GUN Showdown

How does Neversoft's western survive on PSP?

	Version PSP	Developer Rebellion Studios	Publisher Activision	Genre Action

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This is not the end of the control issues though, as further problems include the sheer number of actions mapped to the buttons with different actions performed depending on whether the button is tapped or held down. For instance, tapping the left shoulder button invokes a jump whilst holding it down causes you to crouch. Yet when riding a horse holding the left shoulder button down causes the horse to break into a gallop before settling into a sprint.

Thus, to continually gallop you must continually pump the left shoulder button. Tapping the same button though will cause your horse to jump and so one often finds themselves alternating between galloping and jumping. Things only get more complicated when you factor in the d-pad, which sometimes performs actions (such as mounting your horse or picking up barrels - yes, barrels! - of TNT) and other times must be held down in combination with the face buttons to reload, holster, whistle for your horse or change your weapon.

To Rebellion's credit they have realized this as a potential problem and so holding down a button helpfully brings up an on-screen context-sensitive representation of what actions the face buttons will perform. Fine in theory, but when under attack and requiring a quick change of weapon or a reload this is simply too slow and often you find yourself taking a swig of your flash when you really wanted to perform a different action.

One has to ask why design these problems into the game in the first place? Why not rework the control mechanics into something better? All-in-all a little messy and clumsy to say the least.

As expected, weapons play a big part in the game and there are a wide variety which you will come across, falling into categories such as pistols, rifles, melee weapons and bows. Often you will simply find or be given a new weapon for seemingly no other reason than the game deems it so. It also deems that you then must immediately equip this weapon, no two ways about it. You cannot refuse it, nor can you just put it in your saddlebag for later - you must actively equip it there and then.

Sure, you can then switch back to whatever weapon you were using previously but making the player perform this action smacks of laziness on the behalf of the designers. There also seems to be no obvious way to switch back to the standard pistol after selecting another weapon as the pistol does not appear mapped to a face button. Confusing and bewildering.

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