Written by: Scott Knox

Time to head West with the new GUN title for the PSP, Gun Showdown.

Features:

Expansive Free-Roaming Interactive World – Players traverse on horseback or foot through a living, populated environment that stretches from the snowy mountains of Montana, to the plains of Dodge City, Kansas and the deserts of New Mexico where danger is at every turn.

Extensive Variety of Missions – Experience an extensive variety of missions such as: wage war on horseback, hunt for bounties, play poker, protect ladies of the night, hunt buffalo, assault a frontier fort.

Broad Range of Gameplay – Multiple gameplay styles include: strategic gunplay and precision shooting, stealth tactics, and use of explosives. Embark on numerous side missions to master gun slinging and horse riding. Players can unlock secret weapons and upgrade skills and abilities to improve their weapon and equipment performance.

Have you ever wanted a free-roaming western game? If you played the console versions of Gun, that probably quenched your urge. Now Neversoft aims to bring the same experience to the PlayStation Portable, as well as fix a few problems with the originals. Gun Showdown sticks to the story of the original Guns putting you in the shoes of a cowboy named Colton White. Your adventure starts when your hunter friend Ned leads to a boat that is supposed to contain an important artifact. Unfortunately, you're not the only ones that know of its presence and you barely escape ambush. Ned, on the other hand, does not, which sets you on your quest of revenge to find the baddies that were behind it.

Although the PSP version sticks to the same story and voicework, there will be a few new levels added in as well. All of which were originally going to be put in the first Gun games. So every one of the new, exclusive levels were easily put into the original storyline. Along with that, the controls have also been fine-tuned to the PSP's somewhat difficult interface. The face buttons are now used for adjusting the camera, which has proved very useful and efficient in other PSP games. You can also switch weapons on the fly using the D-pad. Along with a small amount of aim-assisting, it would sound as if Gun's controls will turn out easy to manuever on the PSP's interface.

Along with the great story of the original Guns, one of the most noticeable features of Gun Showdown are the six minigames being added in. One of which is known as Hold-the-Fort. In this mini-game you must man a cannon and do your best to hold back a swarm of baddies that approach you from below. And if the six mini-games aren't enough to impress you, all of the new multiplayer features should do the trick. Five maps will be availible for you and five other people to duke it out on. Each one built with awesome multiplayer in mind, and a new character model system makes each of you easy for the other player to recognize by making each of you completely different. Along with a fun little poker game and some form of capture-the-flag, Gun should make for an interesting multiplayer experience.

Gun also features some interesting weapons assortments as well. Explosives, throwing knives, land mines, and other deadly weapons to make your kills as fun as possible. Also a much needed utility of the old Gun games makes it's debut. A horse whistle that allows you to instantly summon your horse, Indicating that your horse might be used more this time round. Altogether Gun has what it takes to bring some really great open world western shooting to the PSP. Showdown could be a big hit if it sticks to its guns. Gun Showdown is set to release sometime in October, 2006.