with infinite reserve ammunition.
• Bounty Hunter: Cole becomes one on some sidequests. In most missions, you have the option to take them dead or alive and in some you must take them alive.
• Bragging Rights Reward: After finishing the game 100%, you get the most powerful shotgun and an armored steed. Unless you manage to get the New Game Plus, they are Awesome, but Impractical, as there's nobody to use them on barring townspeople and random bandit attacks.
• Bullet Time: The Quickdraw mechanic.
• Cattle Drive: One of the side missions.
• Chinese Laborer: Cole has to protect them while they complete the bridge out of Dodge.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Done to Clay when Hoodoo's men capture him.
  • Soapy Jennings also got his share of torture.
• Cool Horse:
  • "Reverend" Josiah Reed has one badass-looking horse - a powerfully built black steed all decked out in armor, that you can spur without injury. You get it as a bonus for finishing the game.
  • In the PSP version, you get your own horse, named Rogue.
• Cool Old Guy: Ned White, a grizzled old outdoorsman who hunts big game for a living.
• Cool Sword: Defeating Reed and his rider party will grant you a finely made cavalry saber for a melee weapon, and it's the best of the three.
• Cover Drop: The picture on the cover is actually Magruder's logo of some sort.
• Cowardly Boss: Reed will take several shots at you, but the instant you get close to him, or deal some damage, he'll immediately double back and run as far away from you as possible.
• Cruel Mercy: Cole decides to leave Magruder to it when he has him trapped under a rock while the lost city of gold is collapsing on him.
• Dead Guy on Display: After Hoodoo Brown is killed, his corpse is left on display in its casket in the town square.
• Deadpan Snarker: Colton is quite the sardonic fellow in his inner monologues and journal entries.
  Colton: My father and I hunt game for the steamboats traveling the Misouri. Not a bad livin' if you can stand your old man kickin' you every morning at dawn...
• Destination Defenestration: Hoodoo Brown's eventual fate. Cole shoots him, knocking him through the window of his office.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The bow. Great for stealth kills and necessary for the hunting missions. Also comes with fire and explosive variants. However, it takes time to aim and has a slow rate of fire.
• Dirty Cop: Hoodoo's deputies, who in fact are the rather famous outlaws J.J. Webb and Dave Rudabaugh.
• Disposable Sex Worker: Prostitute Jenny has enough screen time and interaction with Colton in the game to make her look like she's going to be the Love Interest, but she gets killed by Reed.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • Averted for Magruder. Crunch!
  • Played straight with Hoodoo Brown. See Destination Defenestration.
• The Dragon: Josiah Reed appears to be Magruder's Dragon in the beginning but the title belongs to Dutchie.
• Ear Ache: Magruder orders his Dragon to cut Reed's ear off as a punishment when he fails to bring the missing piece from the cross of Coronado to him.
• Escort Mission: All the time...
• Evil Is Bigger: One cutscene shows Sgt. Hollister standing between Cole and Soapy, wrapping his arms around them - he towers over both of them by at least a head.
• Evil Is Hammy: Magruder, Reed and Hoodoo really take huge bites out of the scenery when they lose control.
• Evil Is Petty: Magruder and Reed take great pleasure in disreputable conduct.
• Evil Old Folks: Magruder has gray hair, and has been around since long before the Civil War, so he's clearly around Ned's age, if not older.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Magruder and Hoodoo Brown, as voiced by Lance Henriksen and Ron Perlman respectively.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Hollister, Reed, Webb and Rudabaugh are the more notable examples of this. Several mooks also have pretty coarse voices.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There are guns and you get to shoot with them too!
• Exploding Barrels: Justified in that they're filled with black powder.
• Expy: Hoodoo is based on Butcher Bill.
• Eyepatch of Power: Big Bad Magruder has an eyepatch as he suffered from a case of Moe Greene Special in the past.
• Facial Markings: Both Native American Tribes and Renegades use them.
• Fake-Out Opening: First thing you see when you start the game are Conquistadores wandering in a desert.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Hollister, a gracious host who is well spoken to his guests — despite planning to gut them.
  • Hoodoo Brown is also this, at least until he sells Colton out to Magruder.
• Fingore: Magruder shoots two of Soapy's fingers off when he is interrogating him.
• Flaying Alive: After buying a certain item, you'll be able to scalp your downed opponents if they are still alive. It doesn't net you anything, it's just cool.
• Flunky Boss: Many bosses in this game are accompanied by several thugs and soldiers in order to distract the player.
• For the Evulz: MacGruder blows off a second one of Soapy's finger AFTER Soapy told him what he wanted to know.
• Former Regime Personnel: MacGruder and Clay Allison were both members of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Incidentally, the real Clay Allison did fight for the Confederacy. Interestingly, MacGruder has Sergeant Hollister and his men in his employ as muscle, who are all former Union soldiers Still Wearing the Old Colors.
• Frontier Doctor: Campbell, Colton's real father.
• Gatling Good: There are plenty of gatling guns.
• Gorn: This game does not scrimp on the violence.
• Greed: Magruder's motivation is to get his hands on an ancient goldmine.

• Groin Attack: One of the wanted outlaws is a chick who castrated someone. This gets a Call-Back when the victim of said Groin Attack goes Axe-Crazy and tries to burn down a town.
• Guns Akimbo: Hoodoo's Peacemakers. After defeating Hoodoo, the player can make use of them as the most powerful pistols, effectively giving a twelve round capacity compared to the Volcanic Pistol's ten rounds or the six used by the Colt Navy and Schofield revolvers.
• The Gunslinger: Colton is a Quick Draw.
• Gun Porn: There are plenty of different Old West era firearms available for use in the game that fall outside the standard Single Action Army/Winchester Rifle/Double Barreled Shotgun standard (though these are available), including a number of rare guns to play with.
• Harder Than Hard: The Insane difficulty is harder than an amorous bronco bull's balls. You die in 1-2 hits, enemies take more damage and you are just too underpowered to fight effectively without paying for upgrades. And you have scarce little money, too. Using cover is a must, before you reach the missions where there is no cover.
• Healing Potion: Colton's whiskey flask is effectively this.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • Clay Allison, Chavey Y Chavez, Dave Rudabaugh, J.J. Webb, and Hoodoo Brown all existed in reality. Dutchie might be "Dutchy" Schunderberger, who was also a member of the infamous Dodge City Gang that Hoodoo, Webb, and Rudabaugh were also part of.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Jenny is the top sex worker at the Alhambra, but when she hears that Cole is related to Ned, she doesn't hesitate to help him out. She also proves to be a fiercely loyal companion.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Drinking Whiskey fixes all injuries.
• Hypocrite: At one point, Magruder says Hollister and the Renegades are traitors who can't be trusted. While he's not wrong, Magruder conveniently seems to forget he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Though to be fair, it's implied he was only using the Confederacy as a means to find Quivira.
• I Am Not Your Father: Ned's last words to Cole is the revelation that he isn't Cole's real father. Cole, and the player, finds out much later that Cole's real father was a doctor named Campbell and was murdered by Magruder.
• I Like Swords: A cavalry sword is the last and best melee weapon you can get.
• Improvised Weapon: Ned's unloaded rifle makes a good club until he is finally taken out in an explosion.
• Incorrect Animal Noise: The cougars seen in the game sound like lions, and the bison sound like domestic cattle.
• Injun Country: There are two tribes of natives in the game and their camps can be visited during the storyline.
• Ironic Nickname: "Honest" Tom is anything but, since he claims he's going to give Cole a free horse for beating his challenge and then turns around and tries to kill Cole for the Alhambra token he's carrying.
• Karmic Death:
  • Reed is on the receiving end of a well-deserved one, having his brains blown to smithereens after he'd killed Sadie via tomahawk headshot, cutting Jenny’s throat, and Ned by blowing up the steamboat.
  • Magruder's lust to find Quivira ended up being his demise, as he's killed right in the middle of the ancient gold mine.
• Large Ham: What Reed transforms into when he gets angry. Also Hoodoo Brown once he suffers his Villainous Breakdown.
• Last Stand: When Ned runs dry after pushing Colton off the steamship, he turns to using his rifle as a club and takes down a few renegades with it before the ship finally explodes and sinks.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Once Magruder is defeated Quivira begins to collapse in. Justified in that Colton has blasted a large portion of the cave on top of him and combined with Macgruder's mining operation weakening the structural integrity of the caves.
• Lovable Coward: Soapy isn't much for confrontation and even though he gives away key information it's easy to forgive him considering the duress he was under.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Hollister blows himself up in a Taking You with Me attempt on Cole once he's been wounded badly enough. The game's physics allows for enemies to be blown apart when using explosives or even some of the game's more powerful guns; The Nock Gun, for example, is capable of dismembering a horse.
• Mighty Whitey: When Colton joins the Blackfoot Indians in the raid of Hollister's fort, he puts on Native American warpaint and goes shirtless. Although, the trope is ultimately subverted when Colton is later revealed to have mixed ancestry.
• Molotov Cocktail: Here they are known as Whiskey Bombs.
• Moe Greene Special: In a flashback, Magruder is seen being shot in the eye by Colton's biological mother. Sadly, he lived to tell the tale.
• Money for Nothing: Cash is scarce early in the game, but once you buy a pickaxe and start exploring, there's plenty of gold around to buy whatever you need.
• Mountain Man: Ned is a gravelly voiced, buck skin wearing, well-bearded example of this trope.
• New Game Plus: Available as a cheat when you have finished the game.
• No Communities Were Harmed: Empire seems to be standing in for Las Vegas, New Mexico, not to be confused with the other Las Vegas, which is probably why the city has been renamed.
• Not What I Signed on For: Ned's reaction when he witnessed the Apache village massacre by Major Magruder.
• Obviously Evil: Reverend Josiah Reed who has greasy black hair and mustache, a hook nose, and a custom all-black preacher's outfit. He practically oozes evil.
  Colton: If he's a man of the cloth, then I'm the King of Siam.
• One-Word Title: GUN. All caps, too.
• Pistol-Whipping: Ned is shown whacking Renegades with his rifle when he runs out of bullets at the end of the steamboat battle.
• Plot Hole:
  • See Writers Cannot Do Math
  • Made even worse by the fact that Cole mentions via a flashback that around a dozen years prior to the game, he was attacked and almost killed by a cougar.
• Pony Express Rider: One of your side jobs. Deconstructed at the end of the very last Pony Express job, where you have to deliver parts to workers along the railroad under construction. Upon completing the job, you're informed that the completion of the railroad has left the Pony Express obsolete.
• Power Copying: A large number of the game's weapons, including pretty much all of the top tier guns, are obtained by defeating bosses.
• Present-Day Past: Texas Hold 'Em poker is at least twenty years early here. Its inclusion here seems to be due to its surge in popularity during the game's release in the noughties.
• Prison Episode: This game has two of them.
• Pyromaniac: Toby "The Torch", the former mayor of Dodge City.
• Quick Nip: You carry a flask of whiskey which can recover some of your health whenever you drink from it.
• Railroad Baron: Magruder but that is not enough for his greed.
• Rancher: One of your side jobs.
• Recycled In Space: This game is essentially Grand Theft Auto IN THE OLD WEST!
• RPG Elements: The game actually does have a stat system with stats such as gunhand or horsemanship affecting how Cole plays. These stats rise automatically as missions are completed.
• La Résistance: Clay runs a rebel group from the mountains against Empire. Colton joins them after Hoodoo betrays him.
• The Remnant: Sergeant Hollister and his army of Renegades seems to be this, an entire army platoon that has deserted and become an army of outlaws. Also, Thomas Magruder's army of Elite Mooks appears to be the Confederate soldiers that served under him in the Civil War.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: You fight against the Apache in the first few missions, where they kill lots of civilians in attacks on railway workers, stagecoaches, and settlements. You learn fairly early on that they're actually La Résistance against Macgruder, a mass-murdering tyrant, and switch over to their side. This doesn't change the fact that they themselves have been slaughtering civilians by the wagonload to achieve their ends, however.
• The Rustler: One of the enemy types you get to fight.
• Savage Wolves: Wolves are common enemies in the side missions.
• Scenery Porn: The game world may be small but it sure looks beautiful.
• The Sheriff: Both Dodge City and Empire City have one and both give you deputy missions where you have to clean the town yourself. Cole himself is briefly deputised in story by Hoodoo Brown, which lasts for one mission.
• Shoot the Rope: You must rescue Soapy this way.
• Shout-Out:
  • Possible shout-out comes in the form of one of the Bounty missions you can take on, which asks you to track down and subdue a man called "Mad Dog" MacGrady, which could be a possible shout-out to the classic live-action interactive Cowboy game Mad Dog McCree from the early 90's.
  • The Renegade fort's location up a river, along with it's population consisting of absolutely batshit insane U.S Army soldiers is very Apocalypse Now.
  • One of the bounties goes by the name Bob Booth.
• Showgirl Skirt: A lot of the prostitutes' dresses have this.
• Simple, yet Opulent: The rich ladies wear long, black dresses that have a little bit of lace.
• Sinister Minister: Josiah Reed, one mean bastard who fancies himself a man of God... while ruthlessly murdering innocent people. Whether or not he actually IS a reverend or not is never fully established, but he dresses like one.
• Slashed Throat:
  • Reed slits Jenny's throat in front of Colton. Cole can do this to enemies he grabs hold of too.
  • Cole does this to a deputy in Empire when he grabs him through the bars of the cell in order to escape from jail.
• SNK Boss: Magruder. He can't be defeated by shooting him directly, but by shooting the geysers under him with the dynamite bow, then dropping a boulder on top of him.
• Space Compression:
  • Especially noticeable at one point, when Honest Tom states that Dodge City is a day's ride from where he meets Cole... even though it in fact only takes five minutes of riding on horseback and ferrying to get there. Okay, it is Honest Tom, but still.
  • The game takes place in five separate states: Montana, Kansas, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Yet all these locales can be reached within minutes of each other.
• Starting Equipment: A knife is your starter melee weapon. Additionally, your starting guns are a Colt 1851 Navy revolver and a Winchester lever action rifle, the latter of which can carry you through most of the game until the Ferguson rifle is unlocked.
• Super Drowning Skills: Even if you so much as wade knee-deep into a river you will have "drowned".
• Take My Hand!: Many Wounds grabs Cole by the hand to help him out of Quivira when it starts collapsing.
• Taking You with Me: When defeated, Sgt. Hollister puts a few dynamite sticks into his wounds and attempts to blow you up.
• A Taste of Power: The fight against the bear in the tutorial gives you access to the Ferguson Rifle, a powerful gun that's not available until late into the game.
• Timed Mission: The Pony Express missions all have time limits to get from A to B.
• Token Romance: Subverted. Though Cole sleeps with Jenny early on and there seems to be chemistry between them, Reed slits her throat less than halfway into the game.
• Trick Arrow: Standard, fire, and explosive arrows are all available to the player.
• Two Shots from Behind the Bar: After Jenny is taken hostage at the Alhambra Saloon, the bartender unlocks a cabinet behind the bar and pulls out what appears to be a rifle. However, after the cutscene ends he actually uses a pistol instead.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The Dynamite Arrows have this in spades. Hit a civilian with one and they'll run away and a few seconds later, *BOOM*. Prostitutes, will run towards you in an attempt to knife you.
  • You can also harm and kill horses that aren't a danger to you.
  • You can scalp enemies that have been downed. Originally you could have cashed in the scalps with a Native American trader, but that aspect was removed from the game so there's no reason to scalping other than to hear the screams.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Go around murdering civilians, and a "Town Patience" meter will pop up. If that meter drops to zero, then the town's militia will start coming after you. Unlike most examples in a sandbox game, they will stop coming after you after you kill them all.
• Villainous Breakdown: Hoodoo, before his impending death.
  • Magruder also slips into one when he realizes that Colton has killed Reed and acquired the cross of Coronado. He flies into a fit of rage, calling on every able-bodied man available to hunt Cole down and kill him, and boasts that nobody is going to stand in the way of his "destiny".
• The Voiceless: Dutchie, Magruder's muscle, never says a single line of dialogue during his screen time.
• Walking Armory: Not as big an offender as some examples, but by the final mission Colton is carrying: 2 Colt .45 Peacemakers, Ned's .69 caliber Ferguson, a Double-Barrel Colt Shotgun, a Remington Sharpshooter, an Apache bow (with Dynamite Arrows!), a Cavalry Sword, and six Whiskey Bombs and Dynamite sticks each.
• "Wanted!" Poster: You can start bounty hunter missions by examining these.
• Weapon Title: Also One-Word Title.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Literally every single challenge and obstacle in this game is overcome by shooting it.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The timeline of Colt and Ned's history doesn't add up at all. The game explicitly begins in 1880, but Ned took in Colt as a baby after the Civil War (ending in 1865). Colt is not only obviously older than 15, but there's a flashback to "a dozen years back" when Colt was a young adult. In addition, Ned's friends think he died in the Civil War, and refer to it as ten years ago.
• The Wild West: Naturally.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Apache tribe kills lots of civilians in attacks on railway workers, stagecoaches, and settlements. but later turns out to be La Résistance against Macgruder, a mass-murdering tyrant and the Big Bad, and switch over to their side. However, they themselves have been slaughtering civilians by the wagonload to achieve their ends
• You Killed My Father: The plot kicks off when Ned is killed by Hollister's men during the attack on the steamboat. Cole's biological father, Doctor Campbell, is killed by Magruder in a flashback as well as his mother who died in the aftermath.

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