In Gun Showdown you play Colton White, a lone cowboy out to avenge a few deaths and take down a corrupt and malevolent magnate who’s set himself up as the self-styled ruler of a western town. This story may have been done a hundred times over during the heyday of the western movie, but with so few western-themed games available it comes across as more of an homage than a derivative plotline here. It certainly is a refreshing change of pace to strap on a six-gun and take a break from shooting Nazis and aliens.

Gun Showdown is played as a third-party action game in which you lead Colton on his quest to set things right. The game is based on the console game Gun which appeared on several systems at the end of 2005 and the play is fairly similar to those versions. The story is driven by completing missions which can be taken on at any time. In between the missions you’re free to roam the towns and countryside looking for side missions that will earn you more stat bonuses and cash. The cash can be used to purchase weapon and health upgrades which certainly help to make the story missions a bit easier to complete. One of the complaints with the console versions of the game was that the game’s world was pretty devoid of life and things to do outside of the story and side missions. That applies here and more so, as the towns in the PSP version have even fewer people and horses making everything look like it is taking place in towns that have gone bust and soon will go ghost.

Control in the game is mapped to the analog nub and face buttons, with the nub controlling move direction and the buttons controlling facing. It takes a little getting used to if you’ve played the console version of the game and it prevents aiming from being as precise as you probably would want it to be, but overall it works well enough although the camera can sometimes take its time swinging around behind you. Aiming becomes easier when you switch to “quick draw” mode which is a bullet time sort of effect in which time slows for your enemies but you can still move at near normal speed. In this mode you are given the ability to lock targets and quickly flip between them, but the target lock is not always precise and you’ll find yourself having to make plenty of adjustments. This is also a bit of a necessity since the game awards headshots and shots which knock the weapon out of an enemy’s hand with extra quick draw time and you’ll want to keep the limited quick draw meter as full as possible.

Imprecise aiming is something PSP owners pretty much have accepted as a fact of life on the system, but there are is one controller glitch in Gun Showdown that is particularly frustrating. The down arrow on the directional pad is used to initiate actions like getting on your horse or talking to people. For some reason it can take multiple presses of this button to get the game to acknowledge the action. Normally this is just a minor annoyance, but there are timed missions in which you need to speak to someone and then race somewhere on your horse. It’s simply frustrating to watch your timer run down as you’re frantically pushing the button just to get on your horse.

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